“Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. It was launched as a standalone software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third-party game publishers’ titles.” 

That’s the Wikipedia definition of steam. But Steam is more than just a store, its a economy, a community and more. Steam in my opinion and probably many others is the go to store to buy games. Here are my reasons :

Sales

steamDB

Steam constantly has festive as well as publisher sales throughout the year. If you have the patience, you’re more than likely to get a great deal from steam. To know what the lowest recorded price of a specific game is, or when it last went on sale, check out SteamDB. It is an amazing tool for knowing everything that happens on Steams database. But for simplicity’s sake, you can search the game you want to buy and know its sale history. I also recommend installing their browser extension (available for chrome and Firefox), which lets you see the sale history directly on the steam web page itself.

Refund

Steam has the best refund system in the game, in their own words :

“You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it.

It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.”

Market 

Steam doesn’t just suck your money, it can also give back. It does this by a number of ways. Steam trading cards, in game items/drops and more. As you play games on steam you get drops – items related to that game like, a profile background or a chest or something. In most cases you can sell them on the Steam Market. This is a market place withing steam, where you can sell and buy in game goods. The great thing is when you sell your stuff you get cash to your steam wallet, which can be used to buy games/DLC/in-game items.

Community 

The community aspect is what makes steam more than just a store. With 69 million daily users, as of 2021, steam is home to a diverse group of people. And steam does a good job providing them separate spaces to interact with, based on their interest. 

Discussions : Every game has its own discussion page, where users can ask questions and troubleshoot their issues. 

Groups : Users can also start groups based on a specific topic, person, or interest. Group members will get updates whenever a new post is up on the group.

Guides : Users can create guides for everything. From how to install mods, to how to 100% achievements. 

Apart from all of this, there are dedicated sections for your creations including artworks, screenshots, videos and a dedicated MOD page for games that can be modded, and its as easy as clicking subscribe to get them downloaded into your game. 

Customization

This is probably for the niche audience who likes keeping their collection asthetic, but steam provides an array of customization tools.

Profile : You can customize your steam profile to your hearts content. There are thousands of  game specific items you can display on your profile. You have to buy them on the community store, or create badges which will drop a few items related to that game (check out – my profile) You can also buy items from the new point show. Your profile can be seen by everyone (unless your account is private) and its a fun way to show off your liking’s and personality.

Library : This can only been seen by you not like your profile. You can right click any game on your library > Manage > add custom artwork. I suggest creating a separate folder to put your cover art into that wont be moved. Note, custom artwork are not backed up to the cloud. You can also put moving png’s as your artwork (gif’s don’t work) to bring some life into your library. To get custom artwork go to – SteamGridDB

Social Aspect

I consider Steam a social media without the nuisance of social media. I have made many friends just through steam. Adding friends on steam has it’s own set of benefits. You can keep tabs on with what they are playing, see their achievements, chat with them. But if that’s annoying, you can simply set your account to invisible or busy to not show your current status. Also It is really easy to drop in and out of sessions with your friends, which can really helpful for those quick gaming sessions. And finally the ability to gift games, and how easy steam makes the transaction.

Convenience

Steam makes life easier. It has cloud save to save all your games save file for seamless gameplay in different systems, it has a in-built music player to play the OST’s you have bought, it is very reliable, more than most other stores anyways. It also has a personalized discovery queue, that recommends new games based on the games we’ve played. And now with the release of the Steam Deck which runs on Steam OS. It’s safe to say steam is an economy with no signs of stopping, and I’m excited to see where it goes next.