The other big event of 2012, and one of the most influential events in the history of gaming, was the launch of the Steam Marketplace, which allowed players to buy and sell in-game items for real money. The Marketplace complimented the crate and key systems in Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which were early examples of loot boxes, one of the most controversial aspects of gaming in the 2010s.

In the end, it was a half-step that Valve wasn't happy with: In 2013, Gabe Newell called Greenlight 'a bad example of an election process.' Later, Valve would get rid of Greenlight and replace it with Steam Direct, opening Steam to thousands of new games and leading Valve to create controversial new content policies and algorithmic discovery tools. The system came about during the rise of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites, a time when appealing to 'the wisdom of the crowd' was popular. The first big event is the launch of Steam Greenlight, which allowed Steam users to vote on which indie game projects should be allowed to release on Steam. In 2012, Steam got two massive additions that foreshadowed some of the best and worst aspects of modern PC gaming.

Steam pc