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Steam defined the modern video game industry

Steam’s legacy is a vast and varied landscape of games serving millions of individual libraries, some thousands of titles deep — all of which can disappear with a snap if Valve decides to stop, sell or pivot.

It’s a chilling thought — Steam’s demise would enact immediate, catastrophic chaos across the video game industry, gutting players’ libraries and cutting off one of the most direct points of sale for developers of all sizes. Steam’s unwavering success has helped turn Valve into a senior resort community for computer science nerds, where game developers go to live out their final years surrounded by fantastic amenities, tinkering and unsupervised. Steam’s legacy is a vast and varied landscape of games serving millions of individual libraries, some thousands of titles deep — all of which can disappear with a snap if Valve decides to stop, sell or pivot.

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