From Valve's Doug Lombardi over at Computerandvideogames.com:
"For us it was really just a set of things that were necessary, things that would make the overall experience of playing (and developing) our games better. Before we began development on Steam, we contacted many other companies to see if anyone had something similar to Steam already in development. We were surprised to find that, while folks were pursuing some of the individual features such as delivering bits via secure, online commercial means, no-one was pursuing the collection of the pieces we had in mind. What's odd is that statement might still be true today."
Granted I personally didn't know of Stardock Central until recently, but that doesn't mean it hasn't existed for some time. And it still does exist. Even better, I don't have to have it running just to play my games.
Steam basically came into being when they were doing beta testing of Counter-Strike 1.6, but I can't remember what year that was, and I don't know what year Stardock Central came out. I'd be curious to see who actually got this idea to market first.
And for the record, I think id was ahead of the curve altogether with the "don't have to go to the store to buy a game" idea, because they gave a person the ability to unlock any of their games from the original shareware Quake 1 CD (you ordered over the phone to get the unlock code, if I recall).
-HM
