The first known Steam account ever created celebrated its 20th registration anniversary in September, marking a significant milestone in the platform’s history. This momentous occasion prompted the introduction of a brand-new Years of Service badge to honor these early adopters. Alongside this pioneering account, hundreds of thousands of profiles, originally forged during Steam’s nascent days as a humble green launcher for Counter-Strike, achieved the same milestone on September 11.
The transformation of Steam from its humble beginnings to the reigning digital storefront for PC games underscores the incredible journey the platform has undertaken. Its extraordinary success empowered Valve to venture into hardware and emboldened the company to explore highly experimental gaming experiences.
While Steam continues to welcome tens of millions of new users annually, those who have remained loyal since its inception can now proudly display a shiny new badge on their profiles. The very first public account to reach this monumental 20 Years of Service milestone bears the username “Steven” and currently goes by the moniker “Abacus Avenger.” Notably, eight others also attained this badge on September 10, two days before the 20th anniversary of Steam’s official launch.
Remarkably, these nine early adopters were joined by over 319,000 other accounts on the following day, according to third-party tracker SteamDB. Given that the Steam API doesn’t grant access to data from users with private or friends-only profiles, it’s plausible that the total number of individuals sporting the 20 Years of Service badge is even larger. Additionally, the first-ever Steam registrant, whose profile indicates they are located in Bellevue, Washington, likely either is or was an employee of Valve, the Washington-based company behind Steam.
Abacus Avenger remains an active Steam user to this day, amassing nearly 33 hours of usage on the platform within the past two weeks alone. These hours were devoted to titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, benchmarking software 3DMark, and Darwinia, a critically acclaimed real-time strategy game from British developer Introversion Software. Another notable Steam account, belonging to Valve developer Erik Johnson, the second-oldest known account, accumulated over 80 hours of gaming during the same period, engaging with titles such as Path of Exile, Slay the Spire, and Dota 2.
For those fortunate enough to have earned Steam’s latest Years of Service badge, they received 1,000 XP toward their overall level. This XP award aligns with the existing scaling system, which grants 50 XP for each year of service on the platform.
