Items tagged with STEAM
What is generally considered to be one of the greatest PC games of all time is getting an unofficial (of sorts) remaster, and we are absolutely stoked. We are of course talking about Half-Life 2. It first came out nearly 17 years ago and is still without a true sequel (we've turned blue holding our collective breath for Half-Life 3). But in the meantime, a remaster will have to do. We are calling it an unofficial revamp because it is being worked on by the same community of modders responsible for the fan-made Half-Life 2: Update that came out in 2015. That updated build brought with it improved graphics with better lighting, a bunch of bug fixes, new particle effects and fog, and even a commentary...
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Earlier this year, rumors of a Valve hardware console started to float around, but there were concerns about the ongoing chip shortage. Despite this, it seems Valve is plowing forward with its plans as the Bellevue, Washington-based company has announced the Steam Deck starting at $399, with reservations opening on July 16th at 1 PM EST. The Steam Deck is powered by a custom 4-core/8-thread 3.4GHz AMD Zen 2 CPU with RDNA 2 GPU alongside 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. It also features a 7” 60Hz 1280x800 LCD, Bluetooth 5.0, Dual-band WiFi, and stereo speakers, along with the illustrious headphone jack that seems to be missing from most mobile consoles or devices. Another...
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Summer is here, and for many people, that means vacations, beaches, grilling, and whatever else you may associate with warm weather activities. For the nerds among us, however, summer also means a seasonal Steam sale to stock up on games you may not otherwise get an opportunity to play, due to budget constraints. That is right, the Steam Summer sale has finally come back around, and it is time to line your library with some new titles on sale… As with all the Steam Sales, the Steam Summer ’21 Sale has a theme that is focused on “forg[ing] your fate.” Throughout the sale, which runs from June 24th through July 8th, players can browse game categories and follow a choose...
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It is no secret that games are priced differently in different countries. Video games are often more expensive in Europe and Australasia and cheaper in South America and Asia. This discrepancy has led many players to frequently switch their country of origin on Steam or use a VPN to get a better deal on games. These methods have been especially frustrating to video game developers and distributors. Valve has therefore limited the number of times users can change their Steam account’s country to discourage players from lying about their location. Users are now only able to alter their Steam account’s country once every three months. Furthermore, users must use a payment method from...
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In the last few months and even hours, we have seen numerous leaks and rumors about the upcoming Battlefield title, and it all comes to a head today. The trailer is now out there, and the store page is now live, so let's look at all we know about Battlefield 2042... The World-Changing Years Leading Up To 2042 In the years leading up to 2042, humans faced several world-changing events like super-storms, depressions, food and fuel shortages, and countries collapsing. This has led to "the greatest crisis in human history," with over 1.2 billion people left without homes and countries locking down their borders. These people, called the Non-Patriated or No-Pats, band together and become a staple...
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Thanks to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders over the last year, gaming has seen a massive uptick. However, traditional consoles and even PC components have been hard to come by due to the global semiconductor shortage. Amidst this console-supply vacuum, though, handheld consoles like the Nintendo Switch have achieved record sales, and now hardware and software company Valve may want in on the action. On Tuesday. SteamDB creator and data miner Pavel Djundik found a reference to a device codenamed “Neptune,” within the Steam Client beta. He further explained on Twitter that this “Neptune” controller is named “SteamPal” and has a list called “SteamPal...
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More than four years after it came out, Titanfall 2 maintains an 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rating on Steam, both in all-time reviews and in recent evaluations (it arrived on Steam a little more recently, though, in June 2020). Did you miss out on the game when it released in 2016? Well, now is your chance to jump in at no cost—it is free to play right now, and will stay that way throughout the weekend. The free-to-play period has already begun and lasts until May 3rd at 10:00 am PT (1:00 pm ET). Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why focus on a game that came out around four and a half years ago? It's a fun game, for one—see our Titanfall 2 review. There has been a big spike...
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It seems there are simulator games for just about anything you can think of, such as Granny Simulator, Thief Simulator, and even a PC building simulator. Now, teams from Dovetail Games, Curve Digital, and Skyhook Games are bringing what could be the hottest simulator game this summer: Lawn Mowing Simulator. Later this year, players will be able to “enjoy the challenge and serenity of mowing the Great British countryside in a variety of modes, while ensuring cash flow of your empire remains as green as the blades you’re cutting,” according to developer Skyhook Games. New lawn care professionals will be able to visit the British countryside, large equestrian fields, castle grounds...
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Serious Sam 2 was released over 15 years ago, but this week, it receives a massive update for diehard fans. The developers even acknowledge that it has been “five billion years” since the game last received a “proper update,” and we’d imagine that those that still play the game (or have long relegated it to the digital recycle bin) weren’t expecting an update. Developer Croteam says that the new 2.90 Update brings niceties like dual-wielding weapons, an enemy multiplier, and a dozen new multiplayer maps (among other additions). One of the new weapons is the BeamGun, which is based on the Ghost Buster from the original Serious Sam concept and a flamethrower....
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Fair or not, Mac users are sometime a forgotten bunch when it comes to playing computer games, perhaps even more so now that Apple has embarked on a slow breakup with Intel. It wasn't always that way. Remember being afflicted with dysentery in Oregon Trail? Like Pepperidge Farm, Valve remembers, and it has made its Steam Link application available in the Mac App Store. "The Steam Link app allows you to play your Steam games across all your computers. Just pair an MFI or Steam controller to your Mac, connect to a computer running Steam on the same local network, and start playing your existing Steam games," the app's description states. This is one of the final destinations for Steam Link. While...
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Looking for a game to play this weekend? If you head over to Steam, you can claim Metro 2033, the popular post-apocalyptic title developed by 4A Games , for free and it is yours to keep until the world ends for real. That means you could play it this weekend, next weekend, the weekend after that, and...well, you get the point. Metro 2033 turns 11 years old this month, so it's not exactly a new game by any stretch of the imagination. However, it is still a fun title and worth checking out if you managed to miss it all this time. The PC release holds an 81 score on Metacritic, and "Very Positive" ratings (recent and overall) on Steam. Metro 2033 - Free on Steam for a limited time Usually when we...
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Last week, Apple attempted to drag Valve into the legal standoff with Epic Games by requesting a large quantity of data from the PC games creator and seller. While this request appeared out of place, the subpoena seems to have worked, as a judge has told Valve Corp. to hand over certain data from the request. During a Zoom court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixon ordered Valve to produce “aggregate historical sales, pricing and other data on 436 games sold on the virtual game store Steam,” according to Law360. This is significantly less than the original request for information on every Steam game dating back to 2015. Thankfully, the judge saw the flaws in this request...
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While the Fortnite battle continues, now internationally, Apple is attempting to gather ammunition for the courtroom showdown sometime in the future. A court filing from this week reports that Apple subpoenaed Valve Software in November 2020, "simply requesting" Valve’s revenues and the name, price, and availability of every product on Steam to show competition. That is one tall order, and it appears that Valve is not playing ball. In short, Apple believes data from Valve could bolster its legal position against Epic Games, and subsequently requested a plethora of data. According to the record [PDF], in “Request 2,” Apple wanted documents “sufficient” to show...
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It took less than two weeks for Valheim to notch over two million sales, after releasing to Steam's Early Access program. Just as impressively, if not more so, the unfinished survival game reached a peak concurrent player count of 360,000 over the weekend. It is one of the most played games on Steam right now, behind only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Those are some big time juggernauts to be mingling with on Steam, and in terms of peak concurrent users, it is fast approaching third place—at the time of this writing, the Steam Database portal shows Valheim peaking at 392,862 today, just slightly behind PUBG at 398,518. "Forget longboats, we...
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At this point, I will be working on my backlog of games in my Steam library for the next 450 years or so, because I have been conditioned (like Pavlov's dog) to stock up on titles every time there is a sale. And I am okay with the situation. If you are too, then here's a heads up you might appreciate—Steam's Lunar New Year Sale is likely kicking off later today. There has not been an official announcement, but if there is a trusted source for this kind of information, it is Twitter user Steam Database (@SteamDB). They actually gave the first advanced notice almost a full month ago, claiming the date and time were "leaked from an email to Steam partners." Plus the Chinese New Year is February...
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Valve has recently been in some hot water as the EU’s European Commission slapped the games company with a $1.9 million fine over “geo-blocking.” Now, some gamers are suing Valve in California over anti-competitive clauses in developer agreements. Valve and multiple other developers have been named defendants, alleging that the companies entered a competition-stifling contract with a “most favored nations” (MFN) clause. In this case, the MFN clause is an agreement where game developers arrive at a specific price of a game on the Steam platform, and then that price will remain the same on all other platforms. As the suit explains, “Because of this Most Favored...
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Have you ever tried to buy a game but found that it was not available in your region for some unknown reason? This may be due to a practice Valve’s game platform Steam does, called “geo-blocking.” This is done to lock out certain countries from getting a particular game or to manage pricing worldwide. The European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, took issue with the latter and has now fined the gaming company approximately $1.9 million. According to the European Commission website, “geo-blocking” is how a company “segment[s] markets along national borders and to increase profits to the detriment of foreign customers.” They claim that Valve,...
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Though it has been a rough and long year, 2020 is finally ending. Throughout the year, gamers have been distracted by many games, both new and old. Now, Steam is releasing its “Best of 2020” games based on gross revenue and player stats to show what gamers have enjoyed this year. Top Sellers Year to year, the top-selling list on Steam does not change too much, but there are some surprises this year. While it is unclear if the top games based on gross revenue are ranked in order, the number one spot here is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Released in 2017, this game is one of the OG battle royale games from when the genre took off. Though the recent reviews are “mixed,”...
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While Epic Games is giving away 15 free games, Steam is having their annual Steam Winter Sale, where you can get a load of games at a decent discount. Should you get some extra Christmas (or Hanukkah) cash and you want to spend it, we have compiled some of the great gaming deals you can grab now through January 5th at 10 am PT. Halo: The Master Chief Collection Perhaps you feel nostalgic this holiday season or just want to follow the Halo storyline from start to finish. In either case, 343 Industries put together Halo: The Master Chief Collection late last year for gamers to enjoy. It includes six Halo games featuring a campaign with 67 missions across the series and online multiplayer fun. You...
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AMD versus Intel is sort of a David versus Goliath story, only these days, AMD has armed itself with more than just a slingshot. Zen is the real deal. That is abundantly clear by now, but lest anyone needs reminding, a peek at Steam's latest hardware survey results for November 2020 show how well AMD's processors are being received by gamers, as it continues to, uh, chip away at Intel's share. I can hear the groans at the pun, but bear with me. The point is, this is a different AMD versus Intel battle than in past years, before Zen came along. AMD for a long time was the also-ran, while Intel dominated the market with better performing CPUs at the high end. But now? The Ryzen 5000 series is an...
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As another season rolls around, so too does another Steam sale with deep discounts on games. If you do pick up some games, you can stock up on Steam points to decorate your profile for the season. However, let’s look at what Steam has to offer first, as there should be plenty of games for everyone. Shooters If you are looking to blast some bad guys or get into some mil-sim action, these are some of the top deals to get you going over the Tukey-day weekend and beyond. Far Cry 5 @ $11.99 (80% off) Doom Franchise Bundle @ $41.98 (72% off) Arma 3 And DLC Up To 75% Off Simulators Perhaps you just want to sit back and race a car, drive a truck, or build a PC. We get it, playing simulator games...
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When purchasing a game on Steam, customers have two hours to try it out and, if desired, request a refund. The policy is designed to protect gamers against being stuck with a game that does not run right on their hardware, or simply take a mulligan on a game they did not like. However, some customers have pointed out that two hours is simply not enough time to evaluate Microsoft Flight Simulator, and are asking Valve to extend the refund window. It's not necessarily that players want more time to fly the skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator before making a final decision, they just want to get in the game, period. So, what is the actual issue? it is the size of the in-game download that takes...
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