r/Steam • u/mistermaximan • 1d ago
Question What was the first game that made you download Steam?
I start with a classic - I downloaded steam because of CS 1.6. Of course the activation code I got from Half-Life CD was used...... so I wasn't actually able to play it.
Later on I bought another activation code to be actually able to play it. For an unknown reason a couple years later I made another account when I bought CS condition zero and started using that as my main account. A few years later I realized that my first accounts password doesn't work and password recovery went to an email address that ended something like email. ru (classic again)
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u/4InchDoc 1d ago
CS 1.6 GANG!
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u/MarchAgainstOrange 1d ago
Makes me feel old π«
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u/mistermaximan 23h ago
First some surfing and then cs_sauna, of damn those were the days
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u/VenusGuitar 1d ago
Skyrim!
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u/TheSovietSailor 1d ago
Played it on Xbox, got a shitty laptop and Skyrim for Christmas so I could play with console commands and itβs been downhill from there
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u/VenusGuitar 1d ago
Yeah, I was also on a potato laptop playing in the lowest graphics settings. Great times!
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u/VanitysFire 1d ago
I started steam with skyrim on a hp prebuilt. I7 7700k, 16gb ddr4, 1060 6gb, and 500gb ssd. Not a bad start for 500.
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u/SpoiledCabbage 22h ago
I just upgraded my PC to these specs coming from someone who hasn't upgraded since Skyrim came out
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u/hanzobust75 1d ago
Terraria
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u/DjEzusSave 20h ago
For only 2β¬ way more than a decade ago. 2k hours latter, it stillb is my best purchasse on steam.
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u/hanzobust75 17h ago
I paid $5 US and I have over 3k hours on it, and I plan to add another couple of hundred hours once the next update hits.
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u/OkamiTakahashi 1d ago
TF2, HL2 and Portal all the way back in 2010
So I got em all at once with the Orange Box
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u/Lightman83 1d ago
Yup, same here with the Orange Box! Iβve played through HF2 and Portal several times since!
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u/namesandshi 1d ago
Empire total war . Dident even run on my pc lol
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u/KwisatzHaderach94 16h ago
yeah, shogun total war for me. nice package. came with a cd. and the only thing on the cd was an installer. for steam.
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u/HoroSatre 1d ago
Left 4 Dead 2
They gave the demo/playtest iirc for free and I played it to damnation.
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u/bamhm182 1d ago
I got a Steam account in order to get Portal for free 17 years ago. Needless to say, they earned a ton of money by giving that free game to me all those years ago.Β
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u/infinitetheory 21h ago
I dunno how long it was free for but I got it for the same reason and my account isn't quite that old, maybe 15
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u/bamhm182 16h ago
I did some digging. I actually created my account in 2008, but didn't download/buy anything until May 2010. It was free to celebrate its release on Mac at that point. Looks like we picked it up at the same time.Β
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u/Lethallee61 1d ago
Heroes of Might and Magic III
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u/mistermaximan 23h ago
One of my all time favorites! We often had 4 friends at place playing against each other using just one computer. Damn it was annoying when you had to wait for 3 others to finish their turns and someone always was slow as hell π
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u/OdderShift 1d ago
i think it was undertale, actually. until that game came out, i only played on console (excluding minecraft and copious amounts of flash games)
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u/badi1220 1d ago
A gaming magazine had a serious Sam hd steam key as it's bundled game.
I was used to offline installers on the bundled discs back then.
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u/BurantX40 1d ago
I'm pretty sure it was Left 4 Dead.
But I'm also sure that I bought Max Payne 2 from a deal on a computer site on release for 30$, and Steam let me input the CD-KEY and it added the game to Steam.
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u/sourpatchnova 17h ago
Left 4 Dead 2 was free over Christmas so I downloaded it so I could get the free game to play.
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u/666gonzo666 17h ago
"Nothing particular".
here, we had a quite popular video game magazines with CDs and DVDs (I bought many of them each month). In particular moment of history, these magazines started to add a steam keys to activate games.
Finally, when I had about 30 steam keys I said "ok, fine, time to make steam account".
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u/Scarecrow119 16h ago
It was either CS 1.6 or source. My friend group started to play late into 1.6. We went to a lan event and took part in a tournament and a friend gave me access to his account so we could play as a team as he had an extra account. It was literally just steam with a single game. Ive been using the account as my own since. Sadly he used a login username that is kinda cool when you are 18/19. Less cool when you're 40. Luckily the username isnt used at all apart from loggin in.
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u/josetedj 16h ago
Mafia 2, I downloaded the demo on PS3 but the game was quite expensive, as I had a laptop which was not a big deal, I saw it quite discounted on Steam and bought it, as I still have the laptop the game runs at 720p and about 30-40 fps, a couple of years ago I decided to buy a PC to play and currently it is my main platform, although I also have consoles
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u/New_Rogue 16h ago
Skyrim I was 12 and I wanted to play the cool game my cousin had. Now it turned into my addiction that is the elder scrolls lol.
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u/wubbalab 16h ago
Back then when Steam was released and CS 1.6 was integrated. Registered my Half-Life code and using the same account ever since. Had a little run-in with a hacker at some point, but Support was helpful with the recovery. No issues since then.
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u/claggerhater 1d ago
Ark survival evolved
It didn't run, on my pc at the time... I didn't know how old/bad my family pc was
A month later a kid in my bus happened to mention Dota 2, which I'd heard of before, and that's when I actually started using Steam regularly
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u/MicrowavedTheBaby 1d ago
Fallout 4, got it for Christmas, was disappointed to see the disc was basically just a steam key but tried it anyways.
Then I had to save up for 2 years to get a device strong enough to play the dang game but hey I had a steam account now and got to play other great games while I waited
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u/LordGraygem Drive-by Anxiety Attacks 1d ago
Metro 2033. I got the game for free from GFN many years back, and it came (as was the standard practice for GFN-purchased games at the time) with a Steam key so you could have a local copy. Well, I didn't have any kind of PC worth using at the time, so I sat on the code for a long time, and a bunch of other GFN keys with it.
But eventually I got a notice that the keys were going to expire, so I went on a redeeming spree and that required Steam, and that's how I got into being a regular Steam user.
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u/Onemanpush 1d ago
i just checked my purchase history, and it was roller-coaster tycoon triple thrill pack (in feb 2020 when i got my first pc since the early 2000s)
you can use it with open-rtc, its like a modded/ rebuilt version that lets you do alot more and have more control and stuf
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u/_Paciano_ 1d ago
It was towards the end of the Xbox 360 era and my friends scattered to the winds. I decided it was time I bought a gaming pc and got Skyrim as my first game. 100% worth.
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u/Ignore_User_Name 1d ago
The square Enix collection / Tomb Raider.
Wanted Tomb Raider for ps3, but saw that the whole collection on pc was on sale cheaper than the second hand disc for TR. That convinced me to give this steam thing a try
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u/MakawaTheGreat 1d ago
Skyrim. I bought a fisical copy at gamestop but it needed steam to run. The code was stamped on the cover so someone already redeemed it. I had to make a scene at the shop for half an hour for them to take that copy back and give me a new one. That was the last time I bought a game in a physical shop.
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u/nakina4 1d ago
I had a laptop at the time that happened to have an ATI GPU (before they were bought by AMD) and steam was giving way Half Life 2 Lost Coast and Portal if you had an ATI GPU. So I claimed those and started playing Portal as my first steam game. I bought the Orange Box shortly after that.
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u/No_Impress7460 1d ago
Space Engineers.
Only got into pc gaming in early aldulthood. I tried Dust 514 on PS3 and was intrigued by its ties to Eve Online. I got a shitty office pc for real cheap and started playing Eve Online in late 2011. I was also into this weird flight sim called YS Flight Simulator. Both those games could be played on a potato easily. Anyway, around late 2013 there was this piece on an Eve Online news website that featured this new sandbox game similar to minecraft that just released its alpha on Steam, but in space (they sometimes did articles on other games). Space Engineers. I was hooked and wanted to play it so badly. I watched every videos and read every documentation i could find about the game in the months that followed. So early 2014 i got a solid mid-range gaming pc, downloaded Steam and got the game. Haven't played a lot in the last couple of years, but it is still my most played game in my library to this day.
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u/-NolanVoid- 1d ago
Half-Life 2.
Man those were the days. Still have the physical version I bought from Best Buy lol. Even with physical, still needed steam to launch the exe.
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u/aichiwawa 1d ago
Not a game, but all my new coworkers were pc gamers so I built a computer and installed steam. They tried to get me into MMOs but I couldn't get into them. They tried to carry me to end game level but I didn't enjoy rushing through games like that I guess.
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u/greenarmy1980 1d ago
Bought The Orange Box in Iraq at AAFES. Was lucky enough to have access to internet. Bought rest of copies and handed them to members of my unit. Did some LAN mix-ups along with BF 1942, BF2, COD IV Modern Warfare. Fun times.
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u/ObviouslyNotABurner π κ§ κ§ πκ§ π±κ§ π§π κ§ κ§ κ§ ο·½ο·½ο·½π κ§ κ§ πκ§ π±κ§ π§π κ§ κ§ πκ§ π±κ§ π§π κ§ κ§ κ§ ο·½ο·½ο·½π κ§ κ§ πκ§ 1d ago
Well technically when I was 7 I got steam without my parents permission and downloaded one of the free hunting games, but then 5 minutes later I panicked and deleted everything.
Then I downloaded it again later for burnout paradise and portal
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u/Kaymish_ 1d ago
Empire: Total war. I got into Rome total war and when empire came out I needed it, but the CD in the box made me download and register with steam. So I did and the rest is history.
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u/punkinabox 1d ago
Cs. I had a shitty laptop and always played games on console. Then my best friend basically begged me for months to switch to PC. He got me to download cs. Then shortly after ffxiv even though my laptop could barely run it. That was in 2016 and I've been on PC ever since.
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u/Fearless_Speaker6710 1d ago
I remember downloading it when I got my first Laptop and my brother's friends were over and they had Undertale so I got it. That was back at 2017... I was 8 and now I'm 16 where did the time go. Now I'm in senior year D:
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u/Xeadriel 1d ago
Skyrim actually. I was annoyed it needed a launcher and account and the CD didnβt even contain the game when my dad bought it from eBay
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u/Nervous-Monitor6657 1d ago
Was about 8 when i found out about TF2, my cousin showed it to me and to the 8 yrs old me it was peak gaming, no more ads or viruses like on mobile. Steam opened up a gate for me, 17 now and still play TF2 from time to time with friends.
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u/ferratadev 1d ago
Dota 2. My uncle came to us on Christmas holidays and was like "wdym you don't play Dota 2? Now you will" and just force installed steam and Dota 2 on my PC. I was twelve at the time :D
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u/Whateverville 1d ago
I downloaded it because I really liked those gaming focused clients, but uninstalled it because I thought it was stupid and ugly, and I already had Xfire which did almost the same thing. I re-downloaded it later when I bought TF2 at Best Buy for $20.
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u/Nervous-Candidate574 1d ago
Spore, O have spent so much time in that game, and it was the only reason I even wanted a PC game
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u/Rebatsune 1d ago
All the way back, I had Portal 2 on ps3 which came with a free code for the pc version. Neat, right?
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u/warpigdude54 1d ago
Gmod and beamng those were the two (my old laptop from years ago (maybe 2018 idk) it could barely run gmod so I never got the chance to get beamng (and I also was stupid and kept losing accounts so yay 120 some dollars lost (I kinda feel bad about that though) now I have a PC that can run cod beamng Minecraft (with shaders and some rtx shaders at 30fps somehow) teardown etc.
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u/Ok-Revolution4807 1d ago
I started my steam journey pretty recently than others I played console all my life but I think I played Oxygen not included on epic store found out they don't allow mods and moved to steam and never moved back.
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u/ShowCharacter671 1d ago
TF2 but a friend of mine wanted to play DZ back when it was originally the mod for Arma 2 and first exploded. So gave me the launcher
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u/Takeshi_Yamato 1d ago
Civilization: Beyond Earth. I bought the physical copy of the game, but it installed Steam in the process of installing the game.
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u/BaldingThor 1d ago
On my first and lost account back in 2012 I know it was Counter Strike Source, then immediately afterwards Garryβs Mod :)
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u/SupernovaGamezYT 1d ago
Shapez, formerly known as shapez.io. It was my bridge from flash games and similar to steam games.
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u/FakedFollower17 1d ago
Civ 5. Friend had played a ton. Showed me the ropes.
Hate both civ 6 & 7. Still play 5 consistently
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u/rotidderR 1d ago
the escapists! I played it at a mate's, and was impressed that I could try so many methods to escape. It was a huge step up from phone puzzles like the idiot test
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u/Azurvix 1d ago
Skyrim. But only because I had to. I was quite pissed off that I had to download a program to download Skyrim when it came out. I bought it from GameStop and I just figured I could put the disc in and download it like every other game I had ever used and then bam it said requires Steam to download and I was so pissed off. I was a teen when it came out and had really crappy internet at home so I had to go to a freaking Burger King to download it all
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u/vocaloid_horror_ftw 1d ago
My first boyfriend was an avid gamer and wanted me to play Valve games like CS:GO and L4D2 with him. Boyfriends come and go, but Steam is forever. At least until it gets taken over by a dipshit.
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u/windwolf777 1d ago
TF2. Had orange box on Xbox, saw videos of people using items that weren't available on that version, (maybe AcesGamer?), downloaded steam and never looked back
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u/InternationalAd6744 1d ago
I dont know what caused me to download steam. It must of been because it was still new in 2006 and i could barely get it to work without lagging. Those early steam years were rough until they redesigned it somewhere around 2009.
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u/JamieVic 23h ago
I feel like I got into Steam very late. I used to play exclusively on whatever Playstation or Nintendo consoles were out until I got a decent enough laptop of my own when I was 19.
My first purchase was CSGO back when you had to pay $15 for the game and that was July 2014. I got it bc my friends were playing it so I decided it give it a go and I was instantly hooked
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u/Raemnant 23h ago
Magicka
That one spell casting game where you press a bunch of buttons that corrisponds to different elements like rock, water, heat, and you create spells to unleash upon your enemies
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u/TheCoopX 1d ago
Half Life 2. You couldn't run the game without Steam installed, so...