The Steam Summer Sale might be bumping, but right now you can get your hands on the isometric game Shadowrun Returns for the virtually free price of $0. Available via the Humble Store and delivered as a Steam key, the Shadowrun Returns Deluxe Edition still retails for $25 and includes the base game as well as the Anthology DLC and soundtrack.
But like any great deal, this one is time limited and will end mid-day Saturday. Our time wizards peg this promotion as ending at 1p.m. EST on June 23.
The Crew 2 open beta has officially begun for this weekend, and it looks like gamers aren’t quite happy about what developer Ivory Tower is offering.
If you head over to the Steam page, where The Crew 2 currently stands at 37% positive, a large portion of the negative reviews seem to focus on poor handling of the game’s various vehicle types. The Crew 2 lets you race using cars, boats, and planes, all of which control rather rigidly according to early Steam players. While many of the reviews acknowledged that the graphics and performance are a positive, although frame rates are apparently locked to 60, some reviews pointed to the game’s “cringey millennial dialogue” as a point of contention.
Thankfully with the open beta running until June 24, you can try it out for yourself with the only cost being bandwidth and time.
Gamers in the Netherlands woke up this week to find out that they are no longer able to trade or market items in Counter Strike: Global Offensive or Dota 2. Following a ruling by the Dutch government that Valve’s systems constituted a violation of its laws on gambling, threatening criminal prosecution unless the word of the law was met, which according to Valve wasn’t actually detailed in said threat.
So in response, until Valve can better understand how to work under Dutch law, they have gone ahead and disabled trading entirely for users in the Netherlands. This change affects Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2, however since the ruling affects any game where items can be won by chance and then traded outside of the game, more Steam titles may be caught up in the future. So far the Dutch government has only noted the two of Valve’s titles.
(Source: Gamer Revolution)
Playstation Now is Sony’s streaming games service and answer to the lack of backwards compatibility from the Playstation 4 to the Playstation 3, its subscription service allowing you to play titles from the PS4, PS3, and PS2 on your PS4 or PC. All this for $20 a month.
In another life, Playstation Now had the added benefit that it could be played on a ton of a devices, making up for the streaming nature by supporting the PS3, PS Vita, PS TV, Sony Bravia TVs, Sony Blu Ray Players, and Samsung TV models, among other devices that I am no doubt forgetting. Then Sony in one fell swoop cancelled support for every single device outside of the PC and PS4, making Playstation Now a service that costs twice as much as the Xbox Game Pass and delivers an arguably lower quality service at higher prices. While Playstation Now offers a wider library, over 500 titles compared to over 100 on Game Pass, the fact that you are streaming titles means the quality of your experience is directly tied to your router’s performance and Sony’s servers.
So the rumor mill is churning this week and decided to toss out the delicious news that Sony is working on the ability to download games, ala Playstation Plus, for its PS Now customers. The updated will apparently be coming sometime later this year, probably after September, and will start with PS4 games only.
If Sony goes down this route, it would be a marked improvement for Playstation Now as a service. People who want to keep streaming their games can do so, those who don’t mind waiting for the download so they don’t have to deal with fracturing visuals and lag can have their cake and download it too.
How do you feel about the Playstation Now service as it is, well, now? Would you consider subscribing if it wasn’t reliant on streaming?
The next episode in the Guild Wars 2 living world story hits June 26, with Arenanet releasing a trailer (above) showing off some of the new content that will be available.
As the next step in the ongoing story, “Long Live the Lich” players will continue their war against Palawa Joko, the undead lich who we impersonated over the course of the Path of Fire expansion in order to gain control of his army and defeat Balthazar. Joko has begun an all out invasion on Central Tyria and, in the previous episode, we learned that his goal was to find and unleash a plague on the world’s population.
In addition to new story content, Long Live the Lich will also introduce a new mount, new fractal, and more. Long Live the Lich will be free to Guild Wars 2 owners when it launches.
With the Steam summer sale upon us, it might be useful to look back at a not-so-new but not-so-well-known policy laid out by Valve in terms of how and when developers can put their games on sale. According to the terms of service as laid out by Valve, vendors are not allowed to discount their games within 30 days of a price increase, cannot change prices while a promotion is live, and cannot run another discount for two months following a launch discount.
These rules were likely put into place to prevent a repeat of previous years where some developers would increase their costs right before a big Steam sale and then discount it to make it look like the game is at a big markdown, such as a $20 game boosting its price to $50, then offering 50% off and selling at $25 so people think they’re getting a great deal when really they’re paying even more than the regular cost.
The full rules breakdown as follows:
This may come as a shock, but one aspect of games that gamers don’t take too kindly to these days is the idea of developers purposely stopping them from playing. Such is the case with Closers, epic anime RPG published by En Masse Entertainment. Turns out players weren’t too happy about the fatigue system preventing them from playing as much as they would like, and after hearing their feedback En Masse has decided to remove the system come July.
We heard you loud and clear. As of July 3, we’ll remove the fatigue system from the NA and EU versions of Closers. We’ve been watching, observing, and listening to all of your comments in regard to this system. It became obvious the system wasn’t good and took away the fun for a majority of players in our regions. Naddic is a very player focused developer and aligns with our En Masse mission to create great Player Experiences. So, we are very happy to announce the implementation of this change in the next update!
The update notes that existing energy potions will be converted into credits, however this has not been finalized. In addition, starter packs will be altered in what benefits they give as said potions will no longer have a use once the update goes into effect.
(Source: Steam)
I’ve been thinking long and hard about Valve’s new policy regarding offensive games and how this could negatively affect their user base, by which I mean I haven’t been giving it much thought at all. My attention, however, has turned to the idea that Steam will be flooded by horrifying, bullying, aggressive, abusive, games designed to be abusive and bullying, because the media told me to prepare for it and when have they ever published sensationalist material?
If you consider the history of offensive or controversial games, the list is actually pretty small once you filter out the titles that were deliberately cobbled together in a week by a guy using pre-built assets. A guy whose motivation is little more than a stupid joke for his friends or to intentionally bait the games press into writing outrage clickbait about his title, thus increasing its sales potential from zero to three because such coverage rarely results in sales if the game is genuinely awful.
Even then, what you are left with is a pile of games that were controversial for other reasons than its direct content, like Persona 5 bullying streamers or Baldur’s Gate pushing a low quality expansion. You just don’t see serious developers, or even semi-serious indie devs, trying to create games in the same vein as Active Shooter Simulator. As incredible as it may sound, there isn’t much money in that sort of controversy, and the negative blowback can be more damaging than any potential sales revenue. Just ask Konami what it thinks about Six Days in Fallujah.
Which leads us to the group that will for the most part be making these games: Tiny fly-by-night indie developers that nobody has ever heard of before, virtually indistinguishable from the troll accounts. If a game like Active Shooter is submitted again to Steam, would it even be given the consideration that it might not be a troll title? Or Gay World? I have my doubts.
I suppose the goal here is two-fold to discourage troll developers: You’re spending $100 to submit a game that has a high chance of being flagged and dumped as a troll game and you’re not getting that $100 back. If, by chance, the troll game gets through the initial screening, odds are it will either be drowned in the sea of Steam games and nobody will see it or the wrong person will see it, raise a ruckus, and we’re back at square one.
Will that discourage trolls? Hell no, and to further my point I point toward the Something Special for Someone Special, a wedding ring in Team Fortress 2 that broadcasts a global message to all servers upon activation. The ring costs $100 and that price hasn’t stopped thousands of people from purchasing it and some using it to broadcast messages like “Anne Frank has accepted Adolph Hitler’s apology ring,” because those messages aren’t checked. $100 for a joke is nothing for a large swath of people, even if the payoff is people see it for five seconds and then it’s gone.
The developer behind Active School Shooter denies that his game was meant to troll the public, a claim that ultimately falls on deaf ears considering his previous list of published titles including White Power: Pure Voltage and Tyde Pod Challenge. Most trolls will deny that they are in fact trolls, meaning Valve will need to use their critical thinking skills to determine if the next Active Shooter Simulator is a troll game.
On second thought, Valve only declared the game a troll title because of its association with Ata Berdiyev, so we might be doomed in that department.
Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
Valve is once again taking on fake games plaguing Steam, this time focusing on achievements. In a leaked post to the private developer forums, Valve announced that games will now be subject to confidence constraints that will limit how many achievements a game can have and how those achievements affect your account, until the game is validated as being an actual product that people are buying and playing.
The post notes that, until a game is validated as being genuine, it will be limited to 100 achievements and progress will not be visible, nor will it count toward global achievement numbers. Achievement games have become more prevalent on Steam due to Valve’s lax restriction and quality control on products, with an entire genre forming around games that offer thousands of achievements with no real underlying game, generally simply requiring the game to be launched and idling to generate achievements.
This move is very similar to one that Valve took against trading cards, where Valve placed limits on which games would be eligible for the marketable, tradeable cards. It is important to note that unlike trading cards, where an entire black market of mostly Russian bots formed to farm games developed purely to profit off of fraudulent card sales, that achievements are absolutely worthless in Steam other than for decoration and ego purposes.
(Source: Twitter)
Daybreak Game Company has released the latest update for Planetside 2, bringing forth continent-wide events and more. Continent events bring back the aerial anomaly event, tasking the three factions with controlling the most facilities of a certain type within a 30 minute timer, also making all aerial vehicles free to spawn during that time frame. Construction is seeing a change to make the attacking portion less frustrating while also reducing prices to build. Finally, new battle rifles available to all classes will be made available, one for each faction.
But wait, there’s more. In addition to the major changes noted above, Daybreak is also making some tweaks to the user interface and squads, as well as other fixes and balances. The entire list of changes can be found at the link below.
(Source: Daybreak)
MMO Fallout 