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Very Popular
Steam is owned by Valve, it is a very popular program among people who play games on PC, Mac or Linux. It allows you instant access to thousands of games that can be played, Steam has a huge player base, there are currently 8,592,279 people online on Steam and 2,098,670 people currently playing games. Steam is usually the primary platform on PC as it contains almost every PC game and very popular games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. There are other applications on PC that try to copy Steam such as Origin which is an Electronic Arts only platform, no one really uses these as it's a lot more convenient to have all of your games in one place.
Valve Anti Cheat
A lot of people who play console believe that PC gaming is plagued by hackers, this is because you can download hacks/mods for the game you are playing and have them set up within a few minutes. However, what they are not aware of is the Valve Anti Cheat system which is also known as VAC, VAC is a no-questions-asked automated banning system, the system will detect if you are using hacks or cheating on a game and within a few hours or days it will automatically ban you. Once you have received a VAC ban your account is permanently banned from playing on that game, contacting Steam support to try and remove the ban is completely pointless. The only way you can remove a VAC ban is if something goes wrong with the system and you are falsely banned which happens very rarely. VAC was introduced to Steam as it was something the community wanted to rid of the cheaters who were ruining their experience, you will come across hackers and cheaters online but you shouldn't worry as you will know that soon enough they will be banned and won't be able to bother you or anyone else again.
Trading & Marketplace
Steam allows people and friends to trade items from their inventories and other items such as cosmetics, collectibles and keys. On Steam keys are often used as a currency depending on what game you are playing. Generally by playing Valve owned games you will often receive crates/cases just by playing the game but you have to pay to open them. It is often worth opening these crates/cases as you have a small chance of getting something that is incredibly rare, in CS:GO some of the items that you can get out of the cases are easily worth £150+ with some costing around £800. The same goes for the very popular games Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 which are also owned by Valve.
Free to Play
Steam has a large variety of free to play games, this means that the user can download and play the full version of the game completely for free. Ironically, the most played game on Steam is also free which is Dota 2. Dota 2 usually has around 40% of the people currently playing games playing it. However, some free to play games that don't have a huge player base aren't very good as they offer game breaking items to people who are willing to pay for it to give others an unfair advantage. However, this isn't a problem in games like Dota and TF2 which only sell cosmetic items which a lot of people buy as they like to be different than just the default characters. Only selling cosmetics is good as it doesn't offer an unfair advantage but it gives the developers plenty of money to keep the game and servers going for a long time.
