The Orange Box - well, technically Steam came with it...

I‘m old - Half-Life 2 in the box. I had dial-up. Needless to say I loathed Steam and it’s puke green interface through the 00s. I’m still not exactly fond of it.

According to this page my first in store purchase was Audiosurf in 2008, and yeah - great decision and great game. I put 80 hours into it for $10.

But my actual first "steam game" was Half Life 2 in a box from a department store

Half-life 2

Half Life 2 retail standard. August 18, 2005.

I didn't even know that this list was available. There's a ton of games on there that I've never played because I bought them to play after I upgraded my computer and forgot about them. I have a steam deck now and really should go back and try them out.

I think that page only tracks 2008 and newer

Because my "first" purchace aparently was in 2009, and by that point my steam account was already in active use for 6 years.

The first game that I used steam for was CS 1.6 - about a week after steam launched.

And I think the first new game I paid money for and added to steam was HL2

The Talos Principle. That was in 2016, when I created my Steam account. It was also the first game I bought legally. I will now proceed to install it on my Steam Deck.

Jan 16, 2010 The Orange Box

Ragdoll Kung-Fu

It was pretty fun back in the day. It was one of the first games even sold on the platform, too.

Now, I did own Half-Life and the stand alone Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike releases that switched over to being on Steam and needing Steam to play online after the WON servers were shut down. But I bought those in a store, before Steam was even announced.

Half-life 2 ofc :)

First game was Portal, but I got it free when Portal 2 came out. First games I spent money on and got on Steam were a couple of Humble Bundles (Introversion, Egosoft, EA). My first purchase actually from Steam was Goat Simulator.

The orange box. ~$50. Great purchase.

2007 Garry's Mod $10. Judging by the three gift copies I made shortly thereafter, seems like it was a good purchase.

Also had several games on Steam before that, because physical copies had steam keys. But technically not Steam purchases.

If I recall correctly, it was the first Humble Indie Bundle

L4D2.

$0.

Christmas of 2013.

Yes, I am the Ghost of Christmas Present...

First game I activated was a retail copy of Half-Life Platinum Pack, in August 2004. I had made by account few months earlier just for fun right after Steam originally launched.

The first games I bought from Steam specifically was the Orange Box, and AudioSurf in 2007.

The orange box was $61, which inflation adjusted means it cost $99 :)

TF2 after playing the orange box at a friend's.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, in 2006

Oh god! Now I need to check my purchase history from maybe 12-13 years ago and hope it isn't a cringy game! BRB!

Edit:

Good new! It isn't completely cringe, but it's Garry's Mod, with the next game being Goat Simulator. So I wasn't a complete cringe lord... just halfway cringe!

the orange box

Yeah link is definitely wrong. Mine is saying Dow 2 in 09, but I remember being pissed because I had to get an account and spend 3 days downloading updates on 56k just to play hl2 which came on 6 cds in the first place. And why did I have to use this stupid store just to play a single player game that I bought and installed physically.... Then I actually played the game and was amazed with the seewsaw section with bricks. So y'know, worth it.

the og sierra retail box of counter-strike is my steam originator code.

my purchase history wouldn't go back far enough for the few steam sales items i have on it. the only other retail box added was hl2 the week it came out.

Skyrim. I was forced to download Steam to play it. I was on dial up and had just explicitly purchased a single player game not dependent on the internet, and yet..

Then it forced me download the game through Steam even though I had the physical disk right there. I couldn't complete the download, it was too large.

My first steam game was CS 1.6 because I was forced onto steam to continue playing when steam was first released -_- (I had been playing since 1.3 I believe)

My first purchase was Day of Defeat: Source but no it wasn't a good purchase because I barely played any. I kept on playing regular Day of Defeat as I prefered it over the source version.

The Orange Box. Greatest gaming value-for-your-buck there ever was.

Garry's Mod

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People in 2009 50% off for ~18€. Presumely because the game was full price on the Telltale site.

And it was a really good decision.

Puzzle quest.

My friend bought me the orange box, ugh I have to install this new "game manager" to play these things, but they look fun....

At the same time "how do I figure out which of these files to torrent when the game is only 50mb? So many viruses are 50mb". Sure enough I download a virus, wipe my computer and create the " 1 dollar per ten megabytes" rule, so long as I'm getting at least 10mB of information per dollar I'd rather pay for it and not risk getting another virus.

Sure enough, puzzle quest just barely fit into that rule, I bought it and have since added a thousand other games (and just recently bought the re-release of puzzle quest!)

2010 Torchlight, then Puzzle Quest three times, and then Terraria. Torchlight was for scratching the Diablo II itch, but it didn't really do so for long. $20. Puzzle Quest was pretty addicting, so I gave two others their first hit. $1.50 for each one. Terraria was $10 and I've been playing it on and off for 15 years now.

apparently counter strike source, but I don't think I've ever played it

so I'm going to say The Orange Box, technically my second purchase, but I actually played Portal

Team Fortress 2, back when that had a price. After that was Magicka. Great games both of them. The spell combining in magicka led to hilarious accidental combos, and I loved just parking myself as a heavy with a doctor and an ammo machine.

Transistor from Supergiant.

Back then Steam didn't even support my local currency, but that changed the same year.

It's been 18 years, so I don't know exactly which game was first, but I remember hearing about how Steam would honor physical game purchases if the game existed in their store. You just type in the game code of your physical copies and Steam would add them to your library for free.

I added Call of Duty 1 and 2 this way, along with Left 4 Dead and... a few other games that aren't coming to mind now. I remember being upset that my Warcraft WarChest collection and StarCraft wouldn't add to Steam, but I learned years later that Blizzard never sold their games through the Steam store. Well... not until Activision bought them out and sold a few limited games through Steam like Diablo IV and Overwatch.

The first game I actually purchased from the Steam store was probably Half-Life.

18 years later, I have nearly 5,000 games in my Steam library. Their consumer-friendly practices kept me coming back for more games all these years.

EDIT: I checked my purchase history in Steam and I was correct: my first purchase was the Half-Life Anthology and Half-Life 2 Complete. I bought them on October 15th, 2009 for 49,98€. I was stationed in Germany with the US military at the time, which is why the transaction was in euros instead of US dollars.

Age of Empires II HD.

Zeno Clash (ツ)

HL2: Episode One, in August 2006. My Steam account was actually created in August 2004, that was just the first time I gave them a credit card number. Probably the first time I actually had a credit card number to give them!

I didn’t have to look it up to see what game it was, but I didn’t remember the price. I bought Portal for $19.95 almost 19 years ago. Played it on a Windows PC that was not focused on gaming. I guess I’ve also played it on every computer I’ve had since then, including my new-to-me refurb Steam Deck a couple days ago.

Someone made me buy Counter-Strike: Source for a LAN party in 2008.

Just Cause 2

80% off and well worth it!

Just cause 2. Bought a physical copy and was confused why I needed an internet connection.

RWBY Grimm Eclypse lmao, definitely not worth the $15 I paid. Was really into RWBY at the time, I wanna say I bought it between seasons 3 and 4, but it might've been before S3, idk.

Skyrim.

Undertale

I never finished it

Terraria and Dungeon Defenders Ultimate Collection. I had a bunch of free games by then though. It was 2017