Prez wrote on Sep 11, 2023, 15:58:
Half-Life 2 shipped in November 2004. I can't remember anymore, but I seem to recall that it was up until that point a complete unknown. I signed up, as seemingly everyone else did, for Half-Life 2.

Yep, I also signed up for HL2 - Nov 6, 2004.

Badges?! We don't need no stinking badges!

I remember picking up HL2 at a second hand store mere weeks after it was released. I already had a steam account for HL and DoD which I reluctantly joined once Valve killed WoN.

Anyway, 2nd hand HL2... I know what you're thinking: The key was already activated, right?
Well for 5 bucks I figured I'd take a shot give it a go anyway.
I typed the activation key and got an error. It was so long ago now I can't remember what it said. But a search at the time led me to a support page that pointed out the activation codes on the back of the cd sleeves where too long.

I entered the key again, leaving out the last group of letters and numbers, and Hey Presto! New Half Life 2 activated!
It was a rare win for me.

not sure what I was waiting on but..."Member since March 13, 2004."

Guess I'll be getting one. My start date was September, 2003. I'm guess it was for Counter Strike. I was heavily into it back then.

Guess I'll be getting one. My start date was September, 2003.

I was sure I’d only installed steam to play HL2 on release but apparently my account started in July 2004, a good few months before Hl2 was out but not quite early enough to get me into the 20 club,

ZenAbra wrote on Sep 11, 2023, 20:09:
My profile says November 28, 2003. I have no idea why I created the account back then... I didn't play Counter-Strike, so that wasn't it.

The first entry in my Account Purchase history is from June 2008, when I gifted my dad Portal, but that's obviously a limit to the purchase history rather than an accurate report of my first purchase.

Like others here, the first thing I remember using my Steam account for was buying and playing Half-Life 2.

Was there some kind of update to the first Half-Life and/or its expansions if you registered your game with Steam? I have some vague memory of something like that, but I could be wrong.

Any updates they pushed for the other games at that point were no doubt very minor compared to Counter-Strike. Maybe the Half-Life 2 pre-orders had begun a year in advance? A Steam account was required for that, obviously, but I also remember they gave you immediate access to some or all of their previous games as a bonus. The Steam account I use today is actually my second one because I had already registered some CD keys on my first account (Sept. 21st) and didn't want the extra copies to go to waste. A pretty silly notion in the long run, of course... I think I let someone else borrow those games on maybe two occasions all those years ago, lol, and now my main account isn't getting that '20' badge until next year.

14 September 2003!!! happy birthday to me! 318 games owned. 346 DLCs. crazy.

My profile says November 28, 2003. I have no idea why I created the account back then... I didn't play Counter-Strike, so that wasn't it.

The first entry in my Account Purchase history is from June 2008, when I gifted my dad Portal, but that's obviously a limit to the purchase history rather than an accurate report of my first purchase.

Like others here, the first thing I remember using my Steam account for was buying and playing Half-Life 2.

Was there some kind of update to the first Half-Life and/or its expansions if you registered your game with Steam? I have some vague memory of something like that, but I could be wrong.

I was unsure about the whole online service thing, so I didn't created my account October 2004 after pre-ordering HL2. It wouldn't be until 2008 until I bought my first non Valve game on Steam; Prey (the original one).

I was late to the party. January 17th 2004 to be exact

3 days for me. Still use it every day. I joined out of curiosity as I played Half Life deathmatch and was tired of having to have the disk in the drive as my motivation.

BicycleRepairMan wrote on Sep 11, 2023, 17:02:
Still 1 hour left for me. sept 12, 2003

(My local time)

Hey someone here who predates Half-Life 2! What made you sign up? (If you can even remember at this point 😁).

Still 1 hour left for me. sept 12, 2003

(My local time)

Bodolza wrote on Sep 11, 2023, 12:38:
"Incredibly, some of Steam’s early adopter accounts are still actively in use today, a full two decades after their creation."

Nice bit of casual ageism there. I didn't quite make the mark. I created mine in January 2004, so still have a few months until 20 years. I bet I'm not the only one on this board, either.

October 10th here, so a little under a month for mine.

Half-Life 2 shipped in November 2004. I can't remember anymore, but I seem to recall that it was up until that point a complete unknown. I signed up, as seemingly everyone else did, for Half-Life 2.

As for those who have been around even longer, I guess they were the ones who bought that Kung-fu stickman fighting game?

January 1, 2005.

Must have been a giveaway, given the date. I didn't join immediately because I was running a bit of a potato computer that couldn't run HL2 and didn't replace it until very early 2005.

Oct 12, 2004. It'll be 19 years next month. There wasn't a reason to sign up too early. I played CS, but there wasn't an incentive to get STEAM at the time.

INCREDIBLY, I still play games 19 years later. Fucking kids. Get off my lawn!

I waited for a year before I signed up to steam. I was one of the ones that didn't like the idea of digital distribution because of ownership rights. It took till Oct 2004 before I ended up caving. That was still the time when Valve still kept promising that if they ever went out of business they would provide a way for game purchasers to play the games they bought. Shame they reneged on that promise ever since they changed the ToS that everything was not a "Purchase" but a "Subscription to".

Bodolza wrote on Sep 11, 2023, 12:38:
"Incredibly, some of Steam’s early adopter accounts are still actively in use today, a full two decades after their creation."

Nice bit of casual ageism there. I didn't quite make the mark. I created mine in January 2004, so still have a few months until 20 years. I bet I'm not the only one on this board, either.

Sept 13 is my creation date. A few more days to go till 20 years.