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Steam does not require you to be online to play. Steam works just fine offline. I believe Steam games just need to be activated online once.

I've played Fallout: New Vegas offline. And I think it is funny that you choose to call that game specifically "Payus" when the developer basically didn't get paid on that game.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555

Anyone interested, I urge you to take a look at and pick up "Shatter! ( www.shattergame.com ) and ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ ) for more info! It takes the pong/breakout game to one of its more in-depth levels I've seen to date. There are horizontal, vertical, and circular playing fields, multi-depth "stage progressions" that take you from the outer shell of a boss to its inner core, weapons and powerups, physics elements (ie destroy an anchor block and all the blocks connected to it will "fall", and you both have a "pull" and "push" ability that can draw in the ball, powerups, and dangerous blocks alike...or push them out to change the impact!), co-op multiplayer modes and mor!
I know it has come to critical acclaim with some indie-styled awards, but I don't know if it is "pong-enough" for this, as it tends more towards the "breakout - single player vision" than the one-on-one table tennis "VS pong". Still, an excellent example in the genre.

  For a retro throwback, I urge you to checkout "Wizorb" ( http://www.wizorb.com/ ) which approximates a later-generation NES title graphically, and mixes breakout style play with RPG elements as well! It even has native Linux clients available which you can pick up direct or from Desura (For those who don't know, Desura is an open digital distribution system that favors mods, indie, and alpha titles but also supports AAA games of course. They have a native Linux client, but of course not all games sold on the platform have native linux support, but many do)

One of the best, recent pong/breakout/arkanoid style games I've seen as of recently is just as you describe - Shatter. www.shattergame.com and http://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/ for more info. It has many levels that spherical/circular in design, sometimes in different "stages" - stage one is against the "front hex" , stage 2 is the "back hex" stage 3 is inside the sphere against the "second-tier front hex and then third-tier front hex" followed by your ship going deeper inside until fighting the "core" in a boss fight.

Oh please! Has everyone including you forgotten that when valve as an experiment lowered the price of L4D to $2 their PROFITS on that game went up by 1700%?

OK, I'm gonna call BS on that right there. Considering that the marketing budget for L4D was $10 million, and L4D sold 2.5 million copies, at $2 per sale, they couldn't have even covered marketing let alone actually producing the game. Additionally, it counters what valve themselves had said. The cheapest it's ever been on steam was $6.80 not the $2 you claim -- 2 years after initial release, and the numbers weren't all that great. Additionally, 3 million copies were sold at retail, and an additional 3 million were sold for the 360. Total for the entire franchise was 11 million, leaving 5 million for the super bargain basement price deal PLUS L4D2 and DLCs. Even if not a single person bought any DLC or L4D2, it is mathematically impossible for your $6.80 sale to have even gotten close to the revenues made from retail.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2552/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead
http://www.l4d.com/blog/

Additionally, the only hit google has for L4D $2 profit, is YOU on another thread, so not only is this BS, but BS that you personally started in another thread. Good job, troll elsewhere.

The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content.

So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?

We're talking about TF2 still, right?

The thing about "paid content" in TF2 is that you can get any of the non-cosmetic items over time, as you get 6-8 random weapons per week. There are also 27 weapons (3 per class) that can be unlocked through achievements. Weapons can also be crafted, but I'll be honest: It's better to wait for a random drop, because 6-8 items a week makes it take a long time to craft even one weapon, let alone multiple.

The major problem with f2p accounts is that there are restrictions on them until you buy your first item from the store. In USD, the cheapest item is $0.49, but Valve has a minimum of $5 for adding funds to your Steam wallet... however, you can use the remaining $4.51 towards anything on Steam, including games.

My problem with freemium even when done "right" or whatever you want to call it is still is unacceptable to me at a fundamental level:

I -do- not want to be confronted with real life purchasing decisions every few minutes while playing games. Period. I don't want to be dropped into a "store" everytime I die. I don't want to be prompted to buy something everytime I start up, and every time I quit, and every time a new level loads.

I've never had a TF2 free account, but from my understanding is that it bugs you once when you start the game with one of the game's characters having a text bubble mentioning it on the main menu. This is the only time the store is mentioned. other than having a button on the main menu for it. This text doesn't appear if you've ever bought anything from the store or bought TF2 itself from a store (or bought the Orange Box from a store or through Steam).

That saod, I don't mind expansion packs. 20 new tracks and 5 new cars for $10 bucks or whatever is perfectly fine. But don't advertise it in the game so that I have to explicitly decline buying it every time I play... and don't break it up into micro-transactions... $1 per track, 1$ per car... I don't want to excert the mental process of deciding is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck to me... I just don't.

When TF2 has new weaponry come out, they sell them as sets along with related cosmetic items, if you really want to pay for them. The catch is that they're ridiculously overpriced... and usually they're added to the drop system at the same time they come out. So, unless you really want the cosmetic items, there's little point in buying them.

And don't have me competing with people in the expansion pack cars if they are anything more than just skins.

Remember even "Situationally better" is still better if you get any control over the situation, which of course, unless you are an idiot... you always do.

I believe I've already addressed this point.

But more to the point, the way items are balanced in TF2, a lot of the times they're different rather than strictly better. One of the more controversial items from the Christmas 2011 update was the Spy-cicle.

The Spy-cicle is a melee weapon for the Spy... all Spy melee weapons do instant-kill backstabs. Note: Spies can disguise as enemy players, which becomes important in the description below.

The Spy-cicle prevents the usual death screams from players, but instead makes a freezing sound and leaves an ice statue behind instead of a corpse. It can also be used to prevent fire damage (and makes the extinguishing sound when this happens) for 2 seconds at the expense of the Spy losing the Spy-cicle for 15 seconds.

The thing is that its upsides and downsides are tied together. Sure, I can prevent fire at the expense of being able to instant-kill b

Interesting. I've checked out what he said, and it does appear Steam needs you to do some prep work (one time per game) + login into your account before switching to Offline mode.

Does anyone feel like contacting Gabe, and asking him to fix this? Locally cached user info might be a good fix.

I actually read the EULA for the recent game "Civilization V", and it said they could take your contacts list, and share/sell it.
Fortunently Valve/Steam was nice enough to give a refund before I installed it when I complained about it "As a one-time courtesy" not as policy, I'm sad to say.
Particularly since the EULA wasn't available for viewing until after purchase.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2109777

If you want to know what a "good game" is, look at the top played games on Steam. They don't represent the whole market (since not everything is available on Steam), but are a much better indicator for games people actually play longer than a few hours.

Steam & Game Stats

The awesome storytelling of L4D2, CIV 5 and CS must be responsible for their staying power. ;-)

I don't know where you're looking for guides, but wherever it is you should never go back...

the split screen guide is here:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ac079d67c33ce0f0e5bc71e2b9bc5d67&t=1847904

it's a stickied thread in the Steam Portal 2 Forum:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=854

I don't know where you're looking for guides, but wherever it is you should never go back...

the split screen guide is here:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ac079d67c33ce0f0e5bc71e2b9bc5d67&t=1847904

it's a stickied thread in the Steam Portal 2 Forum:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=854

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://itunes.com/
http://netflix.com/
http://hulu.com/
http://spotify.com/
http://pandora.com/

"only games that have been bought as a gift, and thus have never been played, can be traded."
From https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6748-ETSG-5417#howtotrade

Are PC games typically discounted such that someone can buy four copies of the PC game for the price of one copy of a console game? Because that's what it would take to make up for the difference in the multiplayer paradigm between the two markets.

Often, yes.

Dungeon Defenders 4-pack http://store.steampowered.com/app/65800/
Left 4 Dead 2 4-pack http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/

Besides, dedicated screens are much more enjoyable for most games.

Are PC games typically discounted such that someone can buy four copies of the PC game for the price of one copy of a console game? Because that's what it would take to make up for the difference in the multiplayer paradigm between the two markets.

Often, yes.

Dungeon Defenders 4-pack http://store.steampowered.com/app/65800/
Left 4 Dead 2 4-pack http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/

Besides, dedicated screens are much more enjoyable for most games.

Steam started trading last year. So I'm not sure what your complaint about steam is. Though other stuff is in the pipe still, but saying you can't sell it? No you can, it's just BBW still.

Unfortunately only checking the Steam Store page of the item you are considering for purchase is not sufficient. For example: Borderlands Game of the Year Edition has two of the four DLC items with Securom but it is not listed on the GOTY edition page.

Now I always check the Steam Third Party DRM List before any purchase.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/9860/

I did misremember the copy protection, though. It's Tages, not SecuROM.

The Steam page states that you get three activations, and after 30 days, they regenerate. This is completely incorrect, you get three activations period, for life, no exceptions.

I really have to wonder the point of bothering with PC gaming anymore. Most PC games today are now just unoptimized console ports, and there is restrictive DRM from companies like EA and Ubisoft. I do consider Steam to be a bright spot, and its DRM is so invisible that I've never actually encountered it in practice, but then again, Steam is already moving to consoles as well, and Blizzard seems to be dipping its toes in the water.

I just think integrated platforms, like consoles and mobile devices, always win out in the long-term. I certainly don't want to maintain graphics card drivers or other PC-related issues anymore. It's boring and takes time away from playing games. Consoles today practically are PCs, but without all the headaches.

the problem is what we claim one thing can do. a qr code v40? that is less than what one cga adapter could modulate. frame size frame rate? do you realise how much data can be wrangled by a modern gpu? http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/Mafia-2-Enthusiast,2670.html
at 1080p with 16x anisotropic filtering and 118 fps that means it can modulate 9.279897e+9 worth of data symbols(frames) and modifies the frames 16 passes (or pretends to based on it's drivers) and you kids wonder why your toys break!

If by "research" you mean "check the Steam Store page", then yes, you do. Case in point:Anno 2070. Specifically says "3rd party DRM Solidshield Tages SAS 3 machine activation limit"

Yes, I do love Steam.

I really have to wonder the point of bothering with PC gaming anymore. Most PC games today are now just unoptimized console ports, and there is restrictive DRM from companies like EA and Ubisoft. I do consider Steam to be a bright spot, and its DRM is so invisible that I've never actually encountered it in practice, but then again, Steam is already moving to consoles as well, and Blizzard seems to be dipping its toes in the water.

I just think integrated platforms, like consoles and mobile devices, always win out in the long-term. I certainly don't want to maintain graphics card drivers or other PC-related issues anymore. It's boring and takes time away from playing games. Consoles today practically are PCs, but without all the headaches.

There are currently 3,015,146 players on steam - http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

wow, actual data! Possibly a first for slashdot?

However, right now there are roughly 300,000,000 people on FB, so while hardcore gamers are not an insignificant population, they are dwarfed by the rest.

That's 90% of your users. Though steam says that nearly 45% of their users are using a 64bit OS, and it's increasing at a rate of 1% a month.

The Euro issue I don't know about.

Patrician IV - 6.79 USD or 6.79 EUR
Patrician IV Gold - 10.19 USD or 11.89 EUR
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11830/?cc=mx
http://store.steampowered.com/app/57620/>

FYI. Current USD/EUR exchange rate is 1.32370 USD for 1 EUR.

Same shit on other American and Canadian stores.

The Euro issue I don't know about.

Patrician IV - 6.79 USD or 6.79 EUR
Patrician IV Gold - 10.19 USD or 11.89 EUR
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11830/?cc=mx
http://store.steampowered.com/app/57620/>

FYI. Current USD/EUR exchange rate is 1.32370 USD for 1 EUR.

Same shit on other American and Canadian stores.

And yet Steam has that USD=Euro conversion

This is entirely up to the publisher.

For example most, if not all, games from Codemaster uses a reasonable conversion. F1 2011 costs $37.50 or 29.90 euro, depending on if you're in the US or EU. Ok so it's not perfect but it's at least reasonably close.

GFWL seems to be usually mentioned among the system specs. GTA4's store page was a particularly good detergent, for example.

Done.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/469/

"Question: Must all of my computers have internet access to use Steam?"

"Answer: Steam requires an internet connection for each computer intended to play Steam games."

"Question: What is Steam's Offline Mode and how do I use it?"

The Steam client application's files must be updated to allow for the use of Offline Mode.

So, in order to play offline, I must go online to enable playing offline? And the game must be fully patched even if I am playing offline? And how does it verify if the game is fully patched? Does it need a web connection to check?

Yeah, much easier to just steal the fucking game and have this idiotic shit stripped out from get go.

"Question: Must all of my computers have internet access to use Steam?"

"Answer: Steam requires an internet connection for each computer intended to play Steam games."

"Question: What is Steam's Offline Mode and how do I use it?"

The Steam client application's files must be updated to allow for the use of Offline Mode.

So, in order to play offline, I must go online to enable playing offline? And the game must be fully patched even if I am playing offline? And how does it verify if the game is fully patched? Does it need a web connection to check?

Yeah, much easier to just steal the fucking game and have this idiotic shit stripped out from get go.

It was released on 2005, and I don't know why it is difficult for you to find it.

http://www.amazon.com/Quake-4-Pc/dp/B0009Q1IE2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321467944&sr=8-1

http://store.steampowered.com/app/2210/

And Amnesia is currently on sale on Steam.

I would consider Amnesia a revival of this genre. The whole time I was playing it, it reminded me of a dungeon crawler... especially when I was in the dungeon.

That's some pretty serious denial you got going on there.

When it comes to the desktop and desktop software, there's plenty denial going around. Desktop Linux is stable at <1%, Firefox use is in decline and OpenOffice I don't know any good numbers on but in the Steam software survey MS Office is at 57.26% and OpenOffice at 14.63%, no idea if that includes LibreOffice or not. And at all the large companies I've been at as a consultant I've seen thousands of MS Office desktops and not a single place with OpenOffice installed. So there's some popular stuff running on top of a Linux/BSD kernel like Android, OS X and various set top boxes - you can hardly call Android open anymore - but OSS is hardly taking over the world. It's not going away either, but it remains marginal in most areas. Now for all sorts of back-end stuff where you just need a computing box, servers, HPC, supercomputers, rendering farms and so on sure. As long as you can hide it in a closet and users don't need to see it.

I know that, and you know that, but did the game devs know it? This screenshot clearly shows a stone wall covered in ice. It also shows what I have to assume is Castle Black as having a ring wall, which it shouldn't have.

No gameplay footage, no demo, no beta, no reviews, screenshots suggesting that the devs didn't really read the books, and a title that suggests it's made to cash in on the HBO series. I think I'll be passing on this one.

I seem to recall Recettear being on the front page during it's time at the top of the sales charts. That was truly independently published.

Take a good look at these graphs

It's only pirates and Greeks who know the true value of manual labor :)

"Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free."

So when open source crowdsources development it's great, but when video game companies do it it's exploitative? And how exactly are volunteers "forced" to do anything?

If the costs of professional translation are as high as the article suggests (nearly $1 million just to translate Steam storefront pages), then this move makes sense to me. How many sales are you going to gain by having 26 different translations of a game? How many people who might use a translation wouldn't have just played the game in English in the absence of one? Even Valve's AAA titles from before this weren't in 26 languages. Half-Life 2 is only in 18. And that's for a big budget game. For smaller titles, the benefit from translating is undoubtedly not worth the cost.

Given that, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Rather than fans of a game having to organize a team to translate it and hack up a patch, there is now a way for everyone to contribute as much as they like to a publisher-sponsored effort. You'd have to be pretty damn cynical to see this as a bad thing.

Will the translators free work be freely available? If so, then this is great. If not, then there are problems.

Indeed. Because Steam exercises considerable direction and control over their translators, they might be considered employees. AOL ran into minimum wage laws when they had forum moderators. Eventually, they had to pay them back pay.

It looks like they're about 75% done translating.

(My apologies... posted anonymously.)

Just about every PC game out now or in development is using SteamWorks [wikipedia.org]. Square Enix's products are some of those that do.

SteamWorks makes a game DVD into a Steam game so it's no different than buying it online with no DVD. Because of this, the buyer isn't allowed to trade, lend or resell the DVD under the TOS [steampowered.com]. If they are found doing this the account and the DVD key may be terminated. Unlike MMOs this is being applied to single-player games that don't use the internet at all. This may be unprecedented.

Several questions arise from this. We're only supposed to ask one so I guess just pick the one you like best!

1) Is there any legal precedent for or against this practice? ie Does the Right of First Sale apply? (As this is a physical medium rather than digital-only, as it has been confirmed to apply to digital data on a disc (UMG v. Augusto) regardless of the copyright holder trying to restrict the sale.) If not, even though it's a maxim that "software is licensed not sold" what is the relevant actual law that says this?

2) If the EULA that enforces this is in fact legally binding (which has not been established with any regularity as there have been decisions for and against) does this mean that these discs should not legally be allowed to be sold to minor persons who can't sign contracts? (This is to be contrasted with online purchases where the buyer is presenting evidence of being age of majority by their method of payment. Someone else also asked this before I was done typing mine.)

Just about every PC game out now or in development is using SteamWorks. Square Enix's products are some of those that do.

SteamWorks makes a game DVD into a Steam game so it's no different than buying it online with no DVD. Because of this, the buyer isn't allowed to trade, lend or resell the DVD under the TOS. If they are found doing this the account and the DVD key may be terminated. Unlike MMOs this is being applied to single-player games that don't use the internet at all. This may be unprecedented.

Several questions arise from this:

1) Is there any legal precedent for or against this practice? Does the Right of First Sale apply? (As this is a physical medium rather than digital-only, as it has been confirmed to apply to digital data on a disc (UMG v. Augusto) regardless of the copyright holder trying to restrict the sale.) Even though it's a maxim that "software is licensed not sold" what is the relevant actual law that says this?

2) If the EULA that enforces this is in fact legally binding (which has not been established with any regularity as there have been decisions for and against) does this mean that these discs should not legally be allowed to be sold to minor persons who can't sign contracts? (This is to be contrasted with online purchases where the buyer is presenting evidence of being age of majority by their method of payment.)

3) Is there any legal precedent for this arbitrary restriction of the sale of a used good other than Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus 1908 (which ruled against the copyright holder?)

They have been for a while, actually. In fact, there's a sale on Need for Speed games right now

My wife just found the SEGA Genesis Classics Collection on Steam of all places.

With smart phone gaming becoming popular, there might be a new market on previously 'abandoned' games.

Didn't Atari recently enforce it's copyright on some 2600 games?

You might like Avadon: The Black Fortress by Spiderweb Software, then.

If you haven't heard about Spiderweb Software, well, they've been around since '94, and have made a lot of 2d tile-based RPG's.

Exile series, Avernum series, Geneforge series, and the newest serie : Avadon. With this latest game, he's tried to make it shorter and more condenced, which means it's "only" around 30-40 hours length.
If you like older type RPG's, I recommend you have a look at it, and try the demo.

And I'm not connected in any way to the game makers, just going a bit misty-eyed at finding that not only is the company behind a brilliant little game I played to death around 15 years ago still around, it's still making games in that good old style :)

Hmm, has anyone suggested you try ninite?

Personally, I find that Steam carries just about all of the software I usually have to boot into Windows for.

That's why I prefer indie game companies who bring out really interesting games.

Some I have been playing lately: World of Goo, Cogs Game, VVVVVV.

No affiliation with these games, I just love what they do. They remind me of when games first appeared for the PC, when creativity motivated game design, not the quest for uber realism.

As we know, "its super cool to be uber realistic on hardware because it's just a simulation and not really real. So it's cool that way."...

Gimme a break! Gimme a real game.

I don't care what the previews say, good or bad, my copy is reserved and my kids have ordered theirs too. Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion have all kept me entertained for hundreds of hours, and I doubt Skyrim will be any different.

Same here. Although if not for the frequent crashes those hundreds of hours might have been dozens of hours instead. Having to restart the game because it crashed yet again is hardly entertaining.

Bethesda makes fun games. Bethesda also makes very buggy games. I can only hope Skyrim is better.

I also really wish they'd take the time to remake some of the older games. Morrowind was massive and there was just so much to do, but frequently borked when attempting to do the most trivial of things (such as equipping a pauldron!). I never managed to beat it, due to all the bugs.

Incidentally, Steam has their QuakeCon Pack 2011 up for sale for $70.00. It includes the entire Quake and Doom series, Fallout 3 GOTY & New Vegas (with the 3 currently available DLCs), as well as Morrowind and Oblivion and a bunch of other titles. It's a real steal.

"3rd-party DRM: Ubisoft Online Service" http://store.steampowered.com/app/33460/

I guess the choice will be the Pirate Bay Edition, then.

"3rd-party DRM: Ubisoft Online Service" http://store.steampowered.com/app/33460/

Space Pirates and Zombies is on Steam, unlocking on August 15th.

You have to be accepted by Steam in order to have your game on the service.

From Steamworks FAQ: "For new games we look for unique and interesting gameplay and art, and of course it should be fun!" That doesn't give much detail, especially how much of a budget they're expecting to produce "unique and interesting [...] art". Another technical criterion is that it run on a PC, which has its own limitations such as generally smaller monitors than consoles.

I don't know what the system is on the XBox.

Xbox Live Indie Games, as I understand it, starts with legal residence in select countries plus paying $99 per year to join App Hub in order to run your game on a console. Other App Hub members perform "peer review", or evaluation of your game against a technical requirements checklist. Some of the requirements include 1. being written entirely in C# (or another verifiably type-safe language supported by XNA), not C++; and 2. not having any dialogue written in the made-up language of a fictional culture. (Sorry, Tolkien wannabes.) If your game passes peer review, it gets added to Indie Games for as long as you maintain your App Hub membership. Indie Games are not available in countries with a government-imposed requirement of classification of all video games for objectionable material.