Author: Admin

Steam Dev: Torrent My Game Instead Of Using G2A


Homefront®: The Revolution_20160522155530

Action Henk would rather you pirate their games than support shady resellers like G2A, one of the game’s two programmers posted on Reddit following last week’s controversial statements over the key reseller. Consistently the ire of developers, G2A came to attention once again last week after allegations surfaced that the service sold $450 thousand in stolen keys from developer Tiny Build.

This G2a thing goes beyond Hearthstone. I’m a game developer with a game on steam and please just torrent my game instead of supporting shady resellers, I’ll even give you the download link. I understand people aren’t always able or willing to pay full price for a game, but seeing people play my game is the most important thing to me. Just torrent it instead of putting money in the wrong hands.

G2A is a grey market key reseller that allows users to sell cd keys to games that they no longer want. Theoretically, the service exists as a digital Ebay of sorts, especially relevant since Ebay forbids the sale of virtual items. In practice, the service has become a haven for criminals using stolen credit cards to buy keys in massive quantities to sell cheap. The cards are eventually reversed, leaving the developer with nothing and the thief with all of the profits.

It has been difficult to divorce G2A from the gaming community since the company has played its hand by sponsoring many of the top game streamers, and paying quite well apparently.

Developers have attempted in the past to find a way to push customers away from G2A, with larger developers spending the resources to revoke fraudulent keys. For smaller developers like Tiny Build, such a process is prohibitively expensive.

(Source: Reddit)

Destiny Putting Older Consoles Into Maintenance Mode This Year


Cayde-6_1410173955

Gamers who haven’t made their way to the current generation of consoles will be disappointed to find out that Destiny’s next expansion, Rise of Iron, will not be available on their respective platforms. Set to launch in September, Rise of Iron will be exclusive to Playstation 4 and Xbox One. While The Taken King will still be available on older consoles, Bungie warns that future content will be limited on the 360 and PS3, including:

  • Future Game Updates and Content Releases
  • Some Destiny Events and Content
  • Purchasing Silver
  • Accessing new Eververse Item purchases across console generations
  • Some Destiny Companion features on the Mobile App and Bungie.net

Beginning in August, Bungie will be providing an account import tool to upgrade your characters to a newer system. According to the FAQ, upgrades must be within the same console family (PS3 to PS4, 360 to XOne), under the same ID, and not all content will transfer. In addition, older consoles will no longer receive major content updates.

The list of features being disabled on older consoles includes:

  • Trials of Osiris
  • Iron Banner
  • Live Events
  • Purchasing Silver
  • Cross-platform progress

(Source: Bungie, Guided Support)

platforms_infographic

Steam Sales: Counter Strike Is Not Giftable This Year


ss_34090867f1a02b6c17652ba9043e3f622ed985a9

The Steam Summer Sale is upon us, and that means one thing: people stockpiling on cheap copies of Counter Strike: Global Offensive in order to dole them out to burner accounts to use for hacking/griefing purposes once the sale is done. Why would someone spend a ton of money just to cheat in Counter Strike? Your guess is as good as ours.

Unfortunately, prospective cheaters will need to do this the hard way as Valve has disabled gifting for all copies of the game bought during the summer sale. Valve hasn’t explicitly stated this, but their official explanation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense:

CS:GO will not be giftable during the sale. Our goal with sales is to grow the community and historically, during sales, the new users that stick around are mainly the ones that purchase copies for themselves.

Given the recent controversies surrounding key resellers, it seems more likely that the changes are really to prevent a combination of bulk buyers and cheaters.

(Source: Reddit)

Video: 15 Minutes of Escape From Tarkov


The latest video from the hardcore MMOFPS Escape from Tarkov shows 15 unedited minutes of a soldier attempting to escape a guarded chemical factory. You can cut the tension with a knife in many moments, and the video places a heavy emphasis on scavenging.

Pay no mind to the overlapping watermarks.

Overwatch “Avoid This Player” Removed Due To Abuse


McCree_02

Blizzard has announced the removal of Overwatch’s “avoid this player” feature after, perhaps unsurprisingly, the function was abused to avoid playing against highly skilled players. Meant to allow players an opportunity to avoid toxic players, Jeff Kaplan explained on the forums that the function was abused to avoid professional-tier players.

One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match.

On the other hand, players can still make use of the ‘prefer this player’ feature. Widowmaker is the sniper class of Overwatch, allowing skilled shots to take out enemies from far away. Blizzard recently nerfed Widowmaker’s abilities in order to better balance out her abilities.

(Source: Blizzard)

RuneScape Founders Return For Quest


unnamed

Fifteen years after they created RuneScape, the original trio of brothers – Andrew, Paul, and Ian Gower – have returned to the world of Gielinor with a new quest as part of the game’s year-long anniversary celebrations. Dubbed, somewhat inevitably, ‘Gower Quest’, the new mission sees players uncover the mystery of the disappearing cabbages for three familiar looking cabbage mages. Packed with nods and winks to vintage RuneScape memes and jokes, Gower Quest is a fond love letter from the game’s creators.

A free-to-play quest that enables the broadest range of players to experience the adventure and celebrate the game’s past and future successes, Gower Quest will take players through cabbage fields and beyond as they experience a tale that will warm the very cockles of their hearts. Featuring new rewards, including a brand new god sword forged in the name of the cabbage god, Brassica Prime, Gower Quest is like no other RuneScape quest!

“Bringing back the three brothers to help design a celebratory quest was simply fantastic, and we’re already seeing players contact us saying how nostalgic and wonderful Gower Quest is for them,” said David Osborne, lead designer, RuneScape. “We’re grateful to Andrew, Paul, and Ian for returning to RuneScape for one more occasion and being guest designers on the quest. Fifteen years is a phenomenal milestone to reach, so few MMORPGs have ever reached it, and fewer still while experiencing a resurgence in player numbers!”

“Without the Gowers, we would not have RuneScape and there would be no Jagex, so we were thrilled when they agreed to return to Jagex as guest quest designers for this celebratory adventure,” said Mark Ogilvie, design director, RuneScape. “I’ve been working on RuneScape for 14 years now, and I have many, many fond memories of working at the near-dawn of Gielinor and its lore. This quest harks back and pays homage to some key events and characters from across the history of RuneScape, and is the perfect way to celebrate its milestone anniversary.”

Conan Exiles Delayed to January 2017


conanexiles_1

Conan Exiles is begin delayed, and for good reason. In an announcement posted on the Steam Early Access page today, Joel Bylos has revealed that additional funding has allowed the studio more flexibility in getting the game up to snuff before putting it on the store.

We have come to realize that we would like to spend a little more time creating our vision of Hyboria before we release it into Early Access. Having very recently secured additional funding for our studio which has made our financial situation much more flexible than even just a few weeks back, we want to take advantage of that and move Early Access to January 2017. With the extra time in development, we believe we can make a better game for you, the fans.

(Source: Steam)

Check Out Overwatch’s Golden Guns


McCree_02

In his previous talk, Jeff Kaplan announced that competitive mode would bring golden gun skins as a reward for players, with the most skilled among the player base getting their hands on the (presumably) beautiful weapons much sooner than the rest. According to screenshots revealed on the Korean public test server, those guns may be coming sooner than thought.

These guns have not been confirmed by Blizzard, so they may just be high quality fakes. The odds of that seem unlikely.

(Source: Forum)

Down The Line, Where Does H1Z1 Stand?


zombies

Earlier this year, Daybreak Game Company announced that they would be splitting off H1Z1 into two separate games: King of the Kill and Just Survive. Since February, the games have been operating as two separate products leading myself and some others to ask: How have they fared?

Looking at the statistics, it’s safe to say that King of the Kill is easily what players bought into H1Z1 in order to play. The game peaked out in its launch month with an overall peak of more than twenty thousand players. Since then, traffic has dropped off about 25% to fifteen thousand, a respectable rate of retention, and has even grown slightly over the course of June.

The survival portion of H1Z1, meanwhile, has proven more stable while less popular. You can see in the chart that, upon split, Just Survive immediately loses nearly twenty thousand players from its peak numbers and sticks at about eight thousand. Since the split, however, the game has lost a distinctly smaller portion of its base. Peak numbers in February dropped from 8.7 thousand down to 7.0 thousand, so it looks like a substantially larger portion who stuck around during the split have stayed since then.

So while King of the Kill is more popular, Just Survive seems more stable. Both titles are no doubt doing well for Daybreak.

(Source: Steam Charts #1, #2)