I think you're underselling things a fair amount. Steam was first - but lots of first to market products under invest in R&D and end up playing catch-up feature wise... Valve has consistently shown they're willing to experiment with new feature and do-dads to make sure their platform remains competitive. Given all the revenue they draw out of Steam I think that's only fair - but a lot of companies in their position would cut their workforce and milk that cow until their founder could IPO and exit with a big wad of money.

The features you listed on the API side have almost all come in before competitors have tried to offer similar features - it's seriously impressive.

I am not underselling them at all, or mean my comment that way. However, as the first entry, they have had the longest time to refine all the aspects of their offering. The core of which i think is Users, Games, and API.

Indeed, the prevelance of Steam API is such that competing game markets have to make their own replacement Steam.dll, so that the gamedevs dont have to change anything.

Also Valve was a game company first, and i believe developed the first of these technologies for Half-life 2.

- Valve used Half-life 2 to bootsrap Steam (HL2 install disc came with steam)

- Use Steam to provide online services to HL2

- Then the users of HL2 become Steam users (or the sosial network of Steam, as we say today)

- Expose API to other game companies, which brings more Games, and Users

- Add features and keep ahead of competition

- Alot of the features also come from the fact that Valve develops games, and makes the features for themself first, and then exposes them to everybody through Steam API

Whilst Steam has invested a lot in R&D they also managed to secure it as a requirement to play several key titles throughout its first years.

And I’m not even talking about Counter Strike: Source, quite a few other influential titles including CoD:MW2 required steam for play on PC.

I think the user base and market demographics are why no one really complains on the publisher side. There's no other digital store on earth with more whale-like clientele.

Totally agree with one exception.

"They have all the features" isn't the case for game developers. Steam backend for developers and statistics is still pretty terrible.