Tag: Steam

NM: Grand Theft Auto IV Has Disappeared From PC


Update: A Rockstar Games spokesperson responded to our request for a comment, providing the following statement;

Grand Theft Auto IV was originally created for the Games For Windows Live platform. With Microsoft no longer supporting Games For Windows Live, it is no longer possible to generate the additional keys needed to continue selling the current version of the game. We are looking at other options for distributing GTAIV for PC and will share more information as soon as we can.

Rockstar Games has pulled Grand Theft Auto IV from sale on Steam and the Rockstar Launcher for…reasons that are not entirely clear as nobody involved has made a statement. It is Friday afternoon after all. The game was delisted for sale mid-afternoon on Friday January 10 (today for those reading this as it comes out) although the two expansion collection is still available for sale as is Grand Theft Auto IV via the Playstation store and Xbox.

On Steam the page for Grand Theft Auto IV still exists but the ability to add it to your cart has been disabled. It is not accompanied by any notice from Valve that the publisher requested removal. The Rockstar website still lists Grand Theft Auto IV but any links to buy the game digitally on PC are broken and simply redirect to the front page.

MMO Fallout has reached out to Rockstar’s PR folks and will update if they haven’t gone home for the weekend.

Review: Avabel On Steam Is Lowest Of Low Effort


What can I say about Avabel Online?

Its interface is hideous.

The translation is as low effort as it gets.

The game doesn’t work half the time.

And it literally suggests starting out with auto-quest on before you’ve even taken your first step. Yes, Avabel makes no pretence on being fun to play, just throw that auto-play on and maybe toss developer Asobimo a few hundred bucks for the privilege of having a dull, uninspired ripoff of a mobile game play itself.

Now that Bluestacks is bridging the gap between low effort mobile games and low effort PC games, any fly by night developer can pay $100 to have their mobile title developed on the budget of a White Castle slider foisted onto the Steam Store where it will get buried under a sea of other low effort cash grabs with the only hopes of coverage in the form of ridicule from some loser living in his own basement.

Final Score: 0/10 – I’m sure at least one desperate fanboy will tell me that this game is better than anything that came out on PC.

Not Massive: Build Your Own MMO In MMORPG Tycoon 2


Ever looked your favorite MMORPG Roma Victor and thought “I could do better than this”? Well now you have the chance to put your money where your mouth is without going through the difficult steps of acquiring millions of dollars to feed a budget.

MMORPG Tycoon 2 is the incidental sequel to the title MMORPG Tycoon. Currently in Early Access on Steam, MMORPG Tycoon puts the player in the role of building their own Azeroth or Gielinor or Club Penguin, whatever your heart desires. Create zones, build towns, give your players what they want and watch that cash flow. You’ll even have to deal with cheaters, obnoxious players, and just those who can’t figure the game out for themselves, as you push toward that revenue goal. You can even get in on the trend and make your game free to play, introducing exorbitant cash shops with pay to win elements if you so desire.

One thing that MMORPG Tycoon 2 is not is an MMO. It is single player and your customers are all bots. Still, it looks like a fun way to prove to the world what a design guru you truly are.

Check it out.

Source: Steam

Mirage Online Classic Launches On Steam


Mirage Online Classic is out!

This week sees the Steam release of Mirage Online Classic, a spiritual sequel to Mirage Online and an MMO built using HTML. The title was put together by Christopher Kremer and Rich Conner, and is available as a free to play title at this very moment.

Check it out.

Early Access: Inferna Is A Quaint Little Grinder


Inferna is a quaint little murder box that is kinda fun to run around in for a bit and kill mobs. If it wasn’t free to play, I’d suggest staying away from it.

As part of MMO Fallout’s year end checkup on various early access games, I decided to check out Inferna which launched into early access on December 20 of this year. Inferna is what AAA developers would probably refer to as “minimum viable product,” in that the developers over at the properly named INFERNA LIMITED have created some base systems and tossed the player into a map with gratuitously sprinkled in mobs of varying size, shape, and level.

Otherwise there isn’t a whole lot going on in Inferna at the moment, which is to be expected from a game that literally just launched into early access a week ago. There are some basic equipment enhancement systems in effect, mobs occasionally drop gear that can be sold to other players or to NPC shops. There is the option to create a personal shop like you tend to see in Korean MMOs and plop it down in town to sell items while you are off and about obtaining more goods.

Honestly there’s not a whole lot to talk about with Inferna. On a positive note the developer has clearly been hard at work pushing out patches, and in my short experience the game seems to have a vibrant and active trading community. If you’re expecting a game that is feature complete, you’ve immediately made a mistake by downloading an early access title. If you want a free game to tinker around in for a bit, give it a download.

As for me, I’ll be making a note on my big paper calendar to check in on Inferna in a year.

Early Access Fraudsters: Hellion Is Cancelled, Yet Still For Sale


Hellion needs to be forcibly removed from Steam.

The tale of Hellion is one that should leave you with a fair amount of hesitance to purchase any future product from Zero Gravity (assuming the company doesn’t buckle and cease to exist within the next six months before putting out its next title). Hellion has lots of bugs, Zero Gravity has no intent on fixing those bugs. Rather than push the game through early access and release a finished product, Zero Gravity has decided to abandon the title and cease patching it, ripping off the early access tag and just pushing it out as-is.

Granted, Zero Gravity isn’t done making money off of the game, as they reduced the price to $14.99 and are still selling it. As if to add the fraudulent cherry on the ice cream sundae, Zero Gravity is still advertising Hellion as though the game is still in development. There are features listed on the store page as “work in progress” despite there no longer being any work or progress being put into the title. How’s that for fraud? The company’s own lead production artist and investor even publicly blamed the decision on individuals at Zero Gravity choosing to cut and run to use the funds for their own projects.

The plus side of all of this is that Hellion’s reviews are in the toilet, currently sitting at a 29% mostly negative rating with comments dedicated to warning potential buyers that the game is nowhere near finished and has been abandoned. Should Zero Gravity release a new game, it will no doubt be held to increased scrutiny and the tale of Hellion’s abandonment will surely be reinforced at every possible moment.

For all this and more, check out SidAlpha’s video on the topic.

Kritika Reboot: Stop Buying Gold Ya Mooks


The Kritika Reboot team has not exactly been quiet about their bot-banning sprees, but you might not be aware that the company is going after gold buyers as well. This week the team at ALLM Co. posted a reminder to users; three strikes and you’re out. The message has been reposted below for your enjoyment.

Kritika:REBOOT responds seriously to all of illegal trades including trade in cash. When such behavior is caught, disadvantages can be applied as follows.

– 1st time caught : Sends Warning mail.
– 2nd time caught : 3 days account suspension
– 3rd time caught : Permanent account suspension.

Illegal trades effects bad influence to the economy of the game, we are sorry for those of you who play in manner.

We ask for your cooperation to form better environment of the game.
Thank you.

Source: Kritika

Not Massive: Postal Goes Free On Steam, Gets Mass Botted For Trading Cards


(Update 12/21: That didn’t take long. It looks like Valve has killed trading card drops for Postal as of this morning)

Postal is free on Steam, and if you keep track of the top played Steam games you might be wondering how this little shooter from 1997 managed to amass more than four hundred thousand concurrent players on Steam. I mean, it’s good. It’s not that good.

Well the answer is fraud, but not on the part of developer Running With Scissors or Valve. Postal has trading cards; five normal and five foil, which makes the game an easy target for bots seeking to farm the cards and basically launder money on the black market. The cards were initially added back in 2014.

The good news for players is that if you’re looking to max out that Postal badge, doing so will assuredly be as cheap as it’s going to get. You’ll just have to swallow the possibility of your thirty cents going toward a criminal Russian mafia operation. The bad side is that Valve has a history of outright disabling card trading for free games that become the target of botting, so if you’re going to buy those badges do so now before the hammer of justice swings down. There are five badge levels until you max out, plus one foil badge level.

Check it out.

Source: Postal, Steam Charts

An MMO On Steam: Spelling Quest Online


Spelling Quest Online is certainly a game and is absolutely on Steam.

I’ll come right out and admit that I downloaded Spelling Quest Online because it is free to play and in early access, and also because it is tagged in the MMO category. Spelling Quest Online is multiplayer free-form scrabble, which is a fancy way of saying that nobody takes turns as much as you just throw down tiles and hope for the best. You can connect to random boards and just go to town for the ten minutes until the game gets boring and you want to stop and play something fun.

The boards have words that people can easily spell, like anal and bruv. There is a dictionary check when you want to make a word, but I’m not sure what dictionary the game cross-references that thinks bruv is a word because while the Cambridge dictionary recognizes it, the Oxford dictionary does not. There are daily quests that offer you gold which can be used to replace letters. I assume that most of the people playing this game are cheating. I cheated and used a Scrabble helper website because my gaming skills are only second in their inadequacy to my knowledge of words.

I will readily admit that I quit after ten minutes when completing words left me with a hand consisting almost entirely of Y’s, V’s, and X’s and literally no way to continue playing (I didn’t have any gold) on that map. I probably could have found a spot to put one or two of the Y’s but I didn’t feel like putting more effort than this game is worth. Which is nothing.

As for the developer Craig Schwartz, I will continue to love your character in the film Being John Malkovich, even if they didn’t give you anything to do in the sequel; Being John Malkovich 2: District Dafoe.

We All Missed It: Ankama Pulled DOFUS From Steam


If you’re one of those folks suddenly getting a wild hair up your bum to go play DOFUS again, you’re going to be in for a big surprise if you’re expecting to download it on Steam. It is no longer available on that platform. Ankama made the decision to pull Steam support back at the end of October, and none of us in the games media noticed it because it pretty much flew under the radar without anything in the way of an announcement.

For those coming back to DOFUS, you’re not going to be able to play through Steam. Instead, you’ll need to follow the instructions on the link below to tie your Steam account to an Ankama account, and then play through the official launcher. Good news, you haven’t lost your characters.

Source: DOFUS