Images Show Old School Green Steam Launcher That Apparently Still Works

gamerant.com:

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.

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.

They managed to get