Steam is the Adobe Photoshop of video game distribution. Both apps are the leaders in their respective categories, both are massive in size and scope, and both may be intimidating to first-time users. Steam, however, is infinitely more fun to explore. Valve’s PC gaming client offers a store, cloud saves, remote downloads, video streaming, and many other gamer-friendly features for your desktop, laptop, or Steam Deck. The Steam app remains our Editors’ Choice pick for PC gaming marketplaces, despite lacking integrated video recording capabilities and a way for its users to speak to a customer service representative should they experience a problem.
The Steam Library
Steam offers mostly Windows games along with some macOS titles. Steam Machines may not have taken off, but you’ll find Linux titles, which is great for Steam Deck owners who don’t want to solely rely on the Proton combability layer for Windows games (more on that in a bit). The free Steam app is a terrific way to buy new releases or preorder upcoming releases. If there’s a major new PC game, Steam likely has the title—provided that the game’s publisher isn’t selling it exclusively via another store. For example, you can only buy Overwatch from Battle.net and Fortnite from the Epic Games Store.
Still, Steam currently offers thousands of titles, ranging from simple arcade-like games (Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+) to simulations (Football Manager) to AAA behemoths (Monster Hunter World). Of course, as Steam is a Valve product, it has titles you won’t find in other PC game stores, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Half-Life: Alyx, and Portal. In addition, Valve produces one of the finest VR headsets on the market, so you’ll find many VR games on Steam. It has a variety that its competitors can’t match. Even competitors with their own digital game stores, like EA and Microsoft, now sell games on Steam.
Steam’s library goes back several decades, and it includes excellent classic games like Half-Life and Psychonauts. That said, the store isn’t a comprehensive library of legacy titles (for a wider selection of older games, try GOG.com). Like itch.io, however, Steam has a wide array of indie titles. In fact when you purchase games via itch.io, what you are actually buying are Steam activation keys.
Buying Steam Games
Newer games are priced similarly to retail releases, with most big titles costing $49.99 or $59.99. Indie and older games can cost anywhere from $5 to $19.99, depending on their release date and popularity. There are numerous free-to-play games, too, like Crusader Kings II and Ring of Elysium. Steam’s midweek and weekend sales reduce game prices by a great deal, but it’s Valve’s legendary, thematic Steam seasonal sales that feature incredibly deep discounts on individual games, publishers’ entire libraries, or bundles of their top games. It was during Steam’s Winter Sale that you could buy Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death, the platform’s best bargain-bin title, for just 99 cents.
You’ll find plenty of great deals on Steam, but the truly frugal gamer should stay aware of all their options. Buying games on Humble Bundle (owned by PCMag’s parent company, Ziff Davis) can save you money, donate to a good cause, and still give you a Steam key, anyway. The Epic Games Store wants to be Steam’s biggest rival, and while Epic’s library can’t compare, the store frequently gives away the games it does have for free. For more, check out our feature on the best free games to claim.
There’s another, riskier way to buy Steam games: Early Access. This section is the petri dish in which video games grow. You buy Early Access titles in unfinished form, so they may have more bugs and fewer features than completed, polished games. Fire Pro Wrestling World started as an Early Access title, and after a series of updates, moved to the regular store as an excellent, finished game.
Exploring the Steam Catalog
Steam’s homepage pushes not only big-name titles, but also those that Valve’s recommendation engine thinks would interest you based on your wish list, past purchases, and recent gaming sessions. One time after we logged into Steam, the application suggested taking a look at One Finger Death Punch (because we had just spent a lot of time playing fighting games) and Color Symphony (due to us playing other games listed with the Action, Indie, and Singleplayer tags).
If you want even more suggestions, check the Trending Among Friends section (which displays your buddies’ favorite games, based on their hours logged), Special Offers (game sales), and Recently Updated (games that have received new patches or content).
One of our favorite recommendation tools is Steam Curators. This lets you follow a high-profile video game personality (say, Jim Sterling), a brand (PCMag), or a community (NeoGAF) for their insights. Unfortunate name aside, we particularly enjoy the /r/pcmasterrace group, which has a team that recommends only “the most worthy PC Games.” We’ve discovered plenty of excellent titles via Steam Creators.
Alternatively, you can find a game’s Metacritic rating on its store page if you want an at-a-glance aggregated review score from professional gaming outlets.
You can avoid the sting of buying a broken game by visiting a title’s store page and reading user reviews. Well-received games are labeled Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive, while middle-of-the-road titles are tagged as Mixed. The gum sticking to the bottom of Steam’s seat is the Negative and Overwhelmingly Negative games. From what we’ve read in the user reviews and Steam community forums, those tags are usually reserved for the most broken of broken games.
Steam’s robust set of community features is a huge strength. It makes the Epic Games Store seem unfinished in comparison. Unfortunately, all of this useful information makes for a very busy interface. You can reduce the interface clutter by opening the Preferences menu and checking the product types and platforms that are of interest to you. Steam also gives you the option to filter content by title or genre. If you’re not an RPG fan, now you’ll never see Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster or Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim in your feed again.
With the Steam Deck’s launch, Steam makes it easy to find which games run best on the powerful handheld gaming pc. The Deck Verified program rates games based on how well they perform on the SteamOS operating system. Disco Elysium and God of War receive a green check, so expect no issues. A yellow check, in a game like F1 2021 or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, means the game is playable but might be occasionally wonky or require awkward control remapping. Some games don’t run at all on Deck, perhaps due to anti-cheat software, and many other games remain to be tested (they may work despite not yet receiving a green or yellow check).
Subpar Customer Service
Thankfully, Steam lets you get self-service refunds for unwanted, recently purchased games, which is something that all digital download services should offer their customers. You must submit a request within two weeks, and your playtime must be under two hours. In addition, Steam now gives users the power to delete unwanted games from their accounts. Previously, you had to contact customer service to delete games. The customer service reps aren’t rude or unfriendly; you simply can’t get anyone on the horn, and it sometimes takes days for Valve to resolve a problem submitted by ticket.
Here’s another example of Valve’s frustrating customer service. After buying a game that didn’t download despite being listed in our account, we submitted a help ticket. It took Valve three days to resolve the issue. That’s a long time to hear absolutely nothing from a company in regards to a billing issue. Valve needs to fix this, as soon as possible.
The Steam Engine
Steam automatically handles game downloads and installation, putting local game files in its SteamApps folder and getting them organized in the background. Large games can take an hour or two to download over fast connections, so prepare to keep your computers on if you plan to download the 80GB Death Stranding.
Steam lets you install games on multiple computers, but only one can be logged into an account at once. If you set up Steam Family Share, you can lend your games to others—an idea that Microsoft planned for Xbox One before console gamers’ anti-digital-rights-management (DRM) backlash forced the Redmond-based company to ditch the plan.
Steam, too, employs DRM, as you must log into Steam to establish a license check. That said, you can play any installed game in Offline Mode. Steam’s scheme is easily is one of the least offensive DRM implementations. GOG.com and itch.io, on the other hand, don’t apply DRM to the games in their catalogs, so you have the freedom to install your games on as many PCs as you see fit, without log-in limitations. That said, you won’t see as many high-profile new releases there. Humble Bundle lets you filter searches by DRM options. The Epic Games Store doesn’t add DRM by default, but doesn’t stop publishers from adding their own DRM to individual titles. Speaking of installing games, Steam lets you remotely install games using the Steam mobile app, a convenient ability the PlayStation app lets you do for PS4 games.
There aren’t any major restrictions in regards to Steam Family Share beyond the five user-account limitation; borrowers get their own achievements and cloud saves, too. They just can’t check out the game when the owner is playing it. If you’re sick of having friends borrow your games, you can gift them games, too, or buy them digital or physical Steam gift cards. This feature also ties in with Steam’s parental control functionality, limiting which users can play which games.
Steam offers matchmaking inside games and social media services outside of games, thanks to a Friends list with text and voice chat and support for Clans (groups of players). Friends can jump into each other’s games, you can invite friends into your games, and Clans can organize group activities by setting up calendars and posting server IP addresses.
As you play games, you earn badges that you can keep, sell in the Steam Market for Steam Store credit, or trade for other badges. Once you get an entire badge set, you get cool rewards like user profile wallpapers and special showcase badges. This is not at all essential to the gaming experience, but it’s a nice touch that gives achievement chasers yet another thing to hunt.
Steam lets you take a screenshot by tapping your keyboard’s F12 key (so much simpler here than on the Epic Games Store) but it doesn’t record video. You’ll have to download a third-party solution. On the other hand, the Xbox app’s built-in Game DVR tool lets you capture stills and up to four hours of video footage.
Chill Modes
Valve recognized gamers’ desire to play games in the living room, so it created Big Picture mode. Designed for the lean-back experience, Big Picture caters to people who want to play PC games in the same way that they play console games. The panel-driven UI is quite different from the standard Steam interface, which makes it easy to navigate on a big-screen TV. In addition, Remote Play Together lets you play select local co-op games with friends via the internet. It’s an excellent way to add online functionality to games that lack it, such as River City Girls. Even better, a friend can play with you without owning the game!
Valve’s living room play doesn’t end there. Steam now has a music player (“Dimensions” by Stellar Dreams makes for great writing music) and a slow-growing streaming movie catalog. Yes, movies. The selection is limited, but you can buy John Wick for $13.99 or rent the Keanu Reeves flick for $3.99. Not every movie has a rental option, though. Mad Max: Fury Road is only available as a $14.99 purchase. Unlike Netflix, Steam lacks a monthly streaming plan. You have a 48-hour window to watch your rented movie.
We rented Darren Aronofsky’s Pi to test the service. The 1080p stream opened in its own window and smoothly played over a high-speed home office connection. The experience pleased, but we don’t recommend returning to Steam for movie rentals until there are more titles in the catalog. There are plenty of other, superior video streaming services available.
GOG.com has movies, too, but most of its catalog is devoted to nerd-centric topics. Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony and Indie Game: The Movie perfectly sum up GOG.com’s film offerings. Steam also sells productivity software like Camtasia Studio and GeoVox. Humble Bundle offers non-gaming entertainment and software, from video editing tools to manga drawing tutorial books, in its rotating set of charity bundles.
Steam Broadcasting lets you view friends’ playthroughs or let others watch your sessions. To view a friend’s stream, open your Friends List, select a buddy, and click Watch Game in the menu. Public streams are found in a game’s community hub. In addition, downloading the Steam Link Anywhere mobile app lets you stream games from your gaming desktop or gaming laptop to Android or Raspberry Pi devices. Naturally, the quality of the video stream varies depending on the PC broadcasting the feed; We’ve encountered both magnificent and awful streams. Serious streamers should focus their energy toward a dedicated video game live streaming service, such as Twitch or Facebook Gaming.
Steam on Deck
On Steam Deck, Steam isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. Unless you plan on using the handheld solely as a homebrew Linux machine, you’ll need a Steam account to access the SteamOS interface that Steam Deck is clearly optimized to support. Fortunately, nearly everything we love about Steam carries over into the slick mobile package.
The convenient Steam button brings up shortcuts for Home, Library, Store, Friends and Chat, Media, Downloads, and Settings. You can browse community content and unlock achievements just as easily as on Steam proper. Add multiple profiles, turn on Family Sharing, or take advantage of Remote Play. The Steam Deck store highlights Deck Verified games.
But most importantly, SteamOS powers Steam Deck’s whole pitch of bringing the PC games you already own with you on the go. Once you log in, you can seamlessly download any and all (supported) Steam purchases, as well as sync up cloud saves. Steam wants to be the center of your gaming life, and the software successfully turns Steam Deck into another excellent extension of that ecosystem, finally free from the desktop.
Let Off Some Steam, Bennett
Valve’s Steam service is a must-have for any PC gamer. Its great selection, recommendation features, and deals make it one of the first applications to install on any gaming PC. On Steam Deck, it’s essential. No, Steam isn’t perfect, particularly in the customer support realm, but it’s the best all-round PC game distribution service available. For that, Steam is PCMag’s Editors’ Choice pick for video game marketplaces on PC.
For more PC game reviews and previews, check out PCMag’s Steam Curator page. And for in-depth video game talk, visit PCMag’s Pop-Off YouTube channel.
