Tag: Steam

[NM] Despite Loot Box Controversy, Shadow of War Gets Good Reviews


Yesterday marked the launch of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and not everyone is happy with Monolith’s monetization scheme. Reviews are pretty positive, however a number of critical outlets have mentioned that late game progress is heavily tied to loot boxes and grind. But enough about the critics, how do players feel?

Over on Steam, Shadow of War is being received quite positively. Out of 1,000 reviews, 84% are positive. There are, at the moment of this publication, over 42 thousand playing the PC version with an early peak of 52,658.

One player figured out that you can turn off online components by not agreeing to that part of the terms of service. The video below has some baseless claims, including that WB is selling user data to third parties. You can see the part about shutting off microtransactions at the start.

The Exiled Experiments With Not Letting People Play, It Doesn’t Work


The Exiled is a game that MMO Fallout has covered to some extent over the past year, it’s a quirky little MMO that seems to suffer mostly from poor marketing and low population, the latter likely influenced by the former. Oh and the developer Fairytale Distillery has made some arguably boneheaded experimental moves over the past few months.

One of The Exiled’s draws is that the game runs on seasons, allowing the team to experiment with new modes and ideas, see what works and what doesn’t. Back in August, with the launch of season 6, the team decided to take the living world and make it not so living by reducing the availability of servers to just three hours per day. Odds are if you attempted to give the game a look during the last two months, you logged in during one of the 21 daily hours where the servers were off.

It was a well-meaning idea, limit the server availability so players would be logging in during the same hours, but in practice it just meant that nobody was playing. Literally. With the next season set to start on October 6, servers will once again be available 24 hours each day. Fairytale Distillery will also be refraining from making any big content changes until they have more of a concrete plan for the game’s future.

 We will go back to the drawing board with our plans to re-set the game. Expect smaller bug fixes from us in the coming seasons but no major changes. We are still supporting the game, keeping the servers running and answering your support tickets but as long as we have no convincing plan for the future of the game we will not make any further major changes to it.

(Source: Steam)

[NM] Shovelware Developer Quits Industry After Steam Ban


Shovelware developer Silicon Echo is apparently pulling out of game development after action by Valve led to more than 170 of their games getting yanked from Steam. Silicon Echo is the renowned game developer known for hit titles including Shapes, Shapes 2, Shapes 3, Shapes 4, Shapes 5, Shapes 6, Shapes 7, and Shapes 8. Their library of games consists primarily of minimal effort asset flips pushed onto the Steam storefront in an effort to turn a quick profit using quantity over quality.

All of that came to an end when Valve, without warning, yanked the entire Silicon Echo library, including titles hidden away via separate Steam accounts. In a statement to Polygon, Silicon Echo expressed that it is giving up game development as its reputation is in tatters and its primary source of income now gone.

“This situation has completely destroyed everything we have been working for in the past 3 years and we are forced to give up game development at this point for more that [sic] one reason,” Silicon Echo said. “Mainly because our reputation is destroyed beyond repair, but also for financial reasons. We wish we have been warned about this before, in that case we would focus on a different business plan of development.”

Valve has increased its commitment to removing shovelware titles from Steam this year after mounting criticism that the barrier of entry is too low, and after a large series of low quality asset flips and outright fake games have flooded the market. The situation of Steam being flooded with titles has gotten so bad that 2016 accounted for 40% of all games on the store.

Call of Duty Gets Slammed In Steam Ratings In Open Beta


The Call of Duty World War 2 beta is officially live on PC, and Steam players are not happy. Just hours into the beta being available, the game is already sinking in reviews with 30% (of more than five thousand reviews) as of this writing having a positive outlook on the title. While there are plenty of reviews that are simply trolling or missing context, the general contention among the crowd of haters relates to performance issues, matchmaking problems, and the game just generally being “another Call of Duty.”

A thread has popped up on the forums asking players for bug reports regarding performance issues. It appears that the developers are paying attention, and are not happy with the early review scores, noting:

NOTE: Please don’t review the game without actually giving it a try, it’s unfair to the developers when you rate a game beacuse of an issue that could very well be your own.

The latest Call of Duty title is going to have to work hard to bring PC users back after Infinite Warfare virtually bombed on the system in 2016. Steam charts show that Infinite Warfare peaked at 15,312 on launch, barely three thousand more than Battleborn. Its accompanying title, Modern Warfare Remastered, peaked at just under 1,400 on launch. Both titles carry a “mostly negative” rating with less than 40% positive reviews, and Modern Warfare Remastered has dropped below a full Battlefield server in terms of peak concurrent users. Raven Software, who worked on the PC version of Infinite Warfare, is also working on the PC version of WW2. Steam Spy suggests that less than half a million people own Infinite Warfare on Steam.

Battleborn Ceasing Development Support After Fall Update


As they say, all good things must come to an end, and they also say that development costs money and money doesn’t grow on trees. Gearbox Software has announced that this fall’s update to Battleborn will be the last. The fall update was announced at PAX and includes new skins, map and balance tweaks, as well as new boosts and taunts.

But never fear, those of you who actually bought this game and intend on continuing to play it. The servers for Battleborn will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

Never fear! Battleborn is here to stay. Nothing is changing with Battleborn, and the servers will be up and active for the foreseeable future. We announced the Fall Update for the game at PAX including some new skins, themed around some of your favorite Borderlands characters! That update will also include some updated title art (more full bar titles!) for the more significant challenges in the game, as well as some additional Finisher Boosts and Taunts. Also, there are minor balance changes in that patch.

Creative director Randy Varnell has moved on to new projects, likely including Borderlands 3, which 90% of the Gearbox staff is currently working on. Battleborn launched in May 2016 and got lost in the midst of Overwatch’s massive overtaking of first person shooters. On Saturday night, the game peaked at 106 players on PC.

(Source: Battleborn)

Malaysian Government Blocks Steam Store Over God Fighting Game


Malaysian gamers looking to spend their hard earned ringgits on fresh picked video games are being met with a disappointing notice that the service has been blocked by the government due to allegedly offensive content. Users attempting to access the store are being notified that access has been blocked by the government.

The game in question, Fight of Gods, is a side scrolling fighter that allows players to take control of various real deities including, but not limited to, Jesus and Buddha. The Malaysian government had apparently issued a 24 hour warning on Thursday to Valve to remove the game or face restrictions. The blockage of Steam appears to be part of that warning.

“This is a very sensitive issue, and it is totally not acceptable. We can never agree to such games. The government must take immediate action to ban the game’s sale here,”

Fight of Gods publisher, Taiwanese developer Digital Crafter, has issued a statement that they are contacting Valve to rectify the matter.

"We are disappointed that such freedom of choice is not given to everyone and in particular that the game has been forcibly removed from sale in Malaysia, although no direct communication has been received by us as to the reasons for this. Nevertheless we respect any rules and censorship imposed in any given territory."

Users in Malaysia can still access Steam, just not its store.

(Source: NDTV)

[PSA] You Can Now Activate Steam Keys on the Steam Website


As an update that will no doubt leave some of our viewers thinking “boy it looks like MMO Fallout got hacked and is being used to phish Steam accounts,” Valve has updated their systems so that players can now redeem keys through the Steam website. I’m not entirely sure how to get to this page from the main Steam website, but you can click on the completely legitimate link down below listed as the source and redeem any key you want. Totally legitimate.

There is no way to report on this and make it look good.

(Source: Steam)

PSA: Brink Is Now Free To Play on Steam


In a rather surprising move, Bethesda Softworks has made first person shooter Brink free to play on Steam. Anyone can play the title without dropping a dime, however there is about $4 worth of DLC content.

Bethesda launched Brink in 2011, developed by Splash Damage, creators of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The game was not well received, with critics pointing that the game felt incomplete and rushed to launch. On Steam, the game was virtually abandoned by the playerbase shortly after launch, and hasn’t broken 100 players on average since July 2012.

Speculation is running rampant that the free to play shift, especially after so many years of neglect, may be Bethesda or Splash Damage attempting to gauge interest in the IP. The game was not updated with any new monetization schemes, so players can sleep well knowing that this appears to be just a simple removal of the price tag.

Brink currently carries a 61% “mixed” approval rating on Steam.

(Source: Steam)

Secret World Legends Returns to Tokyo


Secret World Legends is going to Tokyo, again! Players familiar with the original The Secret World storyline will be well acquainted with Tokyo and its quirks, but the zone has just become available on reboot title Secret World Legends.

Tokyo marks the first of three major content additions that will add new areas, content, and story. True to its name, the Tokyo update brings players to (you guessed it) Tokyo to continue the fight against the filth and the evil that it brings.

“The Tokyo updates represent the final part of the storyline that was The Secret World,” says Executive Producer Scott Junior. “Secret World Legends has opened up the game to an entirely new audience who will experience the Tokyo storyline for the very first time. But there is much more to come, and we especially want our veteran players to know that as the storyline of The Secret World ends, the storyline of Secret World Legends is about to start. This winter, a brand new story will be revealed.  Players will get to go to new locations, meet new characters, and experience adventures they never have before.”

Secret World Legends is free to play on Steam.

[Community] PC Gaming May Not Be Dead, But Lawbreakers Is Starting Out Weak


Cliff Bleszinski has a long history with PC games, although you may not know it if you just started gaming within the last ten years. For a while, Bleszinski had a great relationship with the PC platform, until Unreal Tournament allegedly sold quite poorly on the system (according to Gamespy online stats from the time), leading up to 2008 where Bleszinski announced that Gears of War 2 would not be coming to PC, blaming piracy. In reality, Gears of War 2 didn’t come to PC because it was an Xbox platform exclusive.

“The person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know [BitTorrent] to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.”

Certain developers have been exaggerating the effects of piracy on PC for years, going further back than 2011 with Ubisoft claiming that 95% of PC consumers would pirate their product, a factor that runs in direct contradiction to their investor reports which consistently show great sales on PC. As a result of his snubbing of the community, Bleszinski’s name has been somewhat dragged through the mud over the years.

Now Bleszinski apologized for his comment at the 2015 Game Awards, alongside showcasing his upcoming (now released) game Lawbreakers. Well Lawbreakers has launched and while it is receiving very positive reviews, from critics and gamers (87% positive on Steam), the population on PC has been slow to adopt the title. Steam Charts shows a launch day peak of 3,000 which has been steadily dropping over the past week. By comparison, Battleborn launched to a day one peak of 12,000 and is presently sitting at a peak of 280 over the last 30 days, including free trial players.

Bleszinski, for his part, has already responded to news comparing Lawbreakers to Battleborn, noting that the game is “a marathon not a sprint,” and that he would “rather be the underhyped game that slowly ramps up into something that people adore than something that comes out with way too much hype that there’s a backlash for, which is why I think the Steam reviews are so positive.” You can check out the entire interview at Eurogamer.

As for Lawbreakers, we will need to wait and see if the game is able to attract more publicity, and thus a more active population, and what plans are in store should traffic continue to dwindle.