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So that same same year, id sent out a memo

Sept. 4, 2018 by Elizabeth Duran

So that same same year, id sent out a memo to its customers advising them to do their own game testing on their own, which could mean doing a few different things at once. The memo didn't talk about the games, or the testing itself, but the fact that people were going to be interested in what the developers had to say had an impact on the company, the memo said.

"At the very end of the meeting, people began to look at where we were going and see if we could do something better than just a bunch of games and then start doing testing, and seeing what a better fit would be. And it went from there."

On that day, "there was a lot of focus on how we could help people become more involved with game development, and be more involved with the community," Land said. "That was the early stages to a huge shift in our approach. We started to get some feedback and started talking about what we could do to help make that possible."

The memo went on to talk about how Google would eventually start paying out a certain percentage of the ad revenue that would go to Valve Games, a company founded by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell and who previously was a partner in id's new gaming division.

"We were talking about the idea that people could make money off of the Steam sale," Land said. "That's because the revenue would go to the companies that have the most gaming experience and the most developers—and not just those who have the most money."

That's a little bit of the full set of ideas that came out of the meeting, but it also comes as a bit of a surprise that some of the first hints about the future of the Steam platform were vague.