It's almost the end of November, which means it is technically but not spiritually still autumn. It is spiritually winter, the season of wearing gloves and using my phone's flashlight to look for my dog's poos in the long grass. Yet it's not the Steam winter sale that started yesterday, but the Steam autumn sale.
Discounts are definitely never a bad thing, but Steam sales used to feel like big events on the PC gaming calendar. They don't anymore, to me. Friends, are Steam sales still exciting to you?
]]>An on-going lawsuit against Valve about Steam's "anti-competitive" practices and especially, its infamous 30% per-game revenue cut, has taken an interesting twist. According to a report, it's now a class action suit that could benefit any developers or publishers who have sold a game over the Steam store on or after 28th January 2017.
]]>Valve have unveiled a new policy about season passes on Steam, which aims to ensure that developers release all the individual DLC involved on time and share adequate details about each DLC pack in advance. It specifies that developers can delay release of a season pass DLC just once, and by no longer than three months. In the event that a developer postpones DLC release by longer than three months, Valve may take such corrective actions as removing the season pass from sale or refunding players.
]]>A senator for the US government has urged Valve to answer complaints about the amount of racist, sexist and otherwise hateful posts and imagery shared by users on Steam. The digital store was the subject of a report by the Anti-Defamation League last week, which claimed to find millions of examples of "hateful or extremist" language and images hosted on Steam's community. These include things like Nazi symbols in profile pictures, white supremacist slogans in group names, and yet more discriminatory spew in user posts. The senator has noticed this report, and now writes directly to Gabe Newell, demanding that Valve "bring its content moderation practices in line with industry standards" or risk "intense scrutiny" from the government.
]]>Steam's built-in game recording feature has been usable in beta since the summer, but it has now been properly launched for every user, following a client update to Steam yesterday. It's basically another method of capturing funny ragdoll glitches and posting them on the "lol-games-are-dumb" channel of your friend's Discord. Or for posting that flukey knife throw in Call Of Duty to Twitter, as if you really meant to kill the man from across the map all along. Or saving a clip for your personal records, like the footage of that time you yeeted an innocent citizen off the 50-foot wall of a castle town in Dragon's Dogma 2. We all do that, right? Right?
]]>Steam now shows customers a message to let them know that they're buying a license when making a purchase through the storefront, rather than any outright ownership. The change has been implemented internationally in response to new California legislation due to take effect next year.
]]>"Turn-based" games are, as we know, all derived from Turn, the strategy game about a dog digging for coins released for the BBC Micro in 1987. Prior to this, all actions in games simply took place simultaenously, as fast as the player or players could make them.
Fast forward to today and many games are now "turn-based", from Tactics Ogre Reborn to Age Of Wonders 4 to chess. In celebration of their orderliness, Steam is currently running a turn-based RPG fest featuring discounts and demos for "turn-based games where you grow stronger with every battle".
]]>Yesterday, Valve dropped a Steam client beta update focused largely on Game Recording – the beta version’s recently added clip-capturing utility. It’s a pretty wide-spanning array of improvements, adding support for ultrawide monitor resolutions up to 32:9, the high-quality H.265 (HEVC) video codec – on Windows only for now, apologies to the Steam Deck – and the option to "record a specified game indefinitely with no specified time limit."
]]>Earlier today, Nic covered the full release of Steam Families, a feature which makes it easier for families to share a game library and for parents to manage kids' purchases and playtime on the digital storefront. It's a neat improvement over the old system.
Unfortunately I can't think about anything other than the Steam Families logo, which is pictured above and is clearly a shocked, possibly aghast face. Or so I thought at first. The more I stare at it, the more it seems to reveal.
]]>Steam’s family sharing feature Steam Families is now available to everyone on the platform, letting up to six total people share games from a single library, with each individual having access to their own saved games, achievements, and workshop files.
This means that, yes, when you all sit down together in the evening, you can enjoy a hearty family meal in the knowledge that between you, you technically own six copies of the Cities Skylines Big Butt Skinner Balloon.
Each person on the account will have one of two roles: adult or child. Adults can manage parental controls, set hourly or daily playtime limits, approve purchase requests, and control store access. Valve appear very proud of making it easier for parents to spend money, streamlining the “time-consuming” task of buying games for their kids.
]]>Monica Harrington isn't one of Valve's official co-founders, but she was heavily involved in its formation and initial success - working by day as a marketing manager at Microsoft with responsibility for the games division, while helping her partner, Mike Harrington, and Gabe Newell get the Half-Life studio off the ground. In a lengthy post on Medium - which Nic has already covered in the most recent Sunday Papers, but which I think deserves a piece of its own - Harrington takes us through those heady early days.
]]>Another week, another Steam Fest looms. From September 2st until the 9rd you'll be able to find intergalactic discounts and demos in the Steam Space Exploration Fest.
]]>We've been distracted by Gamescom, several game releases, the rapid dwindling of the British summer. Or I assume we have, for why else would we not have yet posted about the Steam Rhythm Fest, which began on Monday and runs until August 26th at 10am PT/6pm BRDST*.
]]>Steam’s seeing a good few sweeping changes of late. They’ve recently added a ‘Trending Free’ tab to separate the no money down and no, money down playables. And, as of September, they’re cracking down on links to other websites in store pages. Now, horror of horrors, they’re coming for your ascii gigachads and “nobody is going to read this review so I’ll just say I’m gay” bangers. The changes are part of their ‘New Helpfulness System’, outlined here.
The new system, which will be enabled by default but can be toggled off, aims to “help potential players make informed decisions about the games they are considering purchasing by understanding the attributes of the game that other players like or don't like.” Ah, so a sort of ‘review’, if you will. I like it!
]]>Finding and sharing Free Stuff is one of the time-honoured duties of the video game journalist or SEO-monger. Back when I was OXM's online editor, "free Xbox games" was one of our golden Google pillars, the other two being "Minecraft Xbox 360 update" and "Skyrim something something". Well, uncle Valve has just rudely torpedoed that ancient investigative initiative by adding a Trending Free tab to the Steam frontpage, encompassing prologues, demos, free-to-play games and that most treasured of jewels, a full free game with no monetisation elements, such as Grimhook.
Do not cry for us pitiful electronic scribblers, crowded on our melting internet icebergs. Play free games instead! Thanks to that new tab, I've just discovered a demo for neato wide-format tower defender Frontline Crisis. Hah, that'll keep the awareness of steady livelihood erosion at bay.
]]>Demos were once a cornerstone of PC gaming and they arguably will be again thanks to events like Steam Next Fest. The latest update to Steam seeks to make those free slices of potential delight easier to find for players, and easier to promote for developers.
]]>There are a lot of video game awards and most of them are simply popularity contests, and therefore also stinky borefests. The one that isn't, in my eyes, is the yearly Independent Games Festival awards - the IGFs.
The IGF Celebration Days Steam sale provides plenty of examples as to why, with discounts from now until July 20th on winners and finalists from throughout the IGF awards' history.
]]>Anyone looking for how to record game clips on their Steam Deck will have, until recently, been starved for decent options. Decky Loader allows for a decent screen capture plugin, for instance, but even that’s on the overly basic side. Enter Steam’s own Game Recording feature – a flexible bundle of game-clippin' tools that’s now emerged from beta and is available to all Steam Deck users on the SteamOS Stable branch.
As far as handheld recording majiggers go, there’s currently little reason to use anything else, not least because Game Recording is built right into the Steam Deck’s operating system. As such, it’s highly configurable and, once you get to grips with the recording process, easy to use and share clips with. Its only problem is that it doesn’t explain itself all that well at first, but good news: you’re reading a guide. Here, I’ll walk you through how to capture footage using both of Game Recording’s two modes, as well as how to save and share those highlights with pals.
]]>Steam’s Game Recording feature has launched in be- wait, no, it's out properly now! Valve have added this (impressively rich) set of video clipping tools to Steam's default Stable branch, effectively bringing it to everyone who hasn't tried it since the Beta branch launch back in June. It comes with tooltips to give you some pointers, but they’re light on detail, so read on for a more comprehensive guide on how to record game clips with Steam – and how to share your clips around.
]]>You can tell when a major Steam sale goes live, because the Steam store stop loading. If you can make it past the "something went wrong" message you'll find that the Steam summer sale is now underway.
]]>From ShadowPlay to OBS, there’s no shortage of tools and apps that can record and share your finest gaming moments and/or hilarious failures. No matter to Valve, who’ve updated the Steam beta client with a replay system of their own.
]]>Steam Next Fest 2024 has formally ended, we've spent a couple of weeks gorging upon demos of all stripes, from oil spill clean-up to dancefloor kendo, and now comes the all-important process of deciding which of those demos Won. Valve have helpfully shared a list of the most played Steam demos during this latest, gravest round of next festivity, and it covers a reasonable range. I mean, I wasn't that surprised to see an open world survival shooter with monsters at the top of the ladder - why else would we dedicate a bunch of Best Of features to such things? - but I am surprised that number three is a leering parody of neglect. Also, there's a game about mopping dungeons that appeals strongly to my Dungeon Meshi-watching sensibilities.
]]>The sheer number and scale of video games released nowadays means that the infamous Steam backlog is better-fed than ever, gorging on half-played hundred-hour RPGs, never-touched indies amassed during summer sales and “I’ll get to it one day” PC pipe dreams. If you were hoping to task your descendants with continuing your quest to get all 1,700-plus achievements in Tales of Maj'Eyal or maintain your ranked leaderboard position in Dota 2, bad news: it turns out that you can’t pass on your Steam library after you die.
]]>Video games must be three hours-long or infinite and nothing in between. The latest Steam event is designed to celebnrate the latter. The Endless Replayability Fest runs from now until May 20th, "celebrating games and demos you can play over and over again."
]]>Players that put more than two hours into pre-purchased or advanced access games will now be exempt from Steam's refund policy, says Steam, the maker of said policy and thus the final word on how it is implemented. As spotted by the Verge, this change is intended to combat a loophole where filthy time criminals could fill their stolen boots with ill-gotten fun pre-release, then get their money back.
]]>Steam’s next week-long celebration will pay tribute to that most treasured of genres, the first-person shooter. The PC marketplace’s FPS Fest kicks off next Monday, letting loose a hail of discounts and playable demos for shooters that prefer things from the first-person perspective.
]]>Valve have launched Steam Families on the Steam Beta Client, a suite of new and refreshed family sharing options that replace Steam's existing Family Sharing and Family View features. The idea is that you'll now have a single location where you can manage your family's games from, as well as have more control over what and when other family members can play.
]]>It's hard for me to get a read on Steam sales, because my relationship and access to games is defined by my work. So I ask you, as the Steam spring sale starts: are Steam sales as big a deal as they used to be?
]]>After several months on the Steam beta build, Valve last night officially launched an update which revamps the shopping experience and lets you hide your shame. Two universal conveniences: your shopping basket is now shared across devices, so no losing track of things you meant to buy later; and buying gift copies is now less faffy. More conditional: you can now choose to make individual games private, meaning no one will ever see if you own them or are playing them. I won't ask why you might want to hide any particular games.
]]>In 2023, more than 500 games earned more than $3 million (around £2.3 million) in gross revenue via Steam, according to Valve. The stat was shared as part of their annual summary, a breakdown of the platform's past year in terms of new features and performance.
]]>The best games are co-op games, and one of the best features of Steam is Remote Play, which turns local co-op games into online co-op games through the power of internet magic.
This week brings Steam Remote Play Together 2024 Fest, a mouthful that means there will be discounts and demos for co-op games on the digital storefront.
]]>It’s time for another pull on the velvet rope labelled “too many games”. In fairness, this time the argument is a touch more involved than perennial moaning about backlogs – to whit, “there are too many games and it’s all the pandemic’s fault”. Nacon’s head of publishing Benoit Clerc has argued that the Covid lockdown years have bred too much investment in new games, and that we’re currently reaping the results in the form of an unsustainable glut of releases.
]]>Little-known indie platform holder Valve have announced a new policy for Steam releases that make use of "AI" technology. To boil it down, developers will now have to disclose how they're using AI tools on Steam pages, including what "guardrails" they're putting in place for live-generated stuff that might be illegal or infringe on copyright. Valve are also introducing a new player reporting system for breaches. The company say these adjustments "will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use AI", with the exception of Adult Only Sexual content that is generated live.
]]>Over 14,000 games were released on Steam in 2023, according to according to data tracked by SteamDB. The number is nearly 2000 games more than in 2022, and continues a steady trend of growth on the digital storefront.
]]>The player-voted Steam Awards have reached their conclusion, and the results are about as weird as the nominees. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the weirdest game possible won in several categories, such as Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Labor Of Love award and Starfield for "Most Innovative Gameplay".
]]>Valve have put together their "Best Of 2023" lists on Steam. This is different from the Steam Awards, voting for which is ongoing, and instead is built from Steam data like revenue, peak concurrent players, and so on. It's interesting every year as older games or indie obscurities do better than you expect.
]]>If you've opted in to the Steam client beta, you can now mark games in your Steam library as private so that they're invisible to other users. That means that if you're - as a hypothetical - a games journalist who once had to buy and install some games with questionable names and subject matter for an article you were writing, you can now hide that so it's no longer visible to your friends or - hypothetically - your child.
Hypothetically!
]]>The nominees for the public-voted Steam Awards have been announced and they are, perhaps more than ever before, baffling to me. If I was being uncharitable, I'd say that's because the list is overrun by games with large multiplayer communities that can be encouraged to vote for them - but who would want to be uncharitable? Let's instead say that the list is certainly not boring, even if Starfield gets a nod for "most innovative gameplay".
]]>Steam has introduced a new way to spot which PC games support PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense controllers, as well as being able to search by specific controllers.
]]>Valve have spent the past year or so gradually updating the Steam interface, partly to bring parity across its various forms such as the handheld Steam Deck and on-the-telly Big Picture mode. Now it's virtual reality's turn, with the launch of SteamVR 2.0.
]]>Valve are introducing text message verification for game developers using Steamworks, following what the platform-holders describe as a limited incident which saw hackers taking over several Steamworks accounts and adding malware to their games. Reportedly, fewer than 100 Steam players have been affected by the malware – I hope you’re not among them.
]]>I've been greatly looking forward to Fortune's Run, despite absolutely sucking at the demo. Scandalously, we don't appear to have covered this indie sci-fi FPS on these golden pages, so here's a quick overview: you're the high-jumping, sword-wielding, bullet-pumping lovechild of Deus Ex and DOOM, galloping through a world that recalls the Imperial bases and sewers of Dark Forces, taking down grungy pixelart sprites by means of precision parries, grabs, combos, headshots, terrain traps and much more besides. Between dust-ups, you can play basketball and leave crayon graffiti for other players care of a Dark Souls-style messaging system. It's a feast!
The game was due to launch into Steam early access tomorrow, 27th September, but unfortunately, there's been a delay. Valve's testers have denied Fortune's Run approval to launch on the platform. Among the reasons, according to developer Team Fortune themselves, is that Valve don't feel the game's content warning for sexual assault is actually necessary.
]]>Each year, Steam announce the dates for upcoming sales and fests. The information is designed so that developers can opt-in to have their games included, and plan for the year ahead. But if you're looking to buy a boatload of games, you might also want to plan when based on potential discounts.
Valve have now announced the relevant dates for the first four months of 2024.
]]>Today marks 20 years since the release of Steam, as we wrote about earlier today. Valve have now posted their own reminiscence about the history of their digital distribution platform over on the Steam site.
And in typical Steam fashion, it's also a sale.
]]>The first time I heard of Steam it was, as you might expect, in conjunction with the release of a little FPS called Half-Life 2 back in 2004. You needed Steam to access it, whether you bought the digital version or a retail copy. Given relative unfamiliarity with digital distribution, the nascent status of broadband internet in the UK and US, and the much greater importance of physical game sales at the time, this caused quite a stir. I remember being alarmed by an op-ed over on GameRevolution.com that held forth at length about the risk of conflicts between Steam and other software, if players were outright required to leave it running. How quaint those anxieties seem today - the day of Steam's 20th anniversary. And yet, there's nothing quaint about Steam's ability to shape the field in which it operates.
]]>If a strategy game gets its hooks into you, it can easily consume hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of your life. That either makes Steam's latest sale of strategy games absurdly good value for money, or an assault upon productivity everywhere.
]]>The Cerebral Puzzle Showcase is back again on Steam, offering heavy discounts for over 200 puzzlers and over 40 demos for upcoming headscratchers. That’s quite a lot of puzzle games, so let’s stretch those dusty noggins with some good old recommendations.
]]>The Wholesome Games Celebration has kicked off on Steam, offering steep discounts on many, many cosy games that you’d typically see featured in various Wholesome Directs - downtempo puzzlers, non-violent explore ‘em ups, games starring cute woodland critters, and so on. Scrolling through all the good stuff might take a while since nearly 250 games are discounted, so let’s run through some highlights here.
]]>Steam has snuck out its latest week-long sales event. This time, it’s a celebration of all things silent and potentially deadly worth making some noise about in the Steam Stealth Fest. Among the highlights are some pretty steep savings on Hitman, Assassin’s Creed, A Plague Tale and Sniper Elite, along with some indie stealth game gems to boot.
]]>The Steam Sim Fest is the latest genre-specific event, discounting dozens of games about emerging cities, dad hobbies, tactical warfare, and other stimulating simulations. Heavy hitters such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and the newest Bus Simulator are enjoying nice discounts, but as always, some hidden gems require a little bit of scrolling. The sales last until July 24th, so here are some good old recommendations from the event.
]]>Blizzard is going to offer its digital PC games outside of its Battle.net launcher for the first time, starting next month with Overwatch 2 - though you’ll still need to sign in through Battle.net to play.
]]>Valve’s policy toward AI-generated content in games recently made headlines as a Reddit post from June claimed that the company were tightening up their review policy in regards to AI-infused games.
The post includes a message from Valve saying that developers "own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create assets." Valve have now cleared up their thought process on the subject, saying they don’t want to discourage developers from experimenting with AI tech, though they need to make sure developers have “sufficient rights” before publishing anything on Steam.
]]>Steam's summer sale is live now and will run until July 13th. As always, there are discounts across all kinds of games, including 30% off Elden Ring, 70% off Need For Speed Unbound and 40% off Valheim. Of particular note: there's also up to 20% off the Steam Deck.
]]>The latest update for Steam is here, bringing with it a number of quality of life changes and a slightly updated look. Valve announced the desktop update back in April, where the new version has been in beta for some Steam users to try out. In Valve's post from yesterday announcing the update is available for all, it did note that the "most impactful changes in this update aren’t immediately visible," as a lot of the work put into the update was today with how it "[shares] code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck." According to Valve, these changes should mean that future features should be more quickly implemented and iterated upon.
]]>Harmony: The Fall Of Reverie, Don't Nod's latest effort to make your choices really properly matter, is out now, and you can get it along with the dev's other games for a bit cheaper as they celebrate their 15th birthday. The sale is offering discounts of up to 80% on Steam until June 15th (next week). It covers all the games developed or published by Don't Nod, which naturally includes the runaway teen-girl-squad hit Life Is Strange, if you are one of the eight people who haven't played it yet, I guess.
]]>For those in the UK, the latest “here’s what you could have won” bit of helpful EU regulation just dropped. Valve are now required to show Steam users in EU countries a game’s lowest price over the past 30 days, which means sellers can’t display deceptively high discounts by bumping the base price before a sale. Valve made the change in order to comply with the ominously named “Omnibus Directive”, which applies to all online stores.
Steam already enforces limits on manipulating prices around sales, but it’s nice that some people get to have a little extra peace of mind.
]]>Steam's latest genre-specific sale is entirely about sports games. From yesterday - this post was postponed due to frozen pitch, sorry - until May 22nd, you can find discounts on everything from skateboarding to golf, wrestling to fishing, and of course lots of fitba.
]]>Valve revealed a swathe of new features coming to Steam's desktop client beta last night, and there are lots of new features that caught my eye. They're overhauling things like the in-game overlay, creating a new toolbar to house achievements, friends chat and discussions, and creating a new hub that shows you everything that's happened in the game's community since you last played it. It also introduces a cool pin feature that lets you stick overlay windows on top of your game - handy if you're following a guide, say, and don't want to keep alt-tabbing out. But there's one thing I'm quite upset about, and that's the new Notes app. I love a good notebook game, you know? Fiddling out puzzles in Tunic, remembering patterns in The Witness... Notebook games are great. But I fear this new Notes app will kill that kind of note-taking dead. And that makes me sad.
]]>Steam will no longer support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems starting from January 1st, 2024, Valve have announced. To continue playing games or using apps through Steam, you’ll need to update to a more recent version of Windows. After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on older versions of the Windows OS. The reason? It’s Google Chrome.
]]>Dodgy reseller listings aside, the Steam Deck has spent its entire life thus far without even a temporary price drop. That ends today, as the Steam Spring Sale has launched with the first official Steam Deck savings - a 10% cut across the range - alongside the more expected dealsplosion of discounted games.
]]>Everyone loves a robot companion, from Half-Life’s Dog to the plethora of Star Wars droids that are so cute they generate millions in merchandising. That’s why I’m intrigued by Plasma, a spacey physics-driven engineering game that lets players build a variety of robot friendos, useful machines, and generally wild contraptions. Plasma comes from Patrick Corrieri and Marco Bancale, who have previously worked on the Poly Bridge series and the tense Kingdom games. Their new creative engineering sim is heading into early access on March 30th, and I can’t wait to see what people make.
]]>My backlog is practically overflowing at this point, hence my New Year's resolution to avoid buying a game until I’d actually play it. But, every now and then, an especially deep discount will catch my eye, my bad impulses wake up, and I spend a few quid on something I won’t touch for six months (seriously, Abzu has been floating on my hard drive for years.) My New Year's resolution won’t hold out for much longer, as Valve have announced their schedule for all of 2023’s Steam Fests and sales events.
]]>Roguelike dungeon crawler Backpack Hero has been in early access for under a year, and it’s now getting a full 1.0 launch on PC and consoles in May. Backpack Hero has been successful for its three-person dev team and stood apart from other roguelikes with its Tetris-inspired inventory management. You see, success in Backpack Hero is determined by how you organise your bag rather than what you’re actually carrying, as you shuffle items around a grid to create synergies and mod your playstyle.
]]>The Steam Mystery Fest is well underway, discounting countless games about detectives, murder mysteries, or generally strange occurrences. Lots of heavy hitters have big sales like Return Of The Obra Dinn and Pentiment, but as always, you’ll need to do quite a bit of scrolling to find the hidden gems. The sales last until February 27th, so you have a week to grab some cheap games, and if you’re struggling with recommendations, here are some good’uns.
]]>Vampiric survival game V Rising continues its early access with a free expansion coming in May. It's meaty, overhauling a few areas of the game including magic progression, spellcasting, and lair building in preparation for the endgame. But it’s also “giving you more of what you already love” with new weapons and spells, boss battles, areas, and factions. Quite a lot to sink your teeth into, then.
]]>Steam offered discounts on builders last month, and is is due to offer cheap mysteries from February 20th-27th. They've already announced the next genre-specific sale, though: Steam Puzzle Fest is coming in the last week of April.
]]>Steam's various discovery hubs are normally designed to steer you towards new games you might like to buy. The latest experiment from Steam Labs, however, is a DLC Discovery Hub. It offers up a tailored list of additional content you might be interested in for games you already own, and prioritises those you've played recently or played most.
]]>Everyone loves Subnautica, the beautiful, terrifying, no-combat underwater survival game. Have as many people also explored the chilly seas of similarly excellent standalone expansion Subnautica: Below Zero? No. So here's a chance to fix that: Below Zero is currently 58% off in Steam's Base Builder Fest.
]]>Steam's next genre-specific event kicks off on Monday, January 23rd, and this time it's entirely focused on base building and citybuilding games. For a week, there will be discounts on games like Dyson Sphere Program, Frostpunk and Planet Zoo, and hopefully some demos for unreleased games, too.
]]>GOG has decided to scrap their GOG Connect service, which allowed users to claim a limited selection of games they already owned on Steam for free. The service was quietly killed off at the beginning of this year and removed from GOG’s site, which didn’t go unnoticed by frequenters of the GOG subreddit. GOG confirmed the closure of Connect to RPS fan site PC Gamer, saying “for a long time nothing really happened there, so we've decided to shut it down”. Fair enough.
]]>After a year and a half, strategy RPG We Are The Caretakers leaves early access today. Caretakers will receive a new patch at launch, adding in the fourth Era of the campaign. This closes out the game’s story with five more missions, an end-game, and other final improvements. If you haven’t checked in with Caretakers since its launch in 2021, a lot has changed through its 10+ patches.
]]>Steam's Winter Sale is still ongoing, with thousands of sales on games big and small. You only have ~24 hours left to nab yourself some good savings, so get at it! I've put down a handful of my own recommendations below, but I'm sure you can find other gems if you scroll for long enough. And of course, other giants like Elden Ring and the LEGO games are also heavily discounted.
]]>Valve launched the Steam Deck Verified system to make it easy for folks to spot what games on their digital store would work with their handheld gaming PC. As we careen into the new year, there are now over 7000 games marked as "playable" or better on Steam Deck.
]]>RPS apparently never met a detective game it didn't like. There are six on our list of the best games of 2022, for example. If the glowing praise of the team here convinced you to try Chinatown Detective Agency or The Case Of The Golden Idol, then you might want to wait a little while longer before buying them. One of next year's genre-specific Steam sales will be the Steam Mystery Fest, running from February 20th-27th.
]]>Have you considered that the real pleasure of PC gaming lies in buying games, installing them, and then playing them for one hour or not at all? If so, then good news! The Steam winter sale has begun, offering discounts on thousands of games you can add to your backlog.
]]>Valve have announced that the Steam Winter Sale will begin next week on December 22nd. I can already see myself standing in front of my mirror, chanting "I do not need more games" before sitting back down at my desk and splurging on everything I missed from this year's RPS advent calendar.
Valve have given us a peek at what's going to be on sale, so click through to see what you should avoid buying until it starts.
]]>Remember the Steam controller? It was kind of like the Neanderthal to the Steam Deck’s Homo sapiens, existing for a brief few years before being discontinued back in 2019. Steam Controllers were an unusual evolutionary offshoot of the by-then fairly standardised controller layout, with funky clickable trackpads taking the place of thumbsticks. Well, Valve’s designers seem to be up for reviving the concept in some form. At least, that’s what they’ve told The Verge in an interview about the Steam Deck’s first nine months.
]]>Never ones to be outdone, Valve are partnering with The Game Awards to give away one of their Steam Deck handheld PCs every minute during the three-hour livestream event on December 8th/9th. They're the 512GB model too, so you might want to raise an intrigued eyebrow and nod slowly. If you’re wondering which standouts from 2022 are up for awards on the night itself then here’s a video of host Geoff Keighley saying game names for ten minutes, below.
]]>Somewhere in the region of 8,000 games have been removed from Steam since its inception, from the mass banning of “fake games”, to publishers removing their own titles due to licensing disputes, pending re-releases, personal disillusionment, server shutdowns and political scandals. Valve even took down one of its own games. Released in 2004 with Steam AppID 92, Codename: Gordon is a Flash-based 2D side-scroller set in the Half-Life universe, developed by Nuclearvision and published by Valve. It was removed due to a hard-coded link to the now-defunct developer’s domain, which Valve regarded as a security risk.
But removed isn’t always the same as gone, and exploring Steam’s deleted items is an adventure through modern gaming history. I spoke to some developers of delisted games to find out more.
]]>Next week is Black Friday, the yearly sales event which means everyone will be thrusting air fryers and SD cards towards you. That's fine with me - I need an SD card - but you may also enjoy Steam's unaffiliated Autumn Sale. Valve have announced it'll begin on Tuesday, November 22nd and run for a week until November 29th.
]]>It’s nearly the end of the year, a time when many a person's thoughts turn to the birth of Jesus Christ (along with whether or not they’re getting FIFA 23 on Christmas morning). Forget about other games for the moment though, because one developer’s bringing The Bible itself to Steam. The appropriately named Bible Games are releasing a fully voiced version of the good book on November 14th, complete with trivia quizzes to check your biblical knowledge. You can watch the surprisingly dramatic trailer below.
]]>Another day, another handy update for Valve’s Steam Deck handheld PC. This time, it’s a beta update that lets you peek inside your Deck without busting the device open. So if you were thinking of hanging your Steam Deck up like a piñata today and whacking it with a big stick to see what goodies are hiding in there, just grab the client beta update instead. You can opt in by heading to Settings, selecting System, and then the Steam Update Channel.
]]>Valve have updated their Steamworks documentation for developers with a commitment to refresh their suggestions for regional pricing more often. This change in frequency is an effort to reflect global and local economic conditions affecting regions. While the company reminds developers that they are free to set their own prices in different regions, Steam provides regional pricing suggestions based on the price of a game in US dollars. Those recommendations should be updated more regularly, Valve said.
]]>The Steam Deck might be able to play modern AAA games on the go, but you should really crack out some classics of yesteryear from time to time too. It’s fun to see that there’s now a way to play old Game Boy Advance cartridges on Valve’s handheld, and they actually make the games look pretty sweet to boot. No, this isn't Valve following up their Switch emulator gaffe. Wave hello to the GB Operator.
]]>Headcrab botherers Valve have registered a trademark for something called Neon Prime this week, an application filing has revealed. The application was made through the United States Patent And Trademark Office. Neon Prime’s trademark was listed as for “computer game software, electronic game software, video game software, computer game programs downloadable via the internet”. So, not VR or Steam Deck hardware then.
]]>There’s an updated Steam app for phones and tablets, everyone. That’s a sentence I thought I’d never type. Describing it as “completely revamped”, the Android and iOS apps are essentially new and add a way to sign into your account on PC using a QR code, remote downloads from your Library, and customisable tabs. If you really enjoy looking at videos of swiping around on phones then you can watch Valve’s below.
]]>Games. So many, many games. Each and every week the game pile grows higher, forming the walls of a virtually impenetrable digital structure known only as the ‘backlog’. As the games multiply, thickening the increasingly cell-like walls of our den of entertainment, we can only gaze on and hope it doesn’t one day become our tomb. On that light note, it’s nice to see that SteamDB now has a section showing what games are coming out on Steam every week.
]]>Owners of Valve’s handheld PC Steam Deck have been fiddling about with creating and sharing their own ten-second animations for the machine’s new custom boot video feature, implemented in a client update last week. Some pay homage to Valve and Steam, while others nod towards games in general, or even classic telly and film. I’ve had a rummage around to help give you some ideas, and found the batch below.
]]>One of the things you can do with a Steam Deck is use it for emulation. Someone at Valve is evidently aware of this, given the recent Steam Deck video - which we wrote about two days ago - contained a shot of a Steam library with a Nintendo Switch emulator in it.
Oops. Valve have since deleted and re-uploaded the video with the emulator removed.
]]>In case September didn't add enough new indie games to your burgeoning Steam wishlists, Valve are back today with another edition of their demo-packed Steam Next Fest, and we've been playing some of its many, many, many demos to help give you a few pointers on where to start. You can view the whole of October's Steam Next Fest right here if you'd rather just dive in headfirst, but below you'll find some hand-picked highlights we've been enjoying ahead of time - including a new Return Of The Obra Dinn-alike, a first-person skeleton shooter, an underwater citybuilders and a platformer where your gun is also an umbrella.
]]>I've no idea how many Steam Decks Valve have sold, but cor: it sure seems to be a success in terms of the diversity of games people are enjoying on it.
Yesterday, the official Steam Deck Twitter account shared a list of the most played games on the handheld PC gaming machine in September. The list includes Vampire Survivors, Elden Ring, Stardew Valley, Cyberpunk 2077, Hades and No Man's Sky.
]]>Steam is ditching its annual Lunar New Year sale next year, opting instead for a new spring sale. That means the digital storefront will now have sales for all four seasons, and Valve have also outlined the dates for the next three major sales events.
]]>Steam now has a fancy charts section that shows the top selling and most played games in real time. If you want a broader picture of what’s trending on Valve’s storefront then you can check out the new weekly rankings of top sellers, along with the top new releases each month. It’s a useful way of seeing what’s trending across the platform if you’re really into that kind of thing.
]]>Valve have been running a series of themed sales events throughout the year, and the latest is live as of yesterday. The Steam Bash Bash features discounts on "hack-and-slashers, spectacle fighters and more" and it's running until September 26th. There are also demos and glimpses of upcoming games.
]]>The Steam store has been updated to introduce revised hub pages for tags, genres, theme and category pages. The changes include clearer personal recommendations, easier access to subcategories, and further options for searching and filtering. The changes come after months of testing as one of Valve's Steam Labs experiments.
]]>Is it lazy to describe Turbo Golf Racing as ‘Rocket League if the cars were playing golf instead of football?' A bit, yes. But it’s also largely accurate. Up to eight players race across a track, ramming their boost-enabled car into their huge futuristic golf ball to send it flying forwards until (depending on your skill or luck) it flies/rolls/plops anticlimactically into the big hole at the end. It’s golf, sort of, but fast, demanding, and often unpredictable. You don’t even have to wear silly trousers while playing it, but that’s just my personal choice.
Of course, it’s not quite so simple as hitting your ball forward and relying on the videogame gods to deem your ball worthy of reaching the goal before everybody else’s. There are 30 courses of varying length and complexity, and none of them are a simple drag race to the end. There are ramps, twists, turns, and plenty of obstacles. While the very shortest courses are pretty frictionless (I’ve won a few in under 20 seconds), the longest ones are practically begging you to make agonising mistakes.
]]>Last week, Steam added support for Nintendo Online classic controllers. What it didn't have was support for the Nintendo Switch's default Joy-Con controllers. A beta update has now changed that.
]]>Valve are kicking off 2022’s Steam Summer Sale today with discounts on AAA and indie games, starting at 6pm BST/7pm CEST/10am PST. It’s being styled as the ‘Steam 3000’ sale even though that year is a long way off according to my calendar. For some reason, Valve have decided they're doing videos to hype this stuff now too. You can watch the trailer below to get some idea of what might be discounted very soon.
]]>Yesterday I wrote about eco-strategy game Terra Nil’s demo, which went gangbusters during last week’s Steam Next Fest and shot up into the top 50 most played games on Valve’s storefront. Well, turns out that might be at least partly down to a practice called badge-farming. That’s according to industry pundit Simon Carless’ latest GameDiscoverCo newsletter, anyway.
]]>One of the ways Steam wormed its way into every inch of PC gaming was by releasing useful tools that make developers' lives easier. Epic would like their Epic Games Store to also be wormy, and an early step is, hey, still about Steam. The Epic Online Services SDK 1.15, released this week, includes tools that let developers enable crossplay between players on Epic Games Store and players of the same game on Steam.
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