While not totally without competitors, Steam seems secure in its place as the biggest game distributor on PC. With the Bethesda launcher shutting down soon, that statement only seems to be growing more accurate. Love it or hate it, most PC players will recognize the Valve platform’s iconic dark blue and grey color scheme. However, there was a time when neither the platform nor its aesthetic was well established.

Reddit user Aol56Ased recently shared a throwback to the early days of Valve’s digital distribution platform with a trio of screenshots on the Steam subreddit. The three images show Steam’s 2003/2004-era olive green launcher and client. Not only that, but it also apparently still works under the right circumstances.

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The screenshots show what appears to be Aol56Ased running a very old version of Steam in Windows XP. An open MSN Messenger window even accompanies the retro client and operating system. Examining the images in order shows the user launching Steam, signing in, and browsing the store in this retro aesthetic. While there are some significant wrinkles in how functional this early version of Steam is, it’s still impressive that the Reddit user managed to get it working at all.

Old Steam launcher 01

A natural question is how the Reddit user managed to get this version of Steam running. After all, Valve’s platform updates frequently whenever players are online. As one commenter points out, Steam should have automatically started downloading almost two decades’ worth of updates. The early version of Steam also would have required the user to sign in with their email address instead of their display name, as Aol56Ased used in the screenshots.

Old Steam launcher 02

They managed to get around these issues by using a private server, which let them access most or all of the client’s functions without Steam automatically updating on launch. The poster also had to rely on the third-party Escargot service to get the now-defunct MSN Messenger back online. Unfortunately, the private server means that the older version of Steam can’t interact with the modern Steam Store or other features. Thus, the practical usefulness of this early version of Valve’s launcher is minimal, though it’s an interesting trick for anyone wanting a trip back to the early 2000s. However, it is still impressive that they could get the original green launcher working at all.

Old Steam launcher 03

It’s easy to see why the 2004-era color scheme was eventually replaced. It’s not terribly appealing, with one commenter comparing the shade to vomit. Others reminisced about how much they hated Steam at the time. The early versions were unreliable, and that was back when most games still came on CD-ROM, and downloading a separate client seemed like an arbitrary imposition. In a way, the images help to demonstrate just how far Valve’s platform has come since the increasingly distant days of Half-Life 2.

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Source: Reddit