What's the first game you ever added to your Steam account?

[Lauren Morton]

Hey there PC gamers, welcome back to the Chat Log! This week Mollie and I kicked back and did a little digging through our Steam libraries. We realized that there are actually lot more ways to sort our backlog these days than we'd remembered. You can sort your games by obvious things like time played, which is what I keep my library set to most of the time, but also by some less obvious choices like Metacritic score, size on disk, and the date you added to your library. So we made each other a little quiz about our game libraries this week. On that note, I think my favorite question of the bunch for all of you is...

What was the first game you ever added to your Steam account?​

Sort your library by "date added to library" and scroll alll the way down to the bottom. Which game did you add first and when? And was it the same time that you made your Steam account itself? Or are you like Mollie and sat on your empty Steam library for some time before you ever bought anything through the store? While you're in there messing around with the features, let me know if you find out any other interesting facts from your library or if you've devised a really clever way to use those dynamic collections. We're always in the market to get more organized.

 

[Frindis]

I don't have access to my old Steam account, but I know it was Orange Box (90% off on Steam) and I think it would have been around the same year or the next, so 2007/2008. As for the newest Steam account, it was Borderlands 2 back on September 17th, 2012.

 

[PCG Ted]

Don't tell Valve that I've been playing on my older brother's Steam account for 17 years - apparently they're supposed to be non-transferable!

Big bro got Half-Life 2, Lost Coast, HL2 Deathmatch, and Counter-Strike Source all on the Friday after it released. Apparently he was content with that for his entire run of the account, because the next thing added was The Orange Box by me, three years later after I got it for Christmas.

 

[PCG AndyC]

Half-Life 2. I remember it clearly because Steam was absolutely not ready to handle the immediate crushing demand of people trying to play the game, and I was on dialup which only made things worse, and in the end it took almost two weeks before I could actually play the game which drove me to use words that would not only get me banned from these forums but probably fired outright.

Good times, good times.

 

[definitelynwyt]

I no longer use my original account but I remember vividly. Sid Meier's Civilization® IV was my first Steam game back in 2005. I wanted nothing to do with installing steam to play my new PC game.

 

[Alm]

Looks like Team Fortress Classic, plus the original Half Life and Counterstrike.

https://imgur.com/a/nBNx9hd

View: https://imgur.com/a/nBNx9hd

 

[Brian Boru]

Sid Meier's Civilization® IV was my first Steam game back in 2005

Welcome to the forum

Would have to be 2006 at the earliest. Civ4 was released on DVD October 2005, and put on Steam in October 2006.

Sort your library by "date added to library"

Is this on app or site? Looked in both and don't see a Sort option.

Regardless, was The Orange Box which I also got for XMas 2007—so Half Life 2 and Portal simultaneously, probably didn't bother adding Team Fortress 2.

 

[Alm]

Is this on app or site? Looked in both and don't see a Sort option.

I had to use grid view on the launcher to get a sort option.

 

[Brian Boru]

use grid view on the launcher to get a sort option

Thanks, Phase 1 complete

Phase 2: Discover where the %^&* 'Grid View' is hiding!

I swear, Steam's UI is worse than MS Word's for hiding its charms under layers of long skirts

 

[steeleman21]

I started out as a Valve fanboy, so back in Mar 2006, my first few adds were Half Life Platinum Collection (Half-Life 1, its expansions, Counter Strike, and Team Fortress Classic) which I already owned the physical copy of for a few years but wasn't aware of Steam. Then a few months later I bought a second hand copy of Half-Life 2 (14 year old me not quite grasping CD keys) and had to write to Steam support to try and help me out - they did, fortunately 😅

The first couple games I recall buying on the Steam store (and subsequently trying to present a compelling argument for my dad to give me his card details) were The Ship, Garry's Mod, Uplink, and Painkiller. It wasn't until the absolute GOAT in 2007 that I bought another game: The Orange Box. I have distinct memories of waking up early before school to try and play TF2 with friends, only to be hit with unforgivably long 'unlock' times, as the game decrypted its preload - I did not get to play TF2 that morning 😭

 

[Alm]

Thanks, Phase 1 complete

Phase 2: Discover where the %^&* 'Grid View' is hiding!

I swear, Steam's UI is worse than MS Word's for hiding its charms under layers of long skirts

It's not that obvious, could do with words being added to the UI.

https://imgur.com/a/kOfP169

View: https://imgur.com/a/kOfP169

 

[Alm]

Sorry Brian, just tried my own advice and it didn't work. Think you have to hit this one:

https://imgur.com/a/LWwB2cQ

View: https://imgur.com/a/LWwB2cQ

 

[Brian Boru]

not that obvious

Yeah, I had tried that, no 'Sort' in there, only my Collections.

Doesn't matter, probably some obscure setting somewhere—yep, I looked in Settings…—which is hiding it.

Thanks for trying

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

On my original Steam account which I lost the password for and found again fairly recently looks like it was Dec 26 2006 for Half Life 2. My arm was twisted into installing it, I didnt like the idea of Steam as a DRM. Game shortcuts belonged on the desktop in my 'Games' folder.

On the account I'm using now its Metro 2033 on November 17 2012. I bought Metro 2033 I thought on disc from Amazon to try out on my newly built PC. Imagine my surprise when I was again forced into using Valves DRM because the DVD box contained download codes.

I guess what must have changed my mind is when I saw my first sale. Back then they were still doing the flash sales and things would be at different prices every day. It also felt like the discounts were bigger but maybe thats just my memory. Anyway I was locked into digital after that for everything.

I started to put stuff in collections, but didnt bother with all in the end. Any new games are at the top of the Library grid view, and recently played games are there too. Maybe if I had a thousand games it would need more organizing, but as it is for me with less than 300 in Steam its still pretty easy to find anything.

 

[Zloth]

Half Life 2 for me, back in Nov 2004. Then nothing for almost 2 years until I bought Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Then about 2 more years to Portal. I didn't really start adding games much until 2009, which is probably when I started being able to download faster than I could just drive to Best Buy and get a physical copy.

Highest metacritic score for a game I didn't like: Disco Elysium, 97
Lowest metacritic score for a game I did like: X: Rebirth, 33. (It released in AWFUL shape)

@BRIAN... errr? Hello? Forum? I'm typing with the @?? Harrumph. He'll read it anyway.

The sorting option is down a ways:

With all your games, scrolling may take some time. Just hold down the page-down key and turn on the TV or something, it should get there eventually.

Vampire:TM:Bloodlines: Actually, you had to NOT be there! That's another game that came out in terrible shape. Modders fixed it up to where it became a great game.

 

[Brian Boru]

sorting option is down a ways

THERE it is!

Looks like 2+ year gap until next ones.

With all your games, scrolling may take some time

No, all good—I have over 600 of 'em hidden after a recent clean-up

 

[Lauren Morton]

Wow I am really an outlier here for mine not being a Valve game! I got in on Steam after it had already risen in popularity a decent bit, clearly. I was still doing a lot of gaming on discs for PC or consoles or just games like MMOs with their own launchers (installed via discs also) until about 2012. Skyrim was my first purchase on Steam in January 2013, which I'd already played a lot of on my Xbox 360 prior to that. Must have been on sale 😅

 

[Colif]

Audiosurf - April 2008

I haven't played any Valve games

unlike some I can almost put entire collection in one screenshot

 

[Frindis]

@Lauren Morton As for having to have been there to play them, I played vanilla Morrowind without mods some years back and I thought it felt so bad and janky that I uninstalled it. Then I got a collection of mods I think was called Wabbajack and the game just sucked me in instantly. It looked and played much better and it did not take long before I fell in love with it.

As for Bloodlines, I also tried that one in vanilla, but I got stuck on some boat which destroyed the game for me and I had to start over again. I started over again, but with the unofficial patch + some other mods and it took me on one of my best game experiences.

In other words: I would highly recommend you both to play Morrowind and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Not because they have become cult classics, but because they both have something magical about them, something you don't see much of these days. The only game that comes close to me right now in having a similar magical experience is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom which has become one of my favorite games of all time.