From “a broadband business platform”
to the Steam store

The June 2002 capture is the oldest homepage in this set. Its tab reads Steam Powered, and under IN THE NEWS a single line: Steam unveiled at the Game Developer's Conference. Valve’s own history dates that to GDC 2002.^[1] The page links the keynote slides twice, once as HTML and once as a Powerpoint Document.

In January 2003 the same overview text sits above a yellow line, Coming Soon!, and the Try Steam Now! buttons are gone. A new box on the right asks Interested in becoming a Steam content provider?

The box’s Basic Requirements look like a gaming PC, but they weren’t for players. A company needed them to put its software on Steam.

Steam launched on September 12, 2003. At first, Valve says, it was mainly a way to deliver Valve game updates.^[1]

By June 2004 the tab says Welcome to Steam, and every capture that follows begins its tab with those words. The pitch has turned around, from developers to players: BECOME PART OF THE STEAM COMMUNITY. Five promises follow, starting with Play the latest Valve games (like Counter-Strike: Condition Zero!) and Get automatic updates (no more patching!).

A box headed WHAT IS STEAM? answers in one breath: Steam is Valve's new way of getting games into your hands ASAP. Another reports on the Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey, where More than half a million respondents have taken part so far. Half-Life 2 itself was still five months away.

The menu is a row of small images: news, Get Steam Now, Cyber Cafes, Support, Forums, Status. The footer has a new name too. In 2003 it said Valve, L.L.C.; now it says Valve Corporation.

Valve’s own anniversary history can’t settle which game from another company came to Steam first. It names Codename: Gordon in 2004, then gives the title to Rag Doll Kung Fu in 2005 and corrects itself: You are correct, we are fools.^[1]

Half-Life 2 came out on November 16, 2004, the release date its store page still shows. In June 2005 Gordon Freeman’s face fills the middle of the homepage under Play Half-Life 2 Now! and Choose from 3 exciting packages: Bronze $49.95, Silver $59.95, Gold $84.95. Below it, the Valve Premiere Pack costs $19.95, Featuring 6 incredible games from Valve.

A download store, selling a hat. Gold was not only downloads: a January 2005 capture sells it for $89.95 with HL2 posters, full strat guide, soundtrack, hat, collector's box, postcard & more.

The menu still has Cyber Cafes, and the small print explains it: Over 1000 gaming venues have signed up for Valve’s Cyber Café Program. Another box sends fans to the Valve Store for shirts and posters.

The September 2006 homepage is a shop window. Games stand in a grid with prices under them: Uplink $9.95, GTI Racing $19.95, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 $24.95, Half-Life 2: Episode One $19.95, The aftermath of Half-Life 2 and a journey beyond City 17. A news item sells a racing game with hardware: Logitech's MOMO Racing wheel and pedal set for $ 124.95 (+shipping). The New On Steam list is mostly PopCap games added on August 30, 2006: Zuma Deluxe, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, Chuzzle Deluxe.

June 2007 goes dark. A Flash banner for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic leads a catalog with Top Sellers, Top Rated and New releases tabs. All but one of the 32 prices in the page’s code end in .95, from X-COM: Terror From the Deep at $4.95 to Half-Life 2 cut from $29.95 to $19.95. The odd one out is a bundle’s old price, $49.90. The code also holds a language menu listing 18 languages, Danish to Thai.

That December came the first big Steam sale, 10 to 50% off everything, according to Valve.^[1]

In our December 2008 capture the address is store.steampowered.com. The page has three columns now: genres and publishers on the left, the catalog in the middle, deals on the right. Titan Quest Gold is cut from $19.99 to $9.99, and The Orange Box costs $29.99.

Look at the cents. All 40 prices in the 2008 code end in .99. In 2007 none did.

The page’s code still warns You will need to Install the latest Flash plugin to view this page properly. The menu reads Home, What is Steam, Community, News, Cyber Cafés, Forums, Support, Stats.

The left column has a list called Publisher Catalogs. In December 2008 it names 18 companies, from 2K Games to Valve. In June 2009 it names 29, and Electronic Arts, Capcom and Telltale Games are new on it. Prototype fills the big banner, beside Braid at $14.99 and Plants vs. Zombies at $9.99.

In June 2010 the store is wider and grey, with a daily sale on top: FRIDAY: MIRROR'S EDGE, DEAD SPACE, & SPORE, and below it SATURDAY: ??? and SUNDAY: ???. It is EA Week, a year after Electronic Arts first shows up in the publisher list.

The right column has a new box, Community activity (last 48 hours), with a little wave chart and a number: 1,273,797 GAMERS ONLINE. Under it, two price buttons count the cheap end of the catalog: 612 games under $10, 173 under $5.

By December 2011 the counter says 2,277,771, and 1300 games cost under $10. Skyrim is Now Available, Brink has a free weekend, and a news line from December 1 announces a Daily Wishlist Giveaway.

June 2012 puts a big painted panel for The Lord of the Rings Online on top, with a WEEKEND DEAL for Cities XL 2012 beside it. The counter reads 2,448,224 gamers online, and 1632 games cost under $10.

A year later the same box shows 4,803,653, almost four times the 2010 number. The cheap shelf has 2666 games under $10.

The June 2013 menus show where Steam was going. In the page’s code the STORE dropdown lists Featured, News, Recommended, Wishlist, and the Community dropdown lists Discussions, Workshop, Greenlight and Market. The Games menu in the code puts Early Access next to Free to Play. Valve dates player reviews and Early Access to 2013.^[1] Rising Storm leads the carousel, and the page’s code still links to Cyber Cafés.

Making the store blue is how Valve’s own changelog names the new look of September 22, 2014: (also commonly referred to as “Making the store blue”). The same list has one removal, the Recommended for you page, replaced by the entire home page of Steam.^[3] Valve called it the Discovery Update. Steam had added over 1,300 titles in nine months and had over 100 million active accounts.^[2]

Our November 2014 capture is blue. A Halloween Sale banner hangs over Farming Simulator 15 and Watch Dogs. In the page’s code the STORE dropdown now reads Featured, Explore, Curators, Wishlist, News. The new Discovery Queue box asks signed-out visitors to sign in: Sign in to view and browse your personalized Discovery Queue.

Two things from the earlier years are missing. The gamers-online counter is gone, and so is Cyber Cafés. The page’s code has a new message, for visitors with nothing to go on: We're out of personalized recommendations for you right now.

In June 2015 the homepage hands itself over to a sale. The tab says Welcome to Steam - Steam Monster Summer Sale, the only capture in this set where anything follows the greeting. The page is a grid of Daily Deals with their discounts, then Flash Sales, New Deals Every 12 Hours.

That April Valve had taken something back, in unusually plain words: it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. On April 27, 2015 it announced it would remove the payment feature from the Skyrim Workshop and refund everyone who had spent money on a mod. The idea had been to let mod makers work on their mods full time, but an established modding community, Valve wrote, was probably not the right place to start iterating.^[6]

The page’s code has a Hardware menu now, with Steam Controller, Steam Link, Steam Machines and SteamVR. In June 2016 that menu lists HTC Vive instead of SteamVR, and the headset itself takes the top of the page beside a Resident Evil franchise sale.

In November 2016 Valve rebuilt the store again, and its notes introduce new Big Blue buttons with a straight face: Pretty exciting, right?^[4]

June 2017 is the first capture in this set with the heading that still runs the page: FEATURED & RECOMMENDED. Under it a carousel shows one big game at a time, here Grand Theft Auto V, with arrows on both sides. The left column lists ways to be recommended things: By Friends, By Curators, Tags, Discovery Queues.

The page’s code still has a Greenlight link in the Community menu, the last capture in this set with one. That year Steam Direct replaced Greenlight.^[1]

November 2018 gives the top of the page to one game, Artifact, before the carousel even starts. June 2019 pins Dark Souls: Remastered in the carousel, and the Hardware menu in the code leads with Valve Index.

Later that June the Summer Sale turned into a race between teams, the Steam Grand Prix. On June 27 Valve apologized: We designed something pretty complicated with a whole bunch of numbers and rules.^[7]

The prize was a game from your own wishlist. If your team made the podium and you were drawn, Valve would grant you the top item, so there was no need to remove other items from your wishlist.^[7]

Team Corgi was winning too easily. Valve changed the code to curb the snowball effects behind Team Corgi running away with the first two days of the races despite their tiny legs, and raised the points cap by 1,000 for players active on day 1 and by another 1,000 for day 2.^[7]

In June 2020 Star Wars: Squadrons takes the top of the store, and the menu gets a new item, Steam Labs. The categories menu in the code still has a place for the cyber cafés of 2005, under a new name: For PC Cafés. Our 2018 and 2019 captures call it PC Café Games on Steam; the 2020 to 2024 captures say For PC Cafés.

November 2021 is a red Halloween Sale, and the store bar has a Points Shop. Steam Deck appears in the categories menu in the code, before Valve launched the handheld in 2022.^[1] In June 2022 the top of the page is a pixel-art banner: A CELEBRATION OF UPCOMING GAMES, June 13 to 20. That is Steam Next Fest, the renamed Steam Game Festival.^[1] The categories in the code now include Great on Deck.

June 2023 is an ordinary week. Street Fighter 6 fills the carousel, and a box in the left column says Steam Deck Get Yours Now.

Next Fest is back on top in June 2024, in blue, JUNE 10 - 17, above a carousel showing Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX. The page’s code has a Recycling link in the footer and, in the mobile menu, Get the Steam Mobile App.

Our December 2025 capture belongs to one publisher: a Bandai Namco sale, UP TO 90% OFF, over Digimon Story Time Stranger. A row called Top Played on Steam Deck sits further down, and the footer in the page’s code adds Bluesky next to Facebook and X.

June 2026 is Next Fest again, orange and purple, ON NOW THRU JUN 22. The menu under it keeps the six headings of December 2025: Browse, Recommendations, Categories, Hardware, Ways to Play, Special Sections. At the top, Login has become Sign in, and the store menu in the code has a link called Charts.

2002 · Overview2026 · Next Fest

◀ ▶

The same store page, store.steampowered.com/app/220, shows the store’s change on one game. In September 2008 the page sells Half-Life 2 in six packages, from $19.99 for the game with Lost Coast to $99.99 for the Valve Complete Pack. The only verdict on it is from the critics: a Metascore of 96.

January 2011 has a trailer player and a holiday price, -50%, $4.99. July 2014 adds a row of words chosen by players: Popular user-defined tags for this product, among them FPS, Sci-fi, Action and Masterpiece. In January 2018 the players come first. Beside the box art, above the release date: Overwhelmingly Positive, 39,665 reviews in all.

In January 2023 the game costs $0.99 for a few days, -90%, and the review total on the screenshot is 119,164. In 2018 and 2023 the blurb beside the box art opens with 1998. HALF-LIFE sends a shock through the game industry. By June 2026 it begins Reawakened from stasis in the occupied metropolis of City 17, and The Orange Box lists 7 items instead of 5, adding Deathmatch and Lost Coast. The game itself had grown in 2024: the 20th anniversary update put both episodes into Half-Life 2.^[5]

The 2002 page talked to companies. The June 2026 page talks to the player, and it wants to know them. Its code still carries a message that first shows up in our 2014 capture, for visitors the store can’t read: We're out of personalized recommendations for you right now. It even guesses why: it might be that you don't have any playtime on record. The tab above it still says Welcome to Steam.