What a weird name for a game store.

What I imagine:
Bob: "I really like your idea of an online game seller. But what would we call it?"
Joe: "Ummm… Well I was thinking… Maybe we could… Steam!"
Bob: "That's amazingly perfect!"

O_o

I do believe they started off as Valve, it was then after they let out Steam.

It actually is a rather clever name I think, based on what JDelekto said.

You could also say "GOG" is a weird name for a game store if you didn't know it was originally Good Old Games.

Guess it's a good thing that Naughty Dog didn't have the idea first, then.

Yeah, I don't think "Steaming" [insert noun here] would have gone over so well.

Apart from the link to Valve, there's also the idea of Steam as a source of energy, a driving agent, which fits the idea of Steam providing back-end DRM and multiplayer services for games.

And really, Steam isn't all that bad when you compare it to "uPlay", or "Games for Windows Live". Origin is a pretty nifty name, but it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth given what EA did to the original Origin Systems, and it just comes across to me as a shameless attempt to milk more recognition out of a hallowed name. That reminds me of the heady early days when Googling "GOG" would get you all kinds of Biblically-related doomsday links. Hell, even now looking up "GOG" on YouTube gets all kind of crazy "documentaries" about the end of the world, Israel, Armageddon, 666, the Second Coming of Christ, TinyE, etc.

Surprisingly many people don't seem to know that, since they capitalize it as "GoG". What's that supposed to mean?

Good on Games? Good of Games? Good or Games?

Or maybe even Gorgeously Ornate Gametes. One has to be wary of acronyms, even if widely used, lest they be misconstrued.

I don't really have any qualms with Steam, I do have several games on Steam in addition to those I own here on GOG. What I do like about GOG is how it is a somewhat tight community of individuals, with several here who have some really good knowledge about the history of the legacy games here.

I get a sense here that people do care about classic, sorry, "good old" games and really care about seeing them made available again on their new platform, supported by GOG, tweaked to run under any emulation required and guaranteed to work.

A good example is "Darklands"". Arguably one of the best of the first RPG games on a PC, it took several tweaks in a boot script to ensure that it had enough memory to run with the mouse drivers, etc. They get this running on my computer today using DOSBox, pre-configured to work on modern Operating Systems.

I've used DOSBox in the past for games on newer Operating Systems... and it's a bit of work to get one working almost flawlessly.

While they are great at reviving old games, they do have to take on new ones to survive, I don't fault them for that.

I hope you brought your Gorgeously Ornate Gametes; you can join the gamete spraying party!

:)

Oh that's funny!

As an alternative to the boring explanation:
Valve appeared first, and other than couple of titles was rather squishy and crap. Then steam started emanating from it just like a turd left on the sidewalk in summer. Since that point the vapor has spread across most of the gaming word suffocating collectors and consumer rights, with a flood of noxious greenshite, drm, gamemaker, and clientwares.

Girl on Girl.
No? Damn, I'm on the wrong site again!

Ok, but what would you want it to be instead?

It is short, easy to remember, doesn't have sexist or racist innuendos in it, doesn't break any major naming laws, etc.

Also, the fact it is not directly related to gaming is an advantage in case Valve decides to expand the service beyond games.

Such as venturing into the market for cleaning devices or second-hand locomotives.