Items tagged with Valve
Nothing can kill a good time while playing video games more quickly than bugs that prevent you from completing quests or activities. No game is perfect, but some bugs are more frustrating than others. The latest Destiny 2 reset brought with it a variety of bugs that have been hampering seasonal quest, challenge, and exotic catalyst completions. The first major bug is related to the Wayfinder's Voyage V. Wayfinder’s Voyage V requires Guardians to use the Wayfinder's Compass and kill Taken with a bow. However, many players realized that the quest only progressed once they had killed Scorn with a bow. This is fairly easily fixed by the player, but is still a bit annoying. Second, many Guardians...
Read more...
If you're in the market for an adventure to the Red Planet, and you don't have Elon Musk's ambition (or billions), we have the next best thing for you. Surviving Mars, which Haemimont Games developed, is currently available for free from the Steam store. However, you don't have much time to act. The game is only available from now until 1 pm ET on Wednesday, September 8th. However, if you do manage to sneak in before the cutoff to obtain the game, here's what awaits you: Surviving Mars is a sci-fi city builder all about colonizing Mars and surviving the process. Choose a space agency for resources and financial support before determining a location for your colony. Build domes and infrastructure,...
Read more...
The Steam Deck has not even released yet, but it is already proving to be a highly popular console—it did not take long to fill up reservations for the first batch of shipments that will go out in December, and any new reservations ($5 down) are now quoted as arriving sometime after the second quarter of next year. Adding to the hype, a tweet by Microsoft's Phil Spencer suggests that XCloud support is headed to the handheld PC. Spencer is the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, so the tweet holds significant weight. While nothing has been officially announced as it applies to XCloud support on the Steam Deck, Spencer did say that it "works well" on the handheld, noting that he recently visited...
Read more...
There is a lot of excitement surrounding Valve's upcoming Steam Deck handheld gaming PC, and rightfully so. Adding to the hype, Gabe Newell bragged how the open nature of the Steam Deck is its superpower, and a distinguishing characteristic compared to the crop of game consoles running on proprietary platforms. That means users will be able to install Windows 11 if they choose. But will the Steam Deck be ready to accept Microsoft's next OS at launch? That's the goal. Several factors are at play that make this an interesting question. The biggest one is Microsoft's stringent requirement that systems must enable Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 support. This is an added layer of security that...
Read more...
It seems that just about everyone's excited about Valve's Steam Deck, the tiny portable computer with big PC gaming aspirations. Right out of the gate, just securing a position to pay for one was a hot commodity on online marketplaces like eBay. That doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon, either. Already, excited gamers are dreaming about the possibilities of the little Steam engine that could. The company's explosive presales prove that out, as right now the Steam Deck's listing says that it's available for preorder starting at $399, but won't be in customer hands until "after Q2 2022." In the meantime, Valve's hype train hasn't stopped, as a few select outlets got their...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
Fair or not, Valve's recently announced Steam Deck is drawing comparisons to the Nintendo Switch, the result of both systems being built around a handheld form factor. They are not really the same thing, obviously—Steam Deck is a PC in handheld portable form, and the Switch is dedicated console. There are valid comparisons to be made, though, Valve's Gabe Newell points to the open nature of the PC platform as a big advantage in favor of the Steam Deck over some other systems and consoles. Out of the box, the Steam Deck runs a new version of SteamOS (version 3.0), an Arch-based Linux operating system that is optimized for the handheld, and powered by the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment....
Read more...
The running joke about Valve Corporation is that the company cannot count to three, in that there is no [traditional] follow-up to Half-Life 2, Portal 2, or Left 4 Dead 2. However, some of the developers of Left 4 Dead left Valve to create their own game, Back 4 Blood, whose release is just on the horizon. As such, the open beta to test the game out is also quite close, and you can pick up a key for free today. Back 4 Blood is a “thrilling cooperative first-person shooter” from the Left 4 Dead franchise developers. Players will find themselves at war against the Ridden: terrifying parasite-ridden corpses that once were normal people before the infections began and humanity collapsed....
Read more...
At this point, Steam Machines are little more than a footnote in the history of computing, but that did not stop Valve from focusing on hardware. Just the opposite, it recently announced the Steam Deck, a promising handheld that has drawn inevitable comparisons to the Nintendo Switch, though the two are very different products. And don't worry, Valve says, that 30 frame per second target you may have heard about is not a frame rate lock by any stretch. The concern arose when Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais suggested in a recent interview that gamers who are used to high frame rates on other platforms will be happy with 30 FPS on the Steam Deck's 1280x800 screen, which is a lower resolution...
Read more...
The design team behind Valve's upcoming Steam Deck is confident that controller drift will not be an issue on the handheld gaming PC. We will have to wait and see if that is truly the case, but we are crossing our fingers that drifting will not rear its ugly head, as it can be a major point of frustration among gamers. We have already seen this with Nintendo's Joy-Con controllers for its Switch consoles. Joy-Con drift issues have led to class-action lawsuit against Nintendo, an apology from the company, and various hacks and mods aimed at solving the problem. More recently, a modder discovered that a fix could be as simply as sliding a piece of paper or cardboard around 1mm thick inside the Joy-Cons....
Read more...
Valve announced the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC, this week and gamers are abuzz with interest. As preorders opened on Friday, questions poured in about various aspects of the device which is powered by AMD's Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU technology. It is available in three variants which differ only in storage capacity and type. Among other things, prospective buyers were eager to know if and to what extent the onboard storage options are upgradeable. Co-Founder and President Gabe Newell has confirmed all three models of the Steam Deck use a m.2 slot, though Valve is discouraging buyers from attempting to upgrade the storage themselves. Emails to Gabe from u/midnight_watch (left) and u/BernardoOne...
Read more...
Valve dropped a rather intriguing bombshell on the gaming market on Thursday when it revealed the Steam Deck. The 7-inch handheld gaming PC runs a SteamOS flavor of Linux and comes with some relatively powerful hardware under the hood: a custom quad-core AMD Zen 2 CPU that pairs with an RDNA 2 GPU. Preorders for the Steam Deck kicked off yesterday at 1 PM EST, and it didn't take long for enthusiasts to crash the Steam store, causing all sorts of issues. The device is priced at $399, $529, and $649 respectively for 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations. Unsurprisingly, the first batch of preorders sold out quickly, not only to eager gamers but also scalpers. Unlike most product preorders, which...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
With mobile phone displays switching over to OLED panels, companies like Japan Display Inc., specializing in LCD screens, face the consequences. However, OLED panels are not perfect, nor can they do everything, such as displays in virtual and augmented reality headsets. The pixel density of LCDs simply cannot be matched with present technology or price, so that is what JDI is now focusing on in the fledgling VR and AR marketplace. Following the downturn in LCD sales to smartphone manufacturers, the Tokyo-based JDI believes that its display technology will become the standard for VR/AR as “it can achieve higher resolution than OLED while keeping costs reasonable,” as reported by Bloomberg....
Read more...
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...
Read more...
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has been going strong since 2012, regularly hitting the “Top Games By Current Player Count” list on Steam. With this thriving community, it could make for a great opportunity to try and hack players through the game, and it seems that is indeed a potential threat. Researchers recently found a way to get reliable remote code execution on players’ computers just by joining a malicious community server. The Secret Club is a group of like-minded hackers and researchers who believe in open research about security, reverse engineering malware, and game hacking. Concerning the last part about game hacking, it seems they targeted CS:GO due to...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
