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Welcome to our newly designed
website created by our very own Yorick.
There's been a big reshuffle and lots of
new content added so check it all out! |
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Digital Price Drops Don’t Hurt – Valve
Posted @ 6:56 PM, November 18 2009, By: Hectic Glenn In Steam
Speaking today at the Montreal International Game Summit, Jason Holtman of Valve (Director of Business Development) talked about how Valve are able make dropping prices of large titles on Steam effective, increasing sales over a period of time and stop the title feeling like a bargain bin product. Fundamentally people thought that with pricing if you ever decreased the price of a product it hurt your future sales and it hurt your product as a whole. Don't ever take a top-end product and go to USD 5-10 because everybody's going to remember and they'll never buy it at the high price again, they'll think it's in the bargain bin.
But in a connected market prices can be moved up and down without penalty. You can have sales that are dramatically low and bring the price back up and people don't care. They don't care at all. You can do them instantaneously and you can experiment with them Such practice was evident during Halloween when Valve released new content and dropped TF2 to $2.50 several times. When we took the game up back to its full price after we gave away all that free content and gave away lots of copies – tens of thousands of copies – we actually increased the user base and more people came back the following weekend and bought it at full price than we were selling the week beforeJason also mentioned when Left 4 Dead was sold at 50% last Christmas and Valve moved more units of Left 4 Dead on that weekend than at launch. Read the full article here.
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Gearbox’s Randy Rant Part 2
Posted @ 4:39 PM, November 6 2009, By: Hectic Glenn In Steam
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford has hit out again at Valve and Steam. This time he has criticised Valve's approach to PS3 development and Steam (again). A selection of his comments include: I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there's a guy who brought the Sony platform and he's a Sony guy, so he decides he's going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there's a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded; It's the same kind of thing.
Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform. It’s like, I don’t care about retail, about Marketplace, or PSN, I’m going to have Steam. It’s cool, it’s good, and they’re doing a good job but at the same time they’re reliant on the rest of the world.
They had to do that [Left 4 Dead] deal with EA. When I see the L4D ad on the television I don’t see a Valve logo, I see an EA logo, and when I bought it, I bought it at a store. News source. Meanwhile Borderlands (a Gearbox title) ranks as the top seller this week on the awful digital distribution platform that is Steam. Odd way to thank Valve, Randy.
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Steamworks, Modern Warfare 2 and Other Digital Distributors
Posted @ 7:35 AM, November 6 2009, By: Evo In Steam
Some interesting news has emerged over on Kotaku as it emerges that digital distributors like Direct2Drive, Impulse and Gamersgate won't be selling Modern Warfare 2 because it uses Steamworks. Direct2Drive went so far as to tell Kotaku "We don't believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse" and that other titles using Steamworks (Dawn of War II and Empire: Total War) would be removed from sale until Valve seperates the retail side of Steam from features like Steamworks. You can get all the details here. What do you think, should Valve make a clearer seperation between the retail side of Steam and Steamworks?
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The Steam Roundup
Posted @ 3:29 AM, October 14 2009, By: DigiQ8 In Steam, Steam Games
A lot of activity has been going on Steam this week, so here's the roundup.
THQ Sales Week is On now. Each day this week will feature a big discount on a different game from THQ, it kicked off yesterday with 50% off both Titan Quest games but I'm sorry to tell you that you missed this deal. But today's deal is even better, 50% off all Company of Heroes games. So what kind of deal we will get tomorrow? We shall wait and see.
Borderlands Four Pack Available for Pre-purchase. Just like Left 4 Dead 2 Four Pack, Borderlands got it's own Four Pack now for $134.97 USD. You can send the extra copies to 4 of your friends and be ready to jump in co-op mode when the game releases. Many HL2netters are getting ready to invade the wastelands, join them here.
What else? Oh there are new games now available on Steam, check the list below:
That's all. Digi out.
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Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford on Valve and Steam
Posted @ 3:12 PM, October 7 2009, By: Evo In Steam
Gearbox's Randy Pitchford has talked at length with Maximum PC about Borderlands, piracy and Steam. His comments about Steam, well they make for very interesting reading. Here is what he has to say about it: MPC: The download services, like Steam, are helping make it easier to buy games though, right?
RP: I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve.
MPC: Because they’re competitors?
RP: Right.
MPC: You guys have worked with them a lot!
RP: I know. And I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.
MPC: So you think Valve should spin off Steam?
RP: They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.
I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine. You can read the whole interview here.
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Defense of the Ancients Developer Joins Valve
Posted @ 1:15 PM, October 5 2009, By: DigiQ8 In Steam
The developer behind popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients: Allstars has announced today that he joined Valve and is currently leading a team to do some very exciting stuff that DotA fans will love.
I finally have all the resources needed to do some very exciting stuff that you guys will love. I look forward to revealing more specific details when the time is right. As I've said many times in the past and especially after today's developments, I am very excited about DotA's future!
For more info about DotA, click here.
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Steam Client Update: Improved Security Features
Posted @ 6:53 PM, August 27 2009, By: Hectic Glenn In Steam
This patch should be applied automatically, however if it doesn't go to file in Steam, and click 'Check for Steam Client Updates'. Changes include: - Added contact email account verification by request and on new account creation
- Improved account security with verified contact email to prevent phishing
- Added mod support for Killing Floor
- Fixed memory leak
- Added 'officers-only chat' mode to group chats
Hopefully this should reduce cases of phishing significantly, however you should always be cautious and sensible with your account details. Steam news.
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HL2.net Interview with Insurgency
Posted @ 8:31 PM, August 23 2009, By: BlueWolf72 In Mods, Steam
Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat (now available on Steam) has received the Player's Choice 2007 Mod of the Year award from ModDB, as well as the "Best Source Mod of 2007" Gold Award from Steamfriends. With all the success they have had the team is hard at work on Beta 2 and Beta 3. Spielmann, leader of the mod needed a break from all the work to spend some time promoting the popular mod. We even got a quick interview along with some exclusive screen shots for you to take a look at. Beta 2 expected in August has some awesome improvements including: bug fixes, visual updates, map updates, audio updates & new features We at Insurgency Team believe that the community has every reason to be excited about this update. This is a major milestone in the development of the mod that will address an extensive list of long-overdue bugs and that takes into account valuable suggestions from our community. This is not a small patch or a minor content upgrade like the ones we have released through Steam in the past. We really wanted to make sure Insurgency 2.x will be updated to a point where it can be fully enjoyed by everybody without the need of much intervention from our side so that we can concentrate all efforts in the development of the next major version. Because of the outstanding expansion of INS as a competitive multiplayer game in the past year, we were able to gather outstanding feedback that has helped us add extra functionality and improve its gameplay, making it a better game in every respect.
The Insurgency team have already started work on porting their mod over to the Orange Box engine with countless new features. You can read about this development in our interview and see the new media below.
    For the time being, see the end of our interview article for a full changelist of the upcoming August Upgrade for the current verison of Insurgency on Steam. Below are a few videos showcasing some of the new features & updates:
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Aliens vs Predator to use Steam Cloud
Posted @ 7:04 AM, August 20 2009, By: Evo In Steam
VG24/7 have been at GamesCom in Germany where it has been revealed that Sega's upcoming shooter, Aliens vs Predator will make use of both Steamworks and Steam Cloud. Sega's Rob Bartholemew said: “If you’re playing on PC, we’re also leveraging Valve Steamworks to provide anti-cheat matchmaking Achievements, and we’re using Steam Cloud as well, so your saved games and settings can carry over onto any PC you happen to be using” A few other details about the game on VG24/7
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Chet Faliszek on Valve and Left 4 Dead
Posted @ 3:21 PM, August 19 2009, By: Evo In HL2: Episode 2, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, Steam, Team Fortress 2
Valve's Chet Faliszek has opened up about Valve and Left 4 Dead and more to Jim Rossignol in Jim's Ragdoll Metaphysics column on Offworld. Before you start asking, no Chet doesn't have any Episode 3 news. However he does have some other interesting things to say: The Orange Box was weird. It reminded me of 8-bit era game packs. Three Games In One! That seems really unusual in the contemporary market. Did it seem unusual now? Did it seem totally logical to create a three-game pack like that? It still seems weird, now that I think about it.
Faliszek: Well, at the start Portal wasn't mature enough for us to be sure that we should do it like that, and Team Fortress 2 has had plenty of false starts. It kind of formed as we developed the games. There was no "this is how we do it" from the get-go, instead we're a company that can experiment and yeah, it's a throw-back to earlier eras, those ways of doing things. We experiment, and it pays off. You can find this in-depth interview here.
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Steam Client Update Released
Posted @ 5:49 AM, August 12 2009, By: DigiQ8 In Steam
A new Steam client update has been released yesterday, check the change list below:
- Made connections to misbehaving content servers timeout and retry a new server correctly
- Fixed the client sometimes forgetting a game exists after a content update on Steam
- Fixed several rare crashes and memory corruption bugs
- Workaround for a Firefox 3.5 bug where they activate random windows after minimizing which would confuse the state of some Steam windows
- Fixed internet tab in the in-Steam ServerBrowser not updating sorting as more servers are refreshed
- Fixed the first time launch "Installing ..." dialog which is shown while installing things like DirectX for a game taking too much CPU and making the install take a long time
More after the break. [Read More...]
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Planned Downtime for Steam Tomorrow
Posted @ 1:18 AM, August 5 2009, By: DigiQ8 In Steam
Valve announced that Steam will go under software maintenance Tomorrow, August 6th. The downtime will begin at 6:00PM Pacific time and expected to last 3 hours at most, putting the end of the window at 9:00PM Pacific time.
Affected services will include the Steam Community, in-game matchmaking, downloading games and making purchases from the Steam store. Games that do not rely on Steam matchmaking services should remain playable.
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Lombardi Interview: Beating Piracy by Making Great Games
Posted @ 12:09 PM, August 1 2009, By: Hectic Glenn In Steam, Steam Games
In a recent interview with Destructoid, Doug Lombardi spoke about the problems of piracy and how Valve have tried to improve their game quality and service via Steam to limit piracy. Having said all that, though, I think that it's probably true to say that gamers tend to have affinity for the games that they like, so if you're doing your job and making a good game, and providing a high level of service for that game at the time of release and post-release, I'm guessing you're probably less of a victim of piracy and trade, because people want to have the full copy, the legal copy, and have all the updates. Doug also talks about how well GameStop do from selling used copies of games as players feel they exhaust the content available and move on, whereas Valve are able to establish a continued fresh experience. Read the full interview here.
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You Steam The Future?
Posted @ 5:37 AM, July 20 2009, By: BlueWolf72 In Mods, Steam, Steam Games, Team Fortress 2
In a recent interview ABC TV’s Good Game, Valve boss Gabe Newell says Valve wants to let the Steam community fund future game development.
Valve shocked the world with Steam and Gabe is considering a way for you to pay upfront as a community for the game you would play. Imagine paying $30.00 dollars for for another Half-Life, or maybe Opposing Force 2 would you do it?
“One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community. So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget - it needs to be huge, it has to be $10m - $30m, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There’s a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative.
What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I’ll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I’ll also get a copy of that game.’
So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer… Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like.”
Inside Valve Software Interview
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