Valve’s Steam digital distribution service has grown immensely since its launch in 2003, now with nearly all major PC game publishers signed up to release new titles on the service. Would the service have been as successful if Valve launched it with the aid of a larger company such as Microsoft and Yahoo?

That’s what Valve originally planned on doing, but surprisingly, both companies rejected the concept of Steam, according to marketing VP Doug Lombardi:

You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft…and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam.

We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later.

We went around to everybody and asked ‘Are you guys doing anything like this?’ And everyone was like ‘That’s a million miles in the future…We can’t help you.

I don’t even want to imagine how the service would’ve ended up if either MS or Yahoo took the bait.

Microsoft and Yahoo rejected Steam, says Valve [GI.biz]

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