Tag: Steam

Valve Combats Workshop Scams With New Update


When it comes to updating the quality of life of its store, Valve is like a particularly slow iceberg. That said, they do tend to get to their destination. Eventually.

If you pay attention to the drama of the Steam community, you’re probably well aware of an issue plaguing specifically Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. The workshop for both games, and others, has been the target of an onslaught of scams. The scams generally come in the form of ads for free skins, free items, rare skins, giveaways, promotional content, etc. The actual guides lead to phishing websites, infect the user’s computer with malware, keyloggers, etc, and ultimately all you’re left with is a VAC-banned Steam account and an empty inventory. Generally these guides were posted by accounts stolen from other similar scams.

With this week’s update, Steam will now send an email to the account owner when a new item is posted for the first time, asking them to review and confirm the item that was posted. The goal is twofold, to plug the endless stream of scam guides without creating unnecessary hassle for frequent workshop creators, and to inform a user that their account has been compromised without their knowledge. The effectiveness of the new system will have to be seen.

Source: Steam

[NM] Deep Silver Disables Stolen Steam Keys


Metro: Exodus publisher Deep Silver released a statement earlier this week that they will be disabling Steam keys that were flagged as stolen and resold by an unauthorized reseller. The keys were allegedly taken from the factory where the physical keys were printed.

These keys have been obtained illegally from the factory where physical key printing had taken place prior to the announcement of exclusivity with Epic Games, due to the criminal nature of these keys, all unlicensed keys have been deactivated and activation / download of Metro Exodus without the executable file is no longer possible. In addition, the software will be removed from the Steam library of any players using an unauthorised code. The keys being sold on this platform are stolen goods, and are therefore illegal.

The announcement notes that the only authorized key sellers were Humble Store and Razer. Those affected are recommended to contact the seller for a refund, or possibly the cardholder to reverse the transaction.

Source: Steam

Survived By Is Being Survived By Everything Else, Sunsetting In April


Early Access bullet-hell roguelite Survived By has been officially declared deceased. Human Head Studios announced the impending closure today with supporters receiving full refunds. The title released on December 5, 2018, and unfortunately just hasn’t gone as well as Human Head had planned. Steam Charts shows that Survived By launched to a peak of 2,500 players in December which quickly plummeted to 369 in January and slightly over 100 in the last month. As of this publishing there were 13 people online.

The announcement has been posted below for brevity.

After much deliberation and sadness, beginning today, we will be ceasing development of Survived By. We greatly appreciate the time you’ve spent playing Survived By since our launch in Closed Beta and all of the feedback you’ve provided.

This decision hasn’t come easily. We still believe in the core idea of Survived By, but after careful consideration of the game’s progress since its inception, we feel we won’t be able to reach the vision we originally conceived.

We plan to keep the Survived By servers up until April 19th, 2019 and disabling all in-game real money purchases later today. To anyone who has supported Survived By’s development, we’ll be giving full automatic refunds to everyone who has ever purchased items or packs in the coming weeks.

Thank you all, Ancestors.

–The Survived By team

Source: Steam

Valve Promises To Nuke Review Bombs


It’s safe to say that (outside of the revenue share) one of the best promises that Epic Games has made to potential games is the option to avoid a phenomenon that is becoming more and more prevalent on Steam and the internet as a whole: Review bombs. A review bomb, for those living in bomb-proof shelters, involves large numbers of people leaving negative reviews for a game. In the last few years, this has ranged from insertion of DRM, something stupid said by a community manager, the developer entering a publishing deal, an anti-China joke, bad updates, etc.

Valve, in their consistent refusal to deal with community issues, has remained silent on the problem of review bombs. They have instituted what amounted to a bandage in the form of a graphical chart where customers can see if the negative reviews are consolidated to a very short time span.

In a blog post released this morning, Valve has announced that the company will revisit user reviews starting with off-topic review bombs. According to the post, once Valve identifies a review bomb, it will mark the time period and remove those scores from the review score calculation. The reviews will not be deleted. If your review is caught in that time frame, unfortunately you are out of luck as well as the system does not go into each individual review to curate them.

“Once our team has identified that the anomalous activity is an off-topic review bomb, we’ll mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer. The reviews within that time period will then be removed from the Review Score calculation. As before, the reviews themselves are left untouched – if you want to dig into them to see if they’re relevant to you, you’ll still be able to do so. To help you do that, we’ve made it clear when you’re looking at a store page where we’ve removed some reviews by default, and we’ve further improved the UI around anomalous review periods.”

Source: Steam

[NM] PSA: Minion Masters Voidborne Onslaught DLC Free


Minion Masters is a game you may not have heard of; it bills itself as a 1v1 or 2v2 hybrid of a deckbuilder, MOBA, and tower defense. It currently stands with a 95% “Overwhelmingly Positive” review score on Steam, and you can play it for free.

And if you are planning on playing Minion Masters in the future, I recommend checking out and activating the Voidborne Onslaught DLC which is currently free. The DLC normally runs $14.99, but if you activate it prior to March 15, you’ll get it for the low, low price of zero [insert your currency].

“Voidborne Onslaught is the Faction Box for starting your Voidborne Army – or adding some reinforcements to your existing Voidborne collection. This is a great +300% value bundle of Voidborne Minions, including the massive Legendary Colossus as well as 2 exclusive Voidborne cosmetics.”

Check out the game’s Steam page for more details. Voidborne Onslaught contains a number of resources for your army as well as exclusive cosmetics.

PSA: Conan Exiles Free Weekend Starts Now


Just a reminder to you multiplayer survival fans: Conan Exiles is hosting a free weekend starting now. You can pick the game up on Steam and play it until Sunday March 11.

The free weekend comes in alongside a host of balance tweaks, performance optimizations, and a new VOIP voice chat system. In addition, new purges, a new world boss, and other pieces of content have been added into the game. If you enjoy Conan Exiles enough to buy it, the game is also 50% off.

Source: Steam

Daybreak Alters Planetside Arena Launch Plans, Hitting Playstation 4


Daybreak’s upcoming spinoff Planetside Arena is changing course. Somewhat.

In an announcement posted on the official website this week, Daybreak thanked its closed beta testers for their invaluable feedback, and announced that after much consideration the PC-only release will be postponed. The good news is that this delay is to make way for the Playstation 4 version which will launch alongside the PC version this summer. Unfortunately this does mean that the founders beta will be cancelled and all buyers of Planetside Arena on Steam are being refunded their purchases.

The beta program will be extended ahead of launch later this year.

Source: Planetside Arena

Deep Silver Latest To Snub Valve For the Epic Store


Another day, another publisher picked up by the lure of more money. Deep Silver is the latest publisher to become ensnared in the growing Epic Games Store, with Steam players being notified that Metro Exodus, which has been up for pre-order on Steam, will no longer be on sale as of today. Metro does not release until February 15, and Deep Silver has assured Valve that those who pre-ordered will still be able to access the game and future updates.

Notice: Later today, sales of Metro Exodus will be discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.

The initial reaction by the Metro community has not been positive, with the announcement being very quickly deleted following a wave of negative feedback. Negative reactions have already begun flooding the Steam forums with players assuring developer 4A Games and publisher Deep Silver that the store shift has convinced them to not purchase the game period. We will most likely know in a few months time whether the exclusivity deal was as lucrative as 4A Games hopes.

Source: Steam

Guardians of Ember Returns Under Gameforge


Guardians of Ember is a title so popular, I’d be willing to bet that every person reading this article hasn’t quite gotten over its untimely removal from Steam following publisher Insel Games being caught attempting to manipulate review scores. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the population of Guardians of Ember hasn’t been doing so well after its removal from Steam, or that Insel Games is no longer in charge of publishing it. Like a phoenix, Guardians of Ember hopes to rise from the ashes and presumably save Harry Potter’s life at the end of Chamber of Secrets.

What does this mean? First, Guardians of Ember is back in closed beta, and that the game will become free to play as opposed to its plan of being buy to play under the previous regime.

Those of you who bought Guardians of Ember under Insel Games will immediately have access to it under Gameforge. Whether Valve will allow the game back on Steam following this publisher transfer is yet to be seen.

Source: Steam

Reminder: Steam Will No Longer Function On Windows XP/Vista Tomorrow


Does anyone still use Windows XP or Vista to play Steam? Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. According to a November 2018 Steam software/hardware survey, approximately .12% of Steam users are still on Windows XP while Windows Vista is, to put it bluntly, presently unlisted. Presumably Vista users are lumped into the .09% currently running “other” versions of the Windows operating system.

At least, Windows XP users will making up .12% of the population until tomorrow, as January 1 not only marks the beginning of a new year but the official end of life support for Steam on both systems. Valve announced the end of support back in June of this year, and as of tomorrow the client will no longer function for owners of either operating system.

As far as the internet goes, Valve is one of the few remaining companies to have continued support for Windows XP through 2018 along with League of Legends. Blizzard ended support for DirectX9 and 32-bit operating systems in 2017, as did Neverwinter, while Heroes & Generals left the OS behind in 2015.