Tag: Valve

Day of Dragons Dev Accused Of Hardcoding Ban Of Critics


There’s malfeasance (allegedly) afoot in Steam early access. Today’s piece comes to us about the game Day of Dragons, currently in early access on Steam. Day of Dragons bills itself as “an online creature survival game set in a large, beautiful, sandbox open world with multiple biomes and distinct creatures. Rule the world as one of several dragon species, or play as an elemental.”

We here at MMO Fallout have dealt with plenty of dirty Steam devs, but the accusations being levied this week really take the cake. The developer of Day of Dragons, Jao, has been accused of hardcoding bans of two Youtuber critics into the game’s files that apparently cause the game to crash on startup if either try to play. The two Youtube creators are IGP_TV and IcyCaress, both of whom have been very vocal in criticizing Day of Dragons for being a cheaply made prototype using store bought assets. So another day in the indie neighborhood.

The video posted by IGP_TV creates a dump of the game’s memory and then checks the files in a hex editor. Among the code they find six Steam ID’s that have been hardcoded to prevent the game from running.

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Youtuber SidAlpha confirmed through his own investigation that the dump contains the six hard coded Steam ID’s.

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Several parties including MMO Fallout have reached out to Valve for comment. Current Steam Terms of Service for developers state that game bans cannot prevent a user from launching the game. It will have to be seen how Valve respond to these allegations, if they do.

The Game Awards Will Have Playable Demos On Steam


Say what?

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t particularly care about the Game Awards, well now you have a reason to be at your computer this week (outside of the usual reasons). Geoff Keighley’s annual public display of affection toward Hideo Kojima is also renown for having a fair number of game reveals, something that only gets larger every year. This year however you won’t just sit at the television computer screen being told what’s coming out, you’ll be able to play them.

This year The Game Awards is working with Steam to bring playable demos of about a dozen games that will be available for 48 hours before they are removed.

“Six years ago I bet everything I had to create The Game Awards as a way to celebrate our passion for gaming,” said Geoff Keighley, creator, The Game Awards. “Now feels like the right time to take the next step with The Game Festival, a completely digital approach to the consumer event space. Let’s face it: Not everyone can attend a physical trade show or consumer event. The Game Festival is designed from the ground-up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”

  • System Shock (Nightdive Studios)
  • Eastward (Pixpil/Chucklefish)
  • Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus)
  • Moving Out (SMG Studio/Devm Games/Team17)
  • Röki (Polygon Treehouse/United Label)
  • Chicory (Greg Lobanov)
  • Wooden Nickel (Brain&Brain)
  • Haven (The Game Bakers)
  • Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
  • Acid Knife (Powerhoof)
  • The Drifter (Powerhoof)
  • CARRION (Phobia/Devolver)
  • SkateBIRD (Glass Bottom Games)

More information has been posted in an article on Medium. Steam users will also have the chance to win free games through game drops. Exact times have not been established, however the Game Awards airs Thursday Dec. 12 at 8:30p.m. eastern standard time.

Bloodbath Steam: Valve Burns Down The House In Mass Game Ban


(Update: It looks like a total of 833 games have been banned by Valve today)

Bloodbath Kavkaz? Nah, Bloodbath Steam.

Valve is currently in the midst of what appears to be a massive ban wave of shady Steam developers, with hundreds of games caught in the crossfire and no sign of slowing down. The ban wave began just over an hour ago as of this publishing and has been knocking out games left and right.

Chief among the ban list is Dagestan Technology, a Russian publisher of titles such as Bloodbath Kazkov.

We will update if more information become available.

Source: Sentinels of the Store

Valve Changes CS: Go Keys To Combat International Fraud


Counter Strike: Global Offensive is making some changes to its keys this week and you can thank international fraudsters for that. Starting today, Counter Strike container keys will no longer be traded or sold on the market. Players are able to earn cases that contain weapon skins while playing Counter Strike but must buy keys in order to open them and see what loot is inside.

According to a statement put out by Valve, the keys recently became the preferred method of cleaning money by international fraud networks to the point where almost all key purchases are believed to be fraud-sourced.

“Why make this change? In the past, most key trades we observed were between legitimate customers. However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced. As a result we have decided that newly purchased keys will not be tradeable or marketable.”

This update does not affect keys that were already on the market.

(Source: Counter Strike)

Steam Library Beta Shows Life After Clickbait Spam


The new visual update for Steam is here! Well the beta is, anyhow. You can download the beta by going to your settings and opting into the beta branch of the Steam client. It’s very simple and doesn’t require any external downloads unlike the previous trick to get ahold of the early version.

The new Steam is all about ease of use. Click on any game and you’ll see all sorts of information provided by the developer. See your achievements, your trading cards, DLC releases, timed events. Anything your heart desires and more that you might have had to navigate through multiple windows to find before is now in one easy place. What isn’t there? The clickbait spam.

One big complaint that users have had of the Steam News section for each game is that Valve thought people really wanted to see clickbait spam from bloggers like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, PC Gamer, etc. It’s basically a glorified RSS feed that pulls stories based on certain websites that Valve trusts (for some reason) tagging their articles with the games in question. The result? An embarrassing deluge of articles that have little if anything to do with the game they are tagged in.

Well those of you unhappy with Valve’s handling of the Steam News will be glad to know that the clickbait spam newsfeed is officially gone as of the new library. It will be interesting to see how the traffic to the websites is affected once they are no longer getting free advertising on a massive platform for their clickbait.

Steam Cleaning: Banned Developer Creates Shell-Accounts


Where would we be if Steam’s worst developers weren’t so stupid?

There have been hundreds of developers banned from Steam for various reasons of scumbaggery, and Valve doesn’t do a fantastic job of vetting the identity of creators so many of them have come back in one form or another. The latest developer to do this is apparently Sun Lucky Industries who have taken to creating numerous shell accounts to put their copy-pasted, low quality games on Steam.

Thankfully they aren’t very intelligent. Their games Monster Planet, Urban Riots, Desert Monsters, Animal War, Alien Creatures, and Desert Lost contain the exact same price (99 cents) and the exact same product description. They also look like exactly the same game but with different assets packs.

“This is a third person action game,The player is surrounded by a group of monsters represented by the leader,Players can explore the surrounding area freely, but need to kill the monster or avoid the monster’s attack, the leader of the attack and vitality is very high need attention,Players need to survive as long as possible.”

Will Valve react? More than likely.

Big thanks to the folks at Sentinels of the Store for their diligence.

Steam Powered: Valve Negligence Lets Developers Impersonate Them


Meet Wizhood, a game developed and published by Valve. Well not developed or published by Valve. Or maybe it is? The Steam store says it is.

On the latest edition of “Valve Is A Negligent Publisher,” it looks like the folks at Rakarnov Studios noticed that Valve will allow anyone who pays $100 on Steam to impersonate anyone else, including Valve themselves. The game Wizhood was noticed by intrepid Steam watchdogs to have changed its name, unabeited, to Valve itself. Maybe for nefarious reasons, maybe to see if it would actually work, maybe for poops and giggles. Either way, the name change was allowed with absolutely no oversight or confirmation required from Valve.

Even better, looking up Valve’s catalog of games now includes Wizhood as a title right under Half Life 2: Deathmatch and above Half Life 2: Episode 2. Unfortunately for Wizhood, it does not automatically include the game in the Valve Complete Pack.

Looking at the Steam database it appears that this change was made back on June 26 and may have been a tactic to increase visibility with the Steam summer sale having started just a day prior. Incidentally you can pick up Wizhood for 49 cents, a 75% saving over the standard $2. If you have any inclination of picking this game up, we suggest you do so now before the sleeping giant that is Valve wakes up.

PSA: How To Get Early Access To Steam New User Interface


The big UI overhaul is coming to Steam in the next few weeks, but if you are just too excited and don’t want to wait, you are in luck. As it turns out, the new interface is already publicly available thanks to some assets dropped in the Chinese Counter Strike: Global Offensive launcher.

You can get your hands on an early version of the launcher by following the steps below. Keep in mind that the interface is going to look a bit ugly right now as many developers have not yet uploaded assets to fit in with the new box design on the library page. On the other hand, it appears that the new interface has dumped the random Rock Paper Shotgun articles that you all loved seeing spammed in your game news feeds.

MMO Fallout can confirm that this works, the images included in this article were from my own test.

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

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