Recently, Edge-Online had an article featured called "The Age of Steam". It takes a thorough look at the Steam platform, from beginning stages to its current form.
"What started as a way of administering updates has become a delivery platform so powerful that it has threatened to render even the big publishers alternatives obsolete, an online community so well-supported that it sets standards even for those found on consoles, and a no-fiddling environment that allows your games, settings and saves to follow you from one PC to the next every time you log in."
Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, which is behind the digital distribution platform, Impulse, gives his view on the subject.
"We"re at the very beginning of digital distribution. Steam may indeed become the Facebook of digital distribution but there"s just as much chance it could become the next Friendster.
When one of these services has 20 million active users per day, then I think we can say that they have reached a critical threshold. Right now, however, by Valve"s own statistics, about half of Steam users use it for just Counterstrike -- not including all of Valve"s other games."