A 10% price hike on Steam games sold in Australia is all but confirmed, as reported by PC Gamer. As some outlets have been covering, the 2015 Australian budget will include a tax on intangible imported goods, the goal being to apply the GST (Goods and Services Tax) that had not been collected due to the law being written before such goods had become a major market.
When the new prices go into effect is presently unknown.
(Source: PC Gamer)
Valve’s controversial decision to introduce a system where mod makers could put their creations up for sale is dead in the water just a couple of days after it was introduced. Last week Valve announced that creations in the Skyrim workshop would be able to charge a fee for use, with the creator taking a 25% cut of earnings.
The resulting backlash inspired groups of customers boycotting Valve, protest creations popping up in the Steam workshop, and a Reddit AMA by Valve’s own Gabe Newell.
In an announcement posted to the Steam Community, Valve admitted to underestimating the differences between the revenue sharing models in their previous ventures (TF2/DOTA cosmetics) and the mod community.
We’re going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we’ll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.
Going by the announcement, it seems that this isn’t the last we will hear from paid mods. Perhaps Valve will introduce some donation method to help mod creators.
(Source: Steam)
Quest Online has revealed that Alganon will be coming to Steam next month. Alongside a number of other fixes and tweaks, support for Steamworks was added in the latest Alganon patch. According to Quest Online, Alganon will officially be on Steam next month.
Implemented support for SteamWorks backend services. Yes, Alganon is coming to Steam next month! This is the store landing page.
The link does not work as of this publishing.
(Source: Alganon)
[Update]: Tripwire Interactive has expressly forbidden the use of paid mods in its EULA for Killing Floor 2.
Your Mods must be distributed for free, period. Neither you, nor any other person or party, may sell them to anyone, commercially exploit them in any way, or charge anyone for receiving or using them without prior written consent from Tripwire Interactive.
[Original Story] About a day has passed since Valve’s announcement of paid mods on Steam, beginning with Elder Scrolls Skyrim, and the backlash is mounting against the new system. A petition on Change.org to remove the mod shop has drawn over forty thousand signatures at the time of this publishing, while a number of people are flooding paid mods with bad reviews.
Fears that Valve’s hands-off approach to curating content would result in stolen content being listed were confirmed when a fishing mod was pulled for using assets from another mod without permission. The creator of Fore’s New Idle Animations, a mod that many other Skyrim mods rely on to function, has expressed his opposition against mods being released for money.
Valve has also seen criticism over its policy of taking a 75% cut of revenue.
If you haven’t been inundated with phishing attempts lately, consider yourself lucky.
With a customer base of their size and a lucrative trading market ripe for the picking, it only makes sense that Steam is in a constant uphill battle against account theft. In the latest attempt to curb phishing, Valve has placed multiple limitations on free accounts.
Certain features will be restricted until the account has spent at least $5 USD on the store, either by adding funds, purchasing a game, or purchasing a gift.
Malicious users often operate in the community on accounts which have not spent any money, reducing the individual risk of performing the actions they do. One of the best pieces of information we can compare between regular users and malicious users are their spending habits as typically the accounts being used have no investment in their longevity.
Free users with nothing spent on their account will be limited from:
The limitations can only be removed by spending on the Steam store. Receiving a gift, playing demos/free weekends, or adding a retail product will not lift the limitations.
(Source: Steam)
Notorious Games has officially launched their sandbox MMO Xsyon on Steam Early Access. Now available for $29.99, and includes one month of subscription time.
During the Prelude, Xsyon is continuously evolving and expanding. This phase of the game was intended as a time for the game to adapt to its community. The development team has been working closely with the player base to determine the future of Xsyon and wishes to continue to do so with the Steam crowd.”
Players with existing Xsyon accounts can request a Steam copy for no additional charge.
(Source: Notorious Games Press Release)
Following its unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, Project Gorgon has been successfully greenlit for release on Steam.
There’s a lot of work to get the game Steam-ready, and I don’t know the exact timeline yet, but the hard part was getting Greenlit.
You can currently play an early build of Project Gorgon at the official website.
(Source: Steam)
As the Ruble continues to plummet in value, tech giants are taking notice. In a notice released to the public by Steam Database, Valve has region locked all new purchases made by Steam accounts made by Russian players. While the games may be gifted or traded to players in the same region, they will not be able to transfer the games to those outside of Russia. The region locking is a common response by Valve to prevent people from taking advantage of economic turmoil to buy games at a lower price, and currently includes Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, South America, Turkey, and Southeast Asia.
Apple recently announced that they will be halting online sales in Russia.
(Source: SteamDB)
The Steam Holiday Auction is a temporary event encouraging players to recycle their unused items for gems, which can then be used to bid on games and other Steam goodies. As it turns out, players almost immediately figured out a way to farm gems at no cost to themselves, vastly deflating the value of the gems and causing hyperinflation on the price of even the cheapest games. As a result, Valve has shut down the auction for the time being.
Sorry, but there have been some issues with Gems and the Steam Holiday Auction has been temporarily closed. The elves are working franctically to get the issues sorted out, and the auction will start again as soon as they’re done.
More information will follow as it becomes available.
(Source: Steam)
Valve has updated their policy on game trading in Steam, requiring a one month wait period before giftable games can be traded.
All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser’s inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading.
The move is part of an ongoing effort to clamp down on steam key resellers using fraudulent credit cards to buy and quickly distribute keys. Games can still be gifted normally.
(Source: Steam)
MMO Fallout 