It also provides the user with installation and automatic updating of games, and community features such as friends lists and groups, cloud storage, and in-game voice and chat functionality. Steam offers digital rights management (DRM), server hosting, video streaming, and social networking services.
Steam has also expanded into an online web-based and mobile digital storefront.
It was launched as a standalone software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to include games from third-party publishers. Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.
