Highlights
- Steam celebrates its 20th anniversary with the addition of a new Years of Service badge, recognizing early adopters who have been with the platform since its humble beginnings.
- Steam has evolved from a simple green launcher for Counter-Strike to become the dominant digital storefront for PC games, allowing Valve to explore experimental gaming experiences and diversify into hardware.
- The first known Steam account, with the ID Steven and the profile name “Abacus Avenger,” earned the 20 Years of Service badge, along with eight other users, two days before Steam’s official launch anniversary.
The first known Steam account ever created hit its 20th registration anniversary in September, thus warranting the addition of yet another new Years of Service badge to the platform. Hundreds of thousands of other profiles created back when Steam was just a green launcher for Counter-Strike hit the same milestone as of September 11.
A lot has changed since those early days of the platform, as underlined by the fact that Steam is nowadays the dominant digital storefront for PC games. Its massive success allowed Valve to eventually diversify into hardware, on top of providing the company with enough financial security to truly go wild with some highly experimental gaming experiences which it was always eager to explore.
And while Steam is still adding tens of millions of new users on a yearly basis, those that have been with the platform since its humble beginnings now have a shiny new badge to adorn their profiles. The first public account to hit that milestone has the ID Steven, while currently using the “Abacus Avenger” profile name. This user and eight others earned their 20 Years of Service badge on September 10, two days ahead of the bidecennial anniversary of Steam’s official launch.
10 Oldest Steam Accounts by 20 Years of Service Badge Unlock Time
Over 319,000 other accounts joined those nine early adopters on the following day, according to third-party tracker SteamDB. Since the Steam API doesn’t offer access to most data from users whose profiles are only visible to their friends or set to private, the total number of people with the 20 Years of Service badge is plausibly even larger. As for the very first person to sign up for a Steam account, the date of their registration and the fact that their profile says they’re located in Bellevue both suggest that they were or are an employee of the Washington-based Valve.
Abacus Avenger also remains a fairly active Steam user to this day, having clocked almost 33 usage hours via the platform in the last two weeks alone. That time was divided between Baldur’s Gate 3, benchmarking software 3DMark, and Darwinia, a critically acclaimed 2005 RTS from British developer Introversion Software. The second-oldest Steam account belonging to known Valve developer Erik Johnson clocked over 80 gaming hours in the same period, dividing them between Path of Exile, Slay the Spire, and Dota 2.
The Steam accounts that already earned the platform’s newest Years of Service badge received 1,000 XP toward their overall level. This is consistent with the emblem’s existent scaling, which awards 50 XP per year of age.
Source: SteamDB
