Steam
Steam is Valve's distribution platform, created to kick-start the digital distribution era for games. Steam allows users to easily purchase, download, play and update games online. It also helps developers by allowing them to break out of the innovation-crushing "retail and publisher" distribution model and offering them huge improvements to their profit margins and creative freedom.
Steam client is currently available for 
Windows, 
macOS and 
Linux. A mobile version of Steam is also available for 
Android and iOS/iPadOS.
Steam makes it easy to update software just like other similar software. Steam isn't the first software to do this, but it's become popular worldwide for gaming. Users had to visit separate websites that used to have their own steps and installers.
Some software had their own auto-updates, but they were pretty different from each other... This is mostly true for Windows, as some other OSes can auto-update their packages, but are not popular outside of some IT people.
Originally, Steam, at the time of it's releases, it only offered Valve games, or some games that use Valve IPs. This was later changed in 2005, when Steam starts to offers games from various third-party developers, whether they use Valve's engines, IPs or not.
Updates
Steam added PayPal as a payment option on 22 November 2006.
Steam Community and Achievements support was added in 2007.
Custom Steam skins are no longer supported on June 15, 2023 as the entire VGUI has been replaced by Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF).
Limitations/Bugs
Important:It's almost impossible to get older versions of the games without piracy or using retail versions of those games. This makes preservation of .dem files and Workshop Items which require specific versions of a game/software, that are impossible just with Steam.
Warning: Steamwill verify the files before launching the game after some Steam update. Users can't skip it at all. A 14.1 GB game may take up to 10-30 minutes on slower or busy PCs with some games.
Note:Downloads are compressed; many updates take 11MB to download and 716MB to patchWarning: Steam cannot only download and install certain files that the user wants.Steam Status & Statistics
- Steam Charts - Player Stats, Top Sellers, Most Played Games
- Steam Hardware & Software Survey
- Content Server Status
- Customer Support Status
- Unofficial Steam Status (by
SteamDB)
For more information on Steam and how to get it, visit the official About page of Steam. To launch Steam, click here.
Install scripts
Games, mods, DLCs and Workshop items
System Requirements
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Warning: Support for Steam on 
Windows 7, 
Windows 8 and 8.1 will be dropped in Jan 1, 2024.Support for 
Windows XP and Windows Vista and earlier has been dropped in Jan 1, 2019.
Support for macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and 10.12 (Sierra) was also dropped since Sep 1, 2023.
Note:Storage requirements would be changed over time depending on how many games/software you have installed.