{"id":185105,"date":"2022-03-10T13:23:38","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T12:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=185105"},"modified":"2025-07-01T20:53:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T03:53:51","slug":"steam-shop-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/steam-shop-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Steam shop the best it can be?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Steam shop <\/strong>and Steam games platform<\/a><\/strong> is known for epic steam sales, the Valve Steam Deck, supporting indie game developers, and much more. It’s been around since 2003, making it almost 20 years old now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though other developer-specific storefronts like EA Play<\/strong>, Uplay<\/strong>, and others exist, Steam offers games from thousands of developers<\/strong> at all price points — consistently offering sales and user-created mods. The problem is that they are no longer the only player in the digital games storefront game. Rivals like Epic Games<\/strong> have forced Steam to re-examine its features, offerings, pricing structure, developer tools, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the Steam platform stack up to rivals and what are the problems users have found?<\/strong> Let’s explore the Steam shop from things like the Steam shop, Steam games, and Steam wallet to skins gambling and anti-competitive practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steam platform creator: Valve and Gabe Newell<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gabe Newell<\/strong> and Mike Harrington<\/strong>, two former Microsoft employees, started the company Valve Software\/Valve Corporation <\/strong>in 1996. Though initially developing video games, the company developed its digital storefront known as Steam<\/strong> in 2002. It only offered first-party Valve games at first but began to more widely distribute other games starting in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of its lifetime, Steam has added new and developed unique features, and worked alongside its development arm (Valve). It accommodates<\/strong> Windows<\/strong>, macOS<\/strong>, Linux<\/strong>, mobile platforms<\/strong>, and virtual reality options<\/strong>. In fact, Valve produced Half-Life: Alyx<\/strong> in 2020 — a game designed for VR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the platform offers many features, many users just use it as a video game digital storefront and library<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Organization, UI, and features<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Having changed to keep up with popular UI and UX design, the Steam interface now focuses on image-heavy organization<\/strong>. This keeps things very vibrant with lots of visual information, but may not be for everyone. However, Steam also has lots of quality-of-life features <\/strong>such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n