Items tagged with STEAM
Valve is working to bring more games to Linux users by rolling out a new beta version of Steam Play, which includes a modified version of Wine, called Proton, to provide compatibility with Windows game titles, the company announced. This essentially allows Linux users to run native Windows games without a Linux port or major hoops to jump through. "This goes hand-in-hand with an ongoing testing effort of the entire Steam catalog, in order to identify games that currently work great in this compatibility environment, and find and address issues for the ones that don't," Valve said. For anyone who...
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Discord has a message for Valve and its Steam platform, and that message is 'Game on!' The popular online voice and text chat service for gamers is going to sell video games, just as Steam does, and Valve should take notice of its new competition. Why? Discord is not a small outfit—it currently has around 150 million users There is an interesting rivalry brewing between Discord and Steam. Valve recently revamped Steam's chat service to be more like Discord, giving gamers a one-stop-shop for buying games and communicating with friends. It added several nifty features, though whether users...
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One of the most anticipated games of the year is Fallout 76. The game is the latest in Bethesda's post-apocalyptic open-world franchise and it will be set in a Western Virginian wasteland. We already know some important facts about the game including that it will be an online-only title and have multiplayer capability. The catch is that cross-platform play has been blocked by buzzkill Sony. Multiple versions of the game will launch November 14, and we have now learned that the PC version will shun the popular Steam store. Bethesda has officially announced that Fallout 76 for PC will only be offered...
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Let the online chat wars begin! That is the hidden message behind Valve's new Steam Chat messaging client, which has now exited beta and is available in polished form for anyone and everyone who cares to give it a test run. In doing so, Valve is going up against Discord in the gaming chat space, with several similar features that are of interest to gamers. For many gamers, Discord is the go-to chat client—it's even integrated into the Xbox One, as of a few months ago. It's also how I let my son know dinner is ready if his phone is turned off and/or I don't feel like yelling (or walking) across...
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When it comes to digital stores for PC games, Steam is currently the dominant force. Chinese gaming company Tencent wants to battle Steam globally and plans to roll out WeGame beyond its home market of China. The first country that WeGame will battle Steam in is Hong Kong and reports indicate that a version of the platform for that country is in the works now. WeGame launched in September of last year to replace the Tencent Games Platform and has been widely compared to Steam. It is much smaller than Steam with a current catalog of only 220 games. Those gamers are a mix of Chinese titles and...
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The kids are out of school and the weather is trending towards scorching hot (depending on where you live), and that can mean only one thing—summer has officially begun! That alone isn't reason for excitement though. Sure, we're stoked about getting outside and catching some rays, but we're equally excited that Valve has kicked off its Steam Summer Sale 2018, an annual bonanza of bargains on games and even some hardware. We readily admit we'll never get around to playing every game in our library to their entirety, but with so many tantalizing discounts, it's difficult to sit on the sidelines...
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PUBG was all the rage with gamers in 2017 until the Fortnite battle royale made hit the scene and quickly began to win out in concurrent player numbers. PUBG has been working to gain back its lost popularity to outpace Fortnite, and has in the past promised better performance to lure back gamers. Now, a new map is coming to PUBG this week and it is called Sanhok. The new map is much smaller (4km x 4km) at about a fourth of the size of maps like Erangel or Miramar. PUBG says that the smaller size will make battles end a bit faster because there will still be 100 players on the small map. To improve...
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Valve's Steam platform has been in the spotlight a lot lately, for good, bad, or simply odd reasons. The company has just overhauled its Steam chat client, which is hugely appreciated, and perhaps long overdue. At the same time, the company has deemed it appropriate to let the community decide what content should or shouldn't be available on the platform - as long as it's not straight-up trolling, content will remain on Steam. Based on the decision made a couple of weeks ago, school shooter FPS games, and those rife with anime porn, are not a problem - as long as no trolling is going on. What's...
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Valve had many gamers excited when it announced that the Steam Link app would let you stream games from your PC to your iOS device. Not so long after the announcement, Steam Link landed in beta on Google Play for Android aficionados. Unfortunately for the iOS users, Apple blocked the app with Phil Schiller explaining that the app violated App Store rules. However, revised app store rules gave hope that Steam Link might still make it. Valve is now trying to get past Apple censors by removing the purchase options inside the app that was released to TestFlight. Reports claiming...
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Valve is overhauling its Steam Chat feature and the immediate reaction is that it's essentially Valve's version of Discord, the go-to chat client for many avid online gamers. The new Steam Chat is not available in polished form—if you want to try it out, you have to download and install the beta client, which Valve has made available to everyone (it's an open beta, not a closed one, in other words). Those who do are in for a shock to the system. The beta Steam Chat is vastly different from the existing one. One of the biggest changes is being able to wrangle friends into groups, which can...
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Valve has been busy of late rolling out new features and thinking hard about how it will handle controversial games. One of the cool new features was Steam Link, an app that allows you to stream games from your PC over to your mobile device under the right circumstances. In addition, Valve recently offered insight into its decision to allow "everything" onto the Steam store short of illegal content and "straight up trolling." Valve has now announced that it will be opening the doors to Steam China this year. The launch of Steam China is in partnership with Perfect World Zhengqi Multimedia Technology...
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Quake fans rejoice, Bethesda has made an offer that many will find too good to refuse. Quake Champions, the upcoming arena shooter that has not yet been fully released, is now available as a free trial to anyone and everyone. Previously it was a $30 title as part of Steam's Early Access program. It will return to that price after the free trial period as well, but if you grab it now for free, it will remain in your library after this current trial period ends. Even if you're on the fence about Quake Champions, you might as well claim your copy now, just in case. Quake Champions will return to its...
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Some users who logged into Steam recently were being encouraged to pre-order Just Cause 4, the next game in the open-world adventure series by developer Avalanche Studios and publisher Square Enix. Normally a pre-order ad would not cause anyone to bat an eyebrow. In this case, however, Steam's listing came ahead of the game's anticipated announcement at E3. In other words, Steam is the source of a very big leak, though it is not the only one to do so. Right around the month ago, Walmart's web team in Canada posted a whole bunch of unreleased game listings with missing box art. One of the titles...
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Until recently, a remote code execution vulnerability in Steam sat unnoticed by Valve for at least a decade, leaving millions of users at risk of attack. Luckily for all involved, it seems that malicious actors were not privy to the security bug either. Valve has since released a patch that partially addresses the vulnerability, so even if an attacker does attempt to exploit it, taking over a victim's PC is highly unlikely. Tom Court, a security researcher with Context, the company that alerted Valve to the vulnerability, discussed the bug in detail in a blog post. He gave credit to Valve for quickly...
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