While Half-Life 2 wasn't the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. This requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games.
Years before Half-Life 2's release, Valve revealed Steam to the world at the 2002 Game Developers Conference... Perhaps the largest goal for Steam, though, was removing the middlemen of retail.
Back in 2004, many players saw Valve's new platform as nothing but 'fancy DRM.' But what many didn't realize was that Steam would evolve into the key distribution point and social networking center for the entire PC gaming ecosystem.
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