Chess.com is #1 in online chess... But who are we? Where did Chess.com come from? Where are we going? The Beginning Chess.com started in 2005 when two friends — Jay and Erik (that's me!) — decided the world needed a better chess website. We met 10 years earlier in college, where I first became addicted to chess — and Jay was the chess club president. We became friends through our shared passion for the game. There were places to play online, but none of them felt like home. We imagined a site where people could build their chess home online and all in one place: to play in a safe and friendly environment, find friends, save their games, tell their chess stories, share ideas, and learn from each other. I was mid-way through a graduate degree at Stanford and all of my classmates were taking jobs in finance or hot tech companies. But I turned down job offers (including Facebook!) to follow the dream of building the greatest chess site the world had ever seen. And I convinced Jay’s wife to let him join me! Luckily enough, we found out that “chess.com” was coming available in a bankruptcy auction, and we bought the name. Over the next several years, Jay and I poured our life savings, our hearts, and most of our waking hours into building Chess.com. But we never imagined what it is today!
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- In Business Since2003
Business Description
Steam is a digital distribution platform developed by Valve Corporation, which offers digital rights management (DRM), multiplayer gaming, and social networking services. Steam provides the user with installation and automatic updating of games on multiple computers, and community features such as friends lists and groups, cloud saving, and in-game voice and chat functionality. The software provides a freely available application programming interface (API) called Steamworks, which developers can use to integrate many of Steam's functions into their products, including networking, matchmaking, in-game achievements, micro-transactions, and support for user-created content through Steam Workshop. Though initially developed for use on Microsoft Windows operating systems, versions for OS X and Linux were later released. Mobile apps with connected functionality with the main software were later released for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices in the 2010s.
The Steam platform is considered to be the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, and was estimated by Screen Digest to have 75% of the market space in October 2013. In 2015, users purchasing titles through Steam or through Steam keys from third-party vendors totaling around $3.5 billion representing 15% of the global PC game sales for the year, based on estimations made by the tracking website Steam Spy. By the end of 2015, the service had over 125 million registered accounts, with 12.5 million concurrent users. The success of the Steam platform has led to the development of a line of Steam Machine micro-console, as well as SteamOS, an in-house fork of the Debian operating system.
