PC Gamer named the main events in the world of PC gaming over the past 30 years

British publication PC Gamer celebrates its 30th anniversary in a big way retrospective the main events that happened in the world of PC gaming from 1993 to 2023. Here's what they highlighted.

1993-2003

• Doom released (December 1993)
• First E3 (June 1995)
• Quake release (June 1996)
• Ultima Online released (September 1997)
• Fallout release (October 1997)
• Release of the Voodoo2 video card (March 1998)
• Starcraft release (March 1998)
• Release Thief: The Dark Project (December 1998)
• Release of Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings (September 1999)
• Release of the Animo game engine, which would later become GameMaker (November 1999)
• Deus Ex release (June 2000)
• Release of Windows XP (August 2001)
• Battlefield 1942 release (September 2002)
• Release of Eve Online (May 2003)
• Launch of the Steam launcher (September 2003)
• Call of Duty release (October 2003)

2004-2013

• Release of Half-Life 2 (November 2004)
• World of Warcraft release (November 2004)
• Adding paid horse armor to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (April 2006)
• Release of Dwarf Fortress (August 2006)
• Release of The Orange Box anthology - a set of Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Portal (October 2007)
• Plants vs Zombiess release (May 2009)
• Release of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - the first Japanese game on Steam (September 2010)
• Minecraft release (November 2011)
• Release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (November 2011)
• Release Xcom: Enemy Unknown (October 2012)
• Launch of Early Access program on Steam (March 2013)
• Announcement of the first VR headset Oculus Rift Developer’s Kit 1 (March 2013)

2014-2023

• Release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (May 2015)
• Release of the first gadgets from Valve: Steam Link, Steam Controller and Steam Machine (November 2015)
• Release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (December 2017)
• Release of the GeForce RTX 2080 video card - the first with ray tracing (September 2018)
• Disco Elysium release (October 2019)
• COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020)
• Valheim release (February 2021)
• Release of a portable console Steam Deck (August 2023)
• Baldur's Gate 3 release (August 2023)
• Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 (September 2023)