Tag: Valve

Valve Terminates Insel Games (Wild Buster) Over Fraudulent Reviews


Valve today announced the immediate termination of its dealings with Insel Games. According to the news post, Valve employees discovered that Insel was using accounts to post fake positive reviews for their titles.

It has been recently reported on Reddit that the publisher for this game, Insel Games Ltd., have been attempting to manipulate the user review score for their titles on Steam. We have investigated these claims, and have identified unacceptable behavior involving multiple Steam accounts controlled by the publisher of this game. The publisher appears to have used multiple Steam accounts to post positive reviews for their own games. 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 Insel Games Ltd. and removing their games from our store. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.

This affects all of Insel’s titles on Steam, including Wild Buster and Guardians of Ember, as well as The Onion Knights: Definitive Edition. The controversy sparked after an email emerged on Reddit allegedly from the CEO of Insel Games showing the company pressuring its employees to buy the game and leave fake positive reviews.

(Source: Steam)

Fake News: VAC Ban Wave Has Reason Muddied


There is no massive conspiracy to Valve’s recent ban wave of Team Fortress 2 bots, but cheaters would like you to think there is. Valve recently banned a large number of accounts taking part in catbot, a hacker who has been terrorizing Team Fortress 2 servers by flooding them with a large number of bots. News websites picked up on rumors and reports that Valve was simply banning anyone with “catbot” in their Linux username as an attempt to quickly get rid of the bots.

MMO Fallout can confirm that those reports are fake. A confirmed Valve employee has posted on Reddit to deny the claims, noting that these rumors are likely being circulated by the cheating community, and that Valve has not instituted a policy of banning by username.

The bug report–and I suspect many of the posts in this thread–are a tactic employed by cheaters to try and sow discord and distrust among anticheat systems. VAC has many different types of detections and we cannot discuss what they do publicly because doing so makes them less effective. However, one thing I can disclose is that all detections require that the detection occur while a user is actively cheating and connected to a VAC-secured server.

Those of you with Catbottom as your Linux username can breath easy, and log back into Team Fortress 2.

(Source: Reddit)

PSA: Get Steam Link For $1 (Plus A Cheap Game)


The Steam Link is a device that allows you to stream your Steam games to another television in the house via wifi or ethernet. If you’ve been holding out on buying the Link thanks to its bank-breaking $50 price tag, you are in luck (but only if you act fast).

Valve has placed the Steam Link on sale with the game Icey for the sum total of $8.69 USD. The divides out to $7.69 for Icey and $1 for Steam. You do have to pay shipping and handling, but that’s something that would have been added on while buying the link at its regular price regardless. You’ll need to decide fast, as this bundle ends on October 21 at 9am PST.

Icey, for those interested in this bundle for more than just the Link, is a 2D side scrolling shooter/platformer. More information can be found at the link below.

(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.

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)

Mark Laidlaw Reveals Half Life 2: Episode 3 Plot


With the launch of Duke Nukem Forever now more than half a decade behind us, Half Life 2: Episode 3 (or Half Life 3 depending on who you ask) has taken the throne as the king of vaporware. Initially announced in 2006, the next episode in the Half Life 2 series, which Valve ironically moved to an episodic format to avoid long development delays, has been in limbo with nary a shred of evidence that the developer is actually working on said title.

While Valve has been silent on their development plans for Half Life, one thing that the company cannot hide is that its Half Life writers are jumping ship. Over the past two years, at least four big writers have left the company: Eric Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek, Mark Laidlaw, and Jay Pinkkerton.

Mark Laidlaw, evidently not content with his story being lost to the Valve offices forever, recently posted a “fan fiction” story titled “Epistle 3” on his blog. The blog post is from the perspective of a “Gertie Fremont,” discussing the death of “Elly Vaunt” and heading to the antarctic with Alex Vaunt to find the Hyperborea. The story is a clear nod toward Half Life 2, with events detailed that have leaked out through interviews and documents over the years.

In Laidlaw’s story, Freeman and Alex go north to find the Aurora Borealis, a ship created by Aperture Science (thinking with Portals) that can phase in and out of existence and time. The duo comes across Dr. Breen who had transferred his consciousness to a Combine slug, now regretting his decision and wishing for death. They take over the Borealis and plot to crash it into the Combine homeworld, when the illusive Gman shows up and pulls Alex out to rescue her.

Gordon, meanwhile, remains on board the ship to realize that the plan is destined to fail, as the Combine power is too great. He is rescued at the last second by the Vortigaunt, setting the game up for a possible sequel. Gordon wakes up on shore, not knowing where he is or how much time has passed, or even if the resistance won. The story ends on a somewhat chilling note,

“Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.”

The last full game to be developed by Valve was released in 2012, with much of the company’s focus being on maintaining Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike: GO, as well as its various investments in competitive gaming tournaments, VR, and the Steam marketplace. More story-driven titles including Half Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead have sat neglected for the better part of the last decade.

As time goes on, the hopes for Valve wrapping up the Half Life series have understandably faltered. Valve remains silent, writers from the series are leaving, the voice actor for Dr. Breen passed away, and leaks from the company suggest that all attempts to revive the sequel have ultimately died off and gone nowhere. Valve is currently working on several VR titles, and the flat structure ensures that anyone can start working on Half Life as soon as they feel like it. So will they?

It feels less likely as they years tick on.

Valve Updates Steam Groups To Curb Gambling Spam


If you play Counter Strike: Global Offensive, odds are you are probably not unfamiliar with the mass quantities of spam groups that have popped up related to gambling websites. Thanks to Valve not implementing a way to automatically block group invitations, players were at the mercy of whether or not a bot group had you in their sights. With today’s update, Valve hopes to curb Steam spam by preventing level 0 bot accounts from spamming invites.

First off, we see that more and more organized spammers are using bots to create groups on a huge scale. At some times, the number of new groups created explicitly for spamming outweigh the legitimate groups. Once a spammer has created a bunch of new groups, they then use bots to invite random players into the group. Even if only a small percentage of players that were invited end up joining any one of these groups, the spammer still can end up with a significant audience. The spammers then use these groups to advertise various websites or offers by posting frequent announcements to the members.

Starting today, you will only be able to invite your friends to groups, and likewise in regards to receiving invitations. It seems fairly likely that this will lead to friend request spam replacing group request spam, but it is a step in the right direction.

(Source: Steam)

Banned Steam Seller Is Back, Threatening Steam Users


Gennady Guryanov Alekseevich shouldn’t be selling games on Steam, he was banished from the service in April when Valve discovered that he was using Steam accounts to boost the reviews of his games. In fact, his entire library of games was destroyed: Zi, Julai, and K-Rolik.

Secret Doctrine is a game developed by Luma14Kulan, the alias of Gennady Guryanov Alekseevich and which is currently available on Steam at the high price of $50, despite the aforementioned individual being barred from selling products on it.

Through tough research, MMO Fallout was able to verify that not only is Gennady Guryanov the developer of The Secret Doctrine, but that he is in fact currently going by the username Lama14Kulan. How did we discover this information, you may ask? Via the not-so-subtle about page on the game’s own website.

And since Lama14Kulan is shady enough to get himself banned for underhanded practices, it may not be surprising to see that users are being threatened with lawsuits over their criticism of Guryanov’s business tactics.

For what it’s worth, as with most games of this stripe, while Guryanov may be back on Steam, it hasn’t stopped his game from flopping hard. As of this writing, there is one review of the game (Russian) by a user who is (unsurprisingly) friends with Guryanov. There isn’t a single person playing at this time and sales are expected to be miniscule as publisher Elena Schukina (seen above threatening to sue a user) is trying to play up the controversy as “black PR” to drive more sales.

Given that Guryanov is located in Russia and his game has sold virtually nothing, the threat of lawsuit falls on deaf ears. Members of the community should not allow empty threats from a shady creator stop them from exposing and criticizing problematic players in the Steam economy.

(Source: Guardians of Greenlight)

Valve’s Trading Card Update Shoots Shovelware Games In The Heart


Those of you who use or follow Steam in any capacity are no doubt aware of the high volume of low effort shovelware being heaped onto the service, increasingly from developers out of Russia, that have popped up on Steam for one purpose: Farming trading cards. These games use unscrupulous methods, through bot voting or through key bribery, to get their games greenlit, after which the game is immediately besieged by thousands of bots who idle the game and then sell the trading cards for money or break the cards down into gems which are then sold for money. The bots make money, the developer gets a cut of the sales, and others have more incentive to throw their shovelware onto Steam for an easy, if ill-gotten, profit.

The practice has become so popular that there are entire Steam groups dedicated to buying up these low quality games for the purpose of farming cards in large quantities.

Today’s Steam update takes those bad actors out back and buries them next to the rose bushes. In order to be eligible for trading cards, a game must obtain a certain confidence level showing that people are actually playing. In the update notice, Valve attributes changing the trading card system as being to cut down on faux data.

As we mentioned in our last post, the algorithm’s primary job is to chew on a lot of data about games and players, and ultimately decide which games it should show you. These Trading Card farming games produce a lot of faux data, because there’s a lot of apparent player activity around them. As a result, the algorithm runs the risk of thinking that one of these games is actually a popular game that real players should see.

Thankfully this system is retroactive, meaning you’ll receive any cards you should have once they are made available.

Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we’re going to move to a system where games don’t start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it’s actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who’ve played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you’ll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.

Valve has confidence that this system will function better than Steam Greenlight, whose failure to curate allowed the games onto the marketplace to begin with, due to the extra variables and larger base compared to the relative few who use Greenlight. Most recently, Valve made major changes to gifting Steam games in order to combat bad hombres.

(Source: Steam)

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