[dharmab]

> Steam managed to create the Windows gaming environment out of whole cloth.

As someone who has been using Steam since the early days, this feels incredibly anachronistic. Steam pioneered digital distribution but Windows as a gaming OS was already well established at that point.

[mimixco]

Yes, that's what I meant. Surely home computers have been gaming machines since before Windows and that was also a heavy use case for Windows early on.

What I mean was that Steam simplified the selling, installation, updating, forums, mods, everything else -- the store that Microsoft really wanted to have with Games for Windows that never took off.