Steam
Contents
Overview
Steam is an online gaming platform owned and run by Valve Corporation. It was originally started as a tool to update Counter-Strike, the most popular online action game made by Valve. Steam allows users to download games from a large selection of both purchasable and free titles, from producers such as Electronic Arts, Sony Online, Valve, 2K games, and many more.[4] With Steam, users can buy, play, share, modify, and build communities around Valve products as well as those from independent studios.[1]
Popular Titles
Popular games available for purchase on Steam include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Counter-Strike Counter-Strike, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.[5] Steam also offers free downloadable games including Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Champions Online. Electronic Arts features popular titles that can be bought on Steam such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2, The Sims 3 and Mass Effect.[6]
Steamworks
Many third party games are now being fully integrated with Steam by using the Steamworks API. This means that they require Steam to play, have direct access to its friends network, allow for achievements, and save games to the cloud. If a game is bought through a boxed retailer, then the serial key must be registered with Steam. Examples of games using Steamworks are The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. [7]
Controversy
Steam's Volatile Future
Although Steam provides a platform for storing game installation files on their cloud servers, the controversy that comes up is "What happens when Steam isn't here anymore?". Users can spend hundreds of dollars buying games available and playable on the Steam platform but if Steam were to go out of business or to disappear, then users would no longer be able to enjoy their purchases.
Steam's solution to this issue was releasing a new client that allows users to run their purchased games in an offline environment.[8]
Hacked Accounts
Steam was victim to a major hacking attack on November 6, 2011. The hackers gained entry through a few forum accounts into a larger database of information associated with those accounts. Steam detailed the damage in an email sent to all Steam users:
- We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including
- user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do
- not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the
- protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
These forum accounts are maintained separately from the main Steam accounts, and so the damage was somewhat contained. In order to ensure that their user's accounts were secure, Valve forced all users to change their forum account passwords the next time they logged in.
Differential Pricing
There has been some public outcry over Steam's differential- or "tiered"- pricing[9]. As of December 2011, the comment section of this forum shows that some consumers in high-cost tiers simply order some games from other, more egalitarian websites. Perhaps the tiered pricing does not cause any significant problem for Steam due to the ease of ordering via other platforms, leading customers who would otherwise express anger to simply do so. In addition, gamers tend to be more extensively networked in online communities than most of the population, and can therefore solve problems on a case-by-case basis using collaborative forums like Reddit
Ethical Concerns
Another ethical concern is the consolidation of one's game collection into one account. This is the digital equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that Valve and its users take extra precautions to protect accounts and conceal their passwords. The most recent technological advancement made in this regard is the concept of two-step authentication. This is the requirement that each time a user logs into their Steam account, the user must enter a time-sensitive randomly generated code which is sent to the user's email account. Valve's official name for this is called the Steam Guard.[10]
In an older security update, Steam added a simple warning to the Steam chat windows that read "Never tell your password to anyone." At the time it was implemented, there was a serious problem regarding people falling for simple social engineering attacks. Specifically, many people were contacted through Steam chat by people with user names that would suggest that they were Steam or Valve employees. The imposter would then claim to work for Steam or Valve and attempt to phish for the account password, and once obtained would promptly log into the user's account and change the password and email associated with the account so that the user could not recover it.
See Also
External Links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/index.html
- ↑ https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5477-WPJM-9388
- ↑ Graft, Kris (November 19, 2009). "Stardock Reveals Impulse, Steam Market Share Estimates". Gamasutra. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
- ↑ http://store.steampowered.com/about/
- ↑ http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
- ↑ http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Electronic%20Arts
- ↑ http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php
- ↑ http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=870603
- ↑ http://steamunpowered.eu/european-tiers
- ↑ https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4020-ALZM-5519
