Items tagged with Valve
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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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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Valve has announced that it has made some major changes to its Knuckles EV 1.3 controller. It has been sending out Knuckles EV 1.3 developer kits to game devs over the past year to test and that it has been listening to the feedback from these devs along the way. The result of that feedback is a brand-new version of the Knuckles EV controller called Knuckles EV2. According to Valve, very little of the EV 1.3 controller was left untouched. The EV2 version is still recognizable as Knuckles but has lots of changes: Improved industrial design and ergonomics Updated input set and layout Improved strap...
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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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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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Valve is giving the community a bit of an update on its policing policies for Steam via a blog post. This post comes in the wake of controversy and public outcry focused on the video game that was removed from the Steam Store that lets gamers play the part of a school shooter. That game was removed from the Steam Store and the developer was banned for being abusive. The new post says that humans are the ones reviewing controversial games submitted to Steam and the process isn’t automated. The process of making decisions on games to allow refuse is a difficult one according to the post, and...
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Apple has revised its App Store rules and policies with slightly looser restrictions that could pave the way for Valve's Steam Link streaming app to take residence on iOS devices, after it was previously blocked. The relevant wording in the revised rules has to do with how remote mirroring apps like the Steam Link are handled. Depending on Apple's reviews process going forward, the change means that Valve's app could end up on iPhone and iPad devices, after all. First, a little background on the topic. Last month, Valve launched its Steam Link app in beta for Android devices. It works similar to...
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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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Following a whirlwind of controversy over content versus free speech, Valve has decided to yank the game Active Shooter from Steam, but it didn't stop there. Valve also banned the developer Revived Games and publisher Acid from its popular digital distribution platform, which are actually one and the same in Ata Berdiyev, who Valve described as a "troll" with an unsavory history towards its customers. "We have removed the developer Revived Games and publisher Acid from Steam," Valve said in a statement. "This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously...
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