better update its published games as providing downloadable patches for multiplayer games resulted in most of the online user base disconnecting for several days until players had installed the patch. Valve decided to create a platform that would update games automatically and implement stronger anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Through user polls at the time of its announcement in 2002, Valve also recognized that at least 75% of their users had access to high-speed Internet connections, which would continue to grow with planned broadband expansion in the following years, and recognized that they could deliver game content faster to players than through retail channels. Valve approached several companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks to build a client with these features, but were declined. Steam's development began in 2002, with working names for the platform being "Grid" and "Gazelle". It was publicly announced at the Game Developers Conference event on March 22, 2002, and released for beta testing the same day. To demonstrate the ease of integrating Steam with a game, Relic Entertainment created a special version of its game Impossible Creatures. Valve partnered with several companies, including AT&T, Acer, and GameSpy. The first mod released on the system was Day of Defeat. In 2002, Valve's President Gabe Newell said he was offering mod teams a game engine license and distribution over Steam for . Prior to the announcement of Steam, Valve found that Sierra had been distributing their games in PC cafes which they claimed was against the terms of the contract, and took Sierra and their owners, Vivendi Games, to court in 2002. Sierra countersued, asserting that with the announcement of Steam, Valve had been working to undermine the contract to offer a digital storefront for their games, directly competing with Sierra. The case was initially ruled in Valve's favor, allowing them to leave the contract due to the breach and seek other publishing partners for retail copies of its games while continuing their work on Steam. One such company had been Microsoft, but Ed Fries stated that they turned down the offer due to Valve's intent to continue to sell their games over Steam. Between 80,000 and 300,000 players participated in the beta test before Steam's official release on September 12, 2003. A monthly subscription to Valve games on Steam was planned. The client and website suffered outages and bugs at launch. At the time, Steam's primary function was