Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.
Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.
“In case anyone’s curious about the odd colours, that’s the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge’s army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform’s earliest days. “I joined in the first six months,” lamented Affectionate-Memory4. “I feel ancient rn.”
Sept 12th 2003 is the date of my account. Tomorrow it turns 20. Very nice.
Fellow sept 12th here! Never would have thought that the simple looking launcher would turnout to be one of biggest juggernaut of selling digitale games!
Had to make a account so I could keep on playing CS 1.6. good times.
Team 9/12/03 reporting in
I’m two days behind you.
“What’s your friend ID”
“123456”…
“Okay, what’s the rest of the numbers?”
“That’s it. Those ARE the numbers”
*pikachu face*Oh man that’s awesome
Mine doesn’t turn 20 until January. I decided to wait a bit to see if it would actually fail first.
I hated the idea of an installer to install programs that had their own installers. It seemed like a pointless extra program to me, so I resisted getting it until I wanted to play Counterstrike and Steam was the best, or maybe the only way to do that. So I broke down and opened a Steam account.
I’d still prefer if we didn’t have to have these launchers.
What is cs2?
Counterstrike 2. But I guess I was misremembering, since I can’t find any reference to a CS2. I guess maybe it was CS 1.2. Shrug
You’re thinking about Counter Strike Source, which was on the new (at that point) Source engine. CS:Source is what came after CS 1.6
Yes that must be it! CSS. Ha! Web dev shit.
There’s never been a CS2. Other than a version of the name of the set of Adobe programs (ie, Photoshop CS2)
CS 1.6 is the popular one. That version is about to turn 20 as well.
You’re probably thinking of Counter Strike: Source, the name they gave it when they released it built on the Source engine.
Then there was the current one, Global Offensive.
However, there’s a new one about to be released that I think is still being called CS2. Not sure if that’s the final name or not, I haven’t been following it very closely. But I think it’s due to release this month. Or sometime soon.
Thanks. I think it was Counterstrike Source.
I saw at least 2, maybe 3 other comments mentioning CS2, so you’re not the only one. Unless you were talking about it elsewhere in these comments and that was you.
I was beginning to think there was another OG stream game I hadn’t heard of.
I was a daily CounterStrike 1.6 player back then. I didn’t have a choice. Literally couldn’t play unless I converted over to a Steam account.
I was playing CS as well back then. I don’t recall being forced to use steam
They closed the WON network in November I believe it was, which is when I had to make my steam account.
My steam account was also created in November, so I’m going to say that is correct as CS was the reason I made mine too
CS is what got me to finally open a steam account too. I can’t remember if it was the only way to play, or if it was a considerably better way to play. Either way, everyone playing CS was on Steam so I finally opened an account.
Same
I played cs 1.6 at a few LAN parties, but didn’t own it. I didn’t actually join steam until after CS:S had been out a while. I actually bought a hard copy of it.
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I remember connecting with WON before steam, nostalgia CS days
One more year and my Steam account can legally drink and smoke. I’m taking it to Vegas!
You can start drinking at 18
In America, probably not. It’s 21 for all states due to a federal law. If a state has it lower than 21, they get way less funding for Federal high ways, as the bill was aimed to lower drunk driving.
wish i could hide badges… the CS 10 year veteran badge makes it really shameful to play CS… because I never play CS, I just own it.
I too bought CS:S so I could use the assets in Garry’s Mod.
You have to choose to display them to begin with… You mean they won’t let you choose not to afterwards?
I couldn’t figure out a way to have Counter-Strike not show that badge
Interesting
“Only” 12 years here.
Only 18 here.
15 here.
I only signed up to play hl2 I think before that I used keys and CDs for things like ground zero
I remember a work friend burnt HL2 on cd for me and the only way to make it work was he also gave me his steam login. and the dude had a ripper username I still remember to this day, even though I havnt seen him in nearly 20 years.
mrpoo
Incredibly, some of Steam’s early adopter accounts are still actively in use today, a full two decades after their creation.
There are dozens of us!
Probably thousands, if not more!
I’ve got about 8 hours, but I also live on the opposite side of the earth +12 hours, so we’ll see if it’s bound to UTC time 😂
I finally managed to find my account age. 19 years and one month! Time flies.
I had a long hiatus, but I still play FPS games regularly. And I can still join a random HL2 deathmatch and pwn :).
At least
Edit: Mine turns 20 in 5 days
Apparently I’ve got 6 more days til mine turns 20, as well.
Nice. I didn’t make a Steam account until it supported Linux back in 2013 or so. So I guess I’ll be celebrating 10 years on Steam soon.
Took me awhile to look it up, but just saw I’ve had my account since December 31, 2003. I’m just about at 20 years.
Mine’s 15 now, but back in the day I used those bootlegged Steam clients that allowed me to run Garry’s Mod for free. Those were the hackey, piratey times of 700MB aXXo DVD rips that took 1 hour to download.
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Oh man. It is year 20. I think I made my account like 6 days in. I have a 6 digit steam ID.
I remember the steam beta, allowing me to finally ditch « the all seeing eye ».
Count me in the 20s !
Haha the what now? Are you talking about the Yahoo! Software?
It was basically GameSpy, but better.
GameSpy was a universal server browser.
If you ever used the server browser in Steam itself and not from the game, that’s basically what they were. An external app that you could get a list of servers for pretty much anything you added to it.
I think I made mine in 2009 for some sweet sweet TF2.
The orange box was such a good deal
I remember how much everyone hated steam at first. The WON was fine why ruin it with this stupid steam thing?
