Tag: Steam

Tencent Prepares To Take On Steam


Tencent appears to be aiming at PC juggernaut Valve by globalizing its own Steam-esque platform and rebranding as WeGame. Already massive in comparison to Steam, 200 million users in China compared to Steam’s 125 million worldwide, Tencent’s website indicates that the new WeGame platform will support global players on one client, expanding westward and introducing millions more to its ever expanding control of the market. The news comes from a splash page on Tencent’s website, translated and discussed by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad.

For those vaguely familiar with Tencent’s name, the company owns League of Legends developer Riot Games and Clash of Clans developer Supercell. Its stock is currently worth around $30 USD, putting its value around the level of Sony ($31.79) and Nintendo ($30.41). Last month Tencent released its December quarter earnings, boasting 43.9 billion Yuan, $6.3 billion USD. If anyone has the finances to get a foot in the west and put the fear of God in Valve, it is probably Tencent.

(Source: Twitter)

Steam Cleanlight: Valve Terminates More Developers Over Review Manipulation


Valve has claimed three more souls as Steam parts ways with developers over review manipulation. The games in question include Techwars Online 2, Concerning Evergrow, and Trigger Happy Shooting. As posted by a Valve Steamworks moderator, the developers were using fake reviews to make their games appear to be more popular and well received than they actually were, leading to their ability to sell on the Steam platform to be revoked.

None of the games will appear on Steam and their developers will be unable to publish other games going forward.

We (Valve) have identified unacceptable behavior involving multiple Steam accounts controlled by the developer of this game. The developer appears to have used multiple Steam accounts to post positive reviews for their own game. This is a clear violation of our review policy and something we take very seriously.

For these reasons, we are ending our business relationship with Mikhail Pasik and removing this game from sale. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.

(Source: Reddit)

PSA: Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is Free On Steam


Thought about picking up Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and for some reason just never got around to it? Well today is your lucky day, because Torn Banner Studios has made the game free for the next day or so. This isn’t some free weekend trial sort of deal, either, once you activate the game you get to keep it forever. Head on over to the Steam page before the deal ends and add the game to your account.

Head on over to the link below to activate the game on your account.

(Source: Steam)

TERA Sees Huge Number Spikes Thanks To Steam


As surprising as it may sound, releasing on Steam can do wonders for a game’s community, as European publisher Gameforge and developer Bluehole Studios found out following the successful rollout of TERA on the digital distribution service. Since its launch, TERA has remained in the top 30 list of free to play games. According to Steam Charts, TERA enjoys on average more than three thousand concurrent players on Steam alone.

Olaf Bernhard, CMO of Gameforge, says: “Our strategy of bringing not only new releases to Steam but also re-releasing our most successful games, proves very successful: With every game we manage to bring new fans in and reactive former players.”

Support for TERA is still going with a new class set to release in April, the Valkyrie, which players will be able to reserve their names for shortly.

(Source: TERA press release)

Best Of Greenlight: Streets of Rogue


Best of Greenlight is a space where I’d like to talk about games that are deserving of your attention, rather than focus entirely on shady independent developers and their shady asset flips and shady copyright takedown notices. The best part about the current spotlight game is that you can play it right now: It is currently in the middle of a free weekend.

Streets of Rogue looks a lot like The Escapists, is developed by Matt Dabrowski, and is currently in early access on Steam. I know what you’re thinking, ‘another retro-inspired hardcore rogue-lite?’ I’m not deaf to your complaints, in fact I’m willing to admit that if it weren’t for the free weekend that I probably wouldn’t have given this a shot myself. What this package contains is a rather charming game, with tight controls, a variety of systems, and more. In short, it actually makes an effort to set itself apart.

The core of all dungeon crawling rogue-lites is pretty much the same: You go through a dungeon, you kill the things, you get loot, and you level up. Ultimately your character dies and you start it all over again, albeit with some sort of overarching progression system that gives you a little more to go on with each passing session. Streets of Rogue is more than just that, rather than populating the level with a host of angry creatures and letting you have at it, the game actually encourages some level of diplomacy, provided you’re willing to go along with it. If you’d rather just go through each level and massacre the whole map, more power to you.

First thing you’ll do before being thrown into the fray is choose your class for that session, each one with their own strengths, weaknesses, and starting items. The soldier for instance starts with a machine gun and regenerates health when it is under 20. The gorilla, meanwhile, has a very powerful attack but his stupid gorilla brain can’t talk English, and therefore can’t interact with characters, his stupid gorilla hands can’t use guns, scientists hate him and will attack on sight, and bartenders don’t want him in their bar (have you ever seen a gorilla pay his bar tab? Point made). A number of factions populate the world, from cops to the ongoing feud between the blahd and the crepe gangs, scientists, and all kinds of strange bedfellows.

But what makes the game pretty unique is that you’re not just going through a dungeon while fighting off a range of NPCs, rather each map is a procedurally generated zone consisting of a random assortment of characters, an assortment of tasks, and you are given pretty free reign to take on those tasks as you see fit. For example, you have to terminate a character who is hiding behind a locked door. You can knock on the door and see if they’ll come answer it, beat the door down with your fists (provided you’re strong enough), blow it open with a weapon, go outside and shatter the window so the NPC comes to investigate, use a lockpick on the door, use a charge on the door, or go to the outside ventilation system (if the building has one) and inject something into it to either kill or force out the inhabitants.

To give another angle to how the AI reacts to events, in another mission I was tasked with killing a scientist in his home, which had a big mean looking bouncer standing right outside the door. I blew a charge on the door bringing the bouncer down to very low health, which was enough for him to decide the job wasn’t worth it and quit right there on the spot. In another instance, I had to terminate a character being held prisoner in the local jail. After taking out the guard and using the computer to unlock the cell doors, I found my target in a fight with another prisoner. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who wanted this guy dead.

I find the fighting to be extremely satisfying in Streets of Rogue, every punch and whack met with a sickening crunch as your target gets knocked back, even more so when you manage to punch them so hard that they crash through a wall. With the AI system in place, it’s very easy in certain areas for small fights to break out into riots, with buildings exploding and people beating each other to death as the police show up and start blasting indiscriminately, resulting in some bystanders getting shot and either joining in or freaking out and running off. Companies love using the buzzword “the game is different every time you play!” and I think this may be one of the few times that that promise actually comes true.

Your currency for meta progression is chicken nuggets, which you’ll receive for completing missions which are required in order to progress to further levels. Chicken nuggets can be used to unlock traits, rewards, and more.

Since Streets of Rogue still has a day and change left on its free weekend, I highly suggest you give the game a try. Otherwise it sells for $14.99. If you do give Streets of Rogue a try, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Valve Updates Steam Reviews, Free Reviews Don’t Count


Valve has updated how Steam handles user reviews today in a way that will affect how paid/free reviews affect the game’s overall score. Starting today, the review score will no longer be affected by users that received the game for free, including free weekends and gifts.

With the changes we are making now, the review score (shown at the top of store pages and in various places throughout the store such as search results) will no longer include reviews by users that received the game for free, such as via a gift, or during a free weekend. Reviews can still be written by customers that obtained the game in any of these ways, but the review will not count toward the overall review score.

Free to play games will not be affected by this change.

(Source: Steam)

STICLI Games: Toxic Developer With Invalid EULA


STICLI Games is the developer of Airport Master on Steam, a $15 airport simulator that by all accounts seems to be a decent game that merely suffers from a bad user interface. The developer, however, seems intent on driving their reputation directly into the river by coming right off the starting line with toxic behavior, an illegitimate end user license agreement, and enforcing trademarks that it very likely does not own.

Since we live in a world where shady, toxic indie Steam developers waste no time perjuring themselves (because filing a false DMCA is committing perjury, a very real crime) by striking critical videos, banning people who post critical reviews, and threatening critics with everything from legal action to revoking their access to the game because they had the gall to complain on or off of the forums.

But STICLI Games has taken it a step further. Imagine, as a non-business owner, what you would do to stop criticism of your game. You write it into the rules, right? While rules are fine and dandy, you need a set that has implied legal backing behind it, and that leads us to our next topic: The end user license agreement. It’s a tool that, for many small business, would never hold up in court because it wasn’t drafted by a lawyer (a competent lawyer), contains bad sections that could invalidate the whole agreement, and the owner assumes that anything written is legally binding because why not, the customer agreed to it.

STICLI Games has decided to bake justification for toxic, anti-consumer practices directly into their EULA, starting with the recognition that STICLI owns the trademarks on all properties and you are not allowed to produce content without prior written permission:

The End User recognizes that all of the rights associated with the Software as well as the rights related to the trademarks, royalties and copyrights, are the property of STICLI Games and are protected by international laws and treaties. Any use of Copyright Holder’s trademarks, imagery content, videos, graphical elements, names, plot in any activity (including but not limited to: producing 3d party video content, electronic and on-paper publishing, creation of promotional content etc.) is only possible with prior written permission of Copyright Holder.

Incidentally, we can learn a lesson from Digital Homicide’s James Romine on this subject: As he stated in his lawsuit against Jim Sterling about the use of the ECC Games name, he isn’t violating any law because ECC Games doesn’t own the trademark in the United States. And after a cursory search of the US Trademark Office, it looks like STICLI Games doesn’t own a US trademark on Airport Master. Trademark, unlike copyright, does not protect works automatically. You have to file, pay the fees, and have your application approved.

But let’s go further, because the EULA just gets better from here out.

4. TRADEMARKS AND RIGHTS TO THE SOFTWARE
The End User recognizes that all of the rights associated with the Software as well as the rights related to the trademarks, royalties and copyrights, are the property of STICLI Games and are protected by international laws and treaties. Any use of Copyright Holder’s trademarks, imagery content, videos, graphical elements, names, plot in any activity (including but not limited to: producing 3d party video content, electronic and on-paper publishing, creation of promotional content etc.) is only possible with prior written permission of Copyright Holder.

A large portion of the threatening emails I receive from developers follow this pattern, people who think they the legal authority to decide who covers their products and want to know why I didn’t ask for permission before publishing my review/editorial. Here’s the thing about copyright law: You don’t have to ask for the creator’s permission in order to cover it. I don’t need STICLI’s permission to use a screenshot as part of this publishing, I don’t need their permission to write this article about how they’d want permission from me to write this article, and I don’t need permission to review their products.

EULAs don’t magically grant companies special privileges, there have boundaries you can’t go outside of when it comes to agreeing on what can and can’t be done.

9. NO REFUNDS
Except when required by law, the Licensor shall be under no obligation to issue refunds under any circumstances. The Licensor may issue refunds basing on Licensor’s own judgement and solely as a gesture of good will.

I have seen some discussion about this clause and it isn’t technically ‘illegal’ in the basic sense because the writer was smart enough to add ‘except when required by law.’ It doesn’t make sense otherwise because STICLI doesn’t get to decide who receives a refund, that’s Valve. None of STICLI’s judgement comes into effect when it comes to Valve’s refund policy.

That means you MUST obtain prior written permission from us before uploading any videos to YouTube. Otherwise, you are breaching the EULA and we can terminate your software license without refund and fire a copyright strike on YouTube.

Also, is this a challenge? Because it sounds like a challenge, and I love a good challenge. So, in testing whether Steam would enforce Airport Master’s ‘under any circumstance’ EULA, I decided to purchase Airport Master for $14.99. I quickly came across some performance issues, including the following illegible text on most menus. It made the game, in my humble opinion, impossible to play on my system and therefore a qualifying circumstance to ask for a refund, I think most will agree.

So I asked for a refund, to which Valve said “yea sure whatever” and promptly handed it over after about two hours.

Turns out that STICLI Games’ EULA isn’t so binding after all.

One more thing: The whole argument about trademark is useless as trademark and copyright are two wholly separate entities. Trademark is all about market confusion, owning a brand and identity and being able to protect it. It is what would prevent someone from, say, starting up a business called STICKLI Games and producing a game called Airport Masters and selling it on Steam, because that is confusing the market. It stops sleazy furniture stores from advertising the “Ultimate Super Bowl Couch,” because it implies official affiliation. It does not give you full control over the use of the words.

It looks like STICLI Games is in Cyprus, and doesn’t own the trademark there either.

The Exiled Hits Steam Today


Fairytale Distillery’s MMORPG The Exiled has officially hit Steam. The Exiled bills itself as a social sandbox, combining strategy with survival and showcasing full loot and unrestricted PvP. The game is available to try on Steam for free for 7 days, after which you can continue playing with one of the game’s access packs.

“We believe giving all players an opportunity to try our game for 7 days will be incredibly beneficial to the long tail and overall support of The Exiled during its time as an early access title.” said Fairytale Distillery Managing Director Alexander Zacherl.

(Source: Fairytale Distillery press release)

Greenlight Fraudsters: Asset-Flip Developer Dentola Studios Files Bogus Copyright Claim


Fraudster:
2a:  a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor;

Dentola Studios is a shady indie developer peddling premade Unity store projects and trying to sell them via Steam Greenlight. How do I know this for a fact? Because the photo above and the photo below are both the exact same thing, however they come from two sources: The first, said shady developer’s Steam Greenlight page. The second, the Unity asset store it was purchased from for $20 USD. We have officially hit a low point.

But let’s continue, because Dentola Studios, whose titles are now under the name Jaffstook, a guy so trustworthy that he actually has a VAC ban on his account, has been religiously deleting any comments showing where you can buy said asset packs for a mere $20. First is Escape From The Tribe, better known as Archer Hero Must Die. There is Castle Defense, or Monster Defense. There’s Endorforce, I could honestly go on all day, or more accurately however long it would take to list all six games.

In response to criticism from Youtubers like SidAlpha, Dentola Studios has begun filing bogus copyright claims. This studio is claiming copyright on a game that they didn’t make, just purchased a license for, compiled, and threw on Greenlight to hopefully sell. Dentola has no more rightful ownership of their games than a Craigslist seller claiming copyright on the Tonka Truck name.

One statement that I will say for the record is that while they may be blatantly shady folks with no discernable programming talent and an evidently bankrupt moral code, there is no evidence of Dentola doing anything illegal. Like it or not, the premade packs on the Unity Store are perfectly fine with someone buying the product and selling it as is.

Now filing a bogus DMCA takedown is potentially illegal, because you do so under the penalty of perjury which can result in fines and even jail time should action be taken against the aggressor (pro tip: In cases like this it usually never is). For Dentola Studios, no doubt oblivious to the can of worms that they have just opened, this assuredly means nothing less than a reputation tattered and burning, their actions stamped into the internet’s history forever, and a gaggle of Greenlight watchdogs ready to follow them and document their deeds for the rest of their lives.

I’ll leave you with these words: If you want to know what happens when you act like this, take a look at James Romine’s desperate attempts to rebuild his shattered reputation after the Digital Homicide saga. Go to a man whose name is now synonymous with internet villains and ask him if it was all worth it. Also all editorial complaints are to be directed to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com.

[Community] How Valve Can Make Steam Direct (Closer To) Perfect


Steam Greenlight, the process through which developers pay $100 to gain access to submit their games for players to vote to sell on the platform, is going away. In its place is Steam Direct, a process through which developers will be able to pay a per-game fee to guarantee access to the store front.

The new system has been heavily criticized despite a lack of information at this point in time as to how much it will cost and how developers will be able to recuperate said money. Regardless, I’ve decided to put in my two cents on what Valve can do to implement Steam Direct in a manner that improves over Steam Greenlight.

1. Keep Those Fees Flowing

I don’t personally care if Valve is charging money for games to be submitted, and I don’t even particularly mind if they pocket the money from it either. I’d like to see that cash go toward improving the platform, and it likely will since Valve has funded continued updates like reviews, curation tools, better support for refund policies, even though Greenlight money went to charity. For the most part, however, I view the idea of a $100 per title barrier to be just what Steam needs: hurdles for developers to jump over that aren’t damning for the legitimate little guy. Don’t forget, the per-instance fee is what prevented Digital Homicide from using the justice system to harass 100 Steam users, and I have no doubt in my mind that the Romines wouldn’t have had half of their inventory on Steam if they had to pony up $100 for each submission.

Valve is talking somewhere between one hundred dollars and five grand for the submission fee, and in all honestly I think they’ll err toward the lower end. The highest I’d honestly go if we’re discussing a per-title submission fee is $250, and frankly that’s on the high end. This is also disregarding Valve’s statement that the cost will be recoupable, although they haven’t said how. I also assume that there will be different rules for mod submissions.

Let’s face it: $100 isn’t a lot of money if you’re selling a video game, if you can’t recoup that then maybe your game doesn’t belong on Steam. I know that’s not going to be a very popular opinion, but it needs to be said. We already have a place where budding developers can go and dump their experimental free games that won’t sell $100 worth or were just made as a hobby, it’s called Itch.io. Cobbled together a flash game and want to provide it for free? There’s Newgrounds. Steam Greenlight already costs $100, if Valve went with my idea of keeping the price, the only major difference is it would be more costly to dump a few dozen games on the service.

Ultimately, Steam isn’t a dumping ground for weekend projects, high school finals, and troll/meme games. That’s Itch.io. There are other distribution channels.

2. Use That Money To Fund Moderation

This is important, the fee for submission should be going toward improving the store front. By that, I mean it shouldn’t take months upon months of player reports and negative press for you to remove dead games that are unplayable due to offline servers, whose developers are out of business and never bothered to take their store front down. We shouldn’t have to deal with developers like Karabas who make bullcrap claims that they’ve won awards from shows that haven’t happened yet.

Ultimately, Valve’s increased dividends from developers putting down cash for their direct placements should go into improving the infrastructure that they use for said platform, like how the money you pay at toll booths (theoretically) goes toward keeping the roads maintained.

In fact, let’s go a step further and set up the Steam Direct Sponsorship fund, for developers who are doing great work but for one reason or another could never afford the placement on Steam. Let’s say they’re a developer from Venezuela where $100 USD translates to a fair grand. Let some of the money from submissions go into a kitty for these guys and gals, they can submit their game Shark Tank style and let Valve decide which are worthy of passing through.

3. Throw the Whole System In the Trash

Ultimately Steam Direct is the wrong solution implemented to fix a problem that only exists because Valve decided it should. The problem could be solved through curation of games that come in through Steam, as Valve did before Greenlight, but Valve doesn’t feel like curating. They have the money, but don’t want to spend it. They have the employees, but thanks to the flat structure anything related to customer service has been slowly automated over the past few years because nobody wants to do the work and there isn’t anyone in charge to force said work.

So the ultimate solution, the one most guaranteed to never happen, would be for Valve to take quality control into their own hands.