MattyC wrote on Jan 2, 2020, 21:39:
Sepharo wrote on Jan 2, 2020, 20:33:
Rag Doll Kung Fu was the first non-Valve game on Steam... showed up October 2005.
That seems inline with my post. My Steam join date is September 12, 2003 and I wasn't the first or anything.
Sepharo wrote on Jan 2, 2020, 20:33:
Steam server browsers worked just fine right at launch.
Friends list was added 2005ish, hard to find the exact timing.
Steam friends was before 2005, IIRC, but I could be wrong.
The server browser was hot garbage at launch. Sometimes it wouldn't see servers on LAN (other browsers could... you had to manually add it to Steam), it never remembered favorites, filter options were sometimes ignored, it couldn't differentiate (in the early versions anyway) between bots and active users (even though that was a variable that servers readily offered) making those filters worthless, etc. We stuck with stuff like tASE and even Gamespy because Steam's was just bad.
I remember it occasionally forgetting the favorite servers but that seemed to be fixed with restarting or deleting some file or other. I don't remember any of those other issues and didn't post about them here... but I do have a post in 2005 saying that I had completely switched from ASE to Steam for server browsing.
From what I remember the server browser in Steam was pretty much exactly the same as the server browser inside of HL2/CS:S ... so I don't really fault it specifically much for those more advanced filters you were looking for... A server browser isn't a feature I'm looking for in any current platforms though since that concept has kind of died off. Also 3rd party browsers still worked, it was just annoying at the time that once authentication started going through Steam you had to run it before you could launch the game.
I remember I would still use ASE or HLSW long after Steam but only for discoverability at big LAN parties. So like if I was at a 300 person LAN I could pop open HLSW on the LAN tab and see that people were running Battlefield, Q3, CS server whatever.... something that wouldn't be possible through the Steam server browser anyway since it wouldn't have included non-Steam titles.