What helped set the Steam services apart back in its early offerings, was not only the technical innovation demonstrated but to mix that of deeply integrated community elements, somewhat like a strategy from within, which began differentiating it from competitors in this nascent digital distribution landscape. Indeed, its web forums have been characteristic of the erstwhile site. They gave the users a common meeting place where they could discuss anything and get a lot of information and good times in the process. The ability to have friends on the Express software and even to play games with those friends helped to isolate gamers from loneliness even further, allowing for shared experiences and multiplayer teams in games as well; the ability of the Express software to build a personal network within the gaming world proved to be an extremely important characteristic.
Therefore, though experiences were shared, community aspects from Steam, very unlike those from competitions like Epic Games, provided avenues for help and learning.
The incorporation of those features with the pre-existing ones-social networking, and content management formed the complete ecosystem that drew in and retained a very loyal user base [4]. This is, therefore, was what became the New Normal for digital game distribution by Steam in the way they put those elements together, hence, underlining in bright colours the significance of community engagement and connectivity in achieving market leadership.