Valve’s Steam content delivery system has received a lot of stick in the wake of the launch of Half-Life 2 , which in the eyes of the world, was its first major test. People have been bitching and moaning about things such as the mandatory online authentication of the game, the fact that it took so long to unlock the files, and so on.

But for all this I have to say that I love Steam. Take a step back from the frustrations of dealing with the teething problems with the Half-Life 2 launch, and consider that they weren’t all that bad, as 99% gamers got the game running on the first run. Then look at Steam in the wider context of what it can do and what it is doing, and realize it is a thing of beauty.

It is the first truly universal content delivery system that handles everything to do with a particular game in the one program. From downloading a game to patching it, backing up files and searching for servers to play with online, there is no other comparable system that works so well.

Just the advantages related to using Steam for patches make the system worthwhile compared to the old fragmented and manual system of having to find and download patches yourself . When I log onto Steam it automatically searches for patches for all the games I have installed, and if there happens to be anything new it downloads and installs the patch without so much as making a sound, unless there’s a news update to accompany it.

Patches aren’t the only thing Steam can do well when it comes to downloading and installing content. The other day I stuck in my old Half-Life : Blue Shift CD key and unlocked a bunch of oldies that I had been hankering to play - Opposing Force and Day of Defeat - which downloaded and installed themselves in fully patched state within an hour while I worked. It was then simply a matter of firing ’em up and playing - for two minutes work and an hour’s download I had two ready-to-go games on my hard drive and the option to download a bunch more.

Not a Steam convert yet ? Alright then, let’s try cutting out publishers. There was a major legal battle between Valve and Vivendi before the launch of Half-Life 2 because Vivendi copped on to just how much money Steam would make Valve. You see, any copy of Half-Life 2 , bought through Steam, nets all the cash to the developers instead of going through publishers and middlemen, all of whom tend to take their ample slice of the pie. This means that developers now have a viable platform over which to deliver their content and make money off of it, and it also means that prices can come down for downloads.

Another feature of Steam that makes this viable is preloading, which allows downloaders to have most of the game files on their system days or even weeks before the official release. This way, they don’t have to wait ten hours to download the game when it is launched. When Half-Life 2 was still a month or two away from release, chunks of files were made available to pre-ordering customers over Steam so that they had everything they needed to go on their hard drives besides the decryption keys.

Security is another major feature of Steam, and it protects developers and users in both new ways and more improved old-fashioned ones. After the release of Half-Life 2 there was a much publicized culling of pirated game accounts where Valve discovered thousands of accounts using the same CD keys and wiped them all. This may seem heavy handed, but it is a damn better way of dealing with pirates than some of the other methods I’ve seen in my time.

As well as protecting the game, Steam protects players, particularly in online-multiplayer games. The entire anti-cheating system works with Steam to ensure that cheaters are found and then banned from playing online on servers where they cheat. Again, heavy handed, but then again they have nobody to blame for it but themselves.

Looking ahead to the future, Steam will not only deliver us more games in the manner of Half-Life 2 , it will also help bring true episodic gaming to our computers. The idea of games released in episodes has been in the pipe for years but now Valve are taking it to the next level with developers Ritual Entertainment, to bring us the sequel to SiN in episodic form.

Never heard of SiN ? Well ironically enough that’s because of Half-Life - the two games, both very good, were released around the same time, but it was Valve’s baby that won the day. Now the developers are working together to bring us episodic gaming delivered through Steam.

Not only will we get episodes of the story, but the game will also be modifiable. The developers promise to watch what happens in people’s games, with the results being transmitted to them via Steam. They will then modify the story appropriately. For example, if a particular character is mauled in a battle due to the actions of the player, this information will be transmitted to the developers, and if it happens en masse then they’ll make sure that this mauling is reflected in later episodes of the game.

Steam has set the benchmark for online content delivery systems, paving the way and ironing out the bugs to provide us with a system that works. Revere its beauty and await its fruits.