Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
The [STEAM] thread
TychoCelchuuu
___________PIGEON_________San Diego, CARegistered User regular
___________PIGEON_________San Diego, CARegistered User regular
- You can now manage subscriptions inside Steam. Only one game supports it for now, but maybe one day we'll see weekend deals for monthly subscriptions to our favorite MMOs.
- Check out Enhanced Steam, a cool browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox that enhances Steam. Duh.
- Waiting is for chumps: Steam now has category for games with early access betas and alphas. Watch games develop!
- The other shoe drops: regular weekly deals begin on Steam! Are monthly deals next?
- The War Z returns to Steam with a more...honest approach. It is still shit that should not be bought.
- Linux joins Steam as several games get Linux-compatible versions.
Welcome to the Steam thread! This a magical place full of generosity and chilling displays of over-consumerism. Let this post be your guide.
Steam is a store/program by the Valve Corporation. It is both a storefront as well as a sort of launcher program for games bought from it. The easiest way to describe it is as iTunes for video games, and it's a rather apt comparison as Steam is just as much a juggernaut in its market as iTunes. We're talking THE biggest digital distributor of PC games, with a market share that is actually pretty comparable to Apple's little program.
Why use Steam?
Steam's real claim to fame is sales, which started about 6-7 years ago and have been increasing in variety and frequency as the years go by. Let's go down the main types of sales.
The Seasonal Sales: These are the two "big ones" that Steam does twice a year, and both run for roughly two weeks. You have the Summer Sale, which typically starts in late June/early July, and then the Winter Sale which starts a few days prior to Christmas and typically ends a few days after New Year's Day. These are chock full of varying sales, which I am now going to list.
- General Sale: During a seasonal sale, just about EVERYTHING goes on sale by some degree. This is typically around 25% or so, but deeper cuts do happen. The only games that don't go on a general sale are recently released titles and games released by stingy publishers (Activision).
- Daily Deals: A bit of misnomer now, but these are around 6-10 games that get even deeper discounts than the general sale. We're talking 50% or more in most cases. "Dailies" used to last 24 hours, thus the name, but recently they tend to last 48 hours. There are new dailies every day until the sale ends, and dailies tend to not repeat.
- Flash Sales: shorter sales of around six titles. SOMETIMES flash sales are deeper discounts than the Daily Deals, but this wasn't the case in the last Seasonal Sale. These tend to last 12 hours and do repeat.
- Voter Sales: The same as a Flash Sale, only Steam users voted on it. Three games will be up for vote, along with the discount that will be offered for each game should it win. Once the previous Voter Sale is over, the winner of the current vote goes on sale for 12 hours and a new vote begins. Vote options repeat frequently, though not always against the same other two games.
Seasonal Sales are basically a big deal around this thread.
Holiday Sales: A typically week-long sale around some holiday, typically Thanksgiving and Halloween. There are daily deals, and sometimes the other deals pop up (Thanksgiving sometimes get a general sale).
Publisher Sale: A publisher greases Valve's palm and gets a sale. These are similar to holiday sales, only there is generally a daily deal for one game each day, and the games will be unsurprisingly connected to the publisher.
Midweek Madness: Occurs every week, roughly starting midday Tuesday and ending Thursday afternoon. A game or two will get a decent discount for the duration of the sale.
Weekend Sale: Same as Midweek Madness, only slightly longer and TENDS to attract more AAA titles. Happens every week, starting midday Thursday and ending midday Monday.
Daily Deals: Literally a sale every day! Tends to be a decent discount that, as the name implies, happens every day for exactly one game. Deals goes up middday and lasts for 24 hours. Utter crap is generally up for grabs on daily deals, but sometimes you find some really good stuff here.
Note that, during bigger sales (mostly seasonal sales), the Midweek Madness, Weekend Sale, and Daily Deals are suspended until the bigger sales ends.
This is a big thread, and thus there are some guidelines to keep things nice and orderly throughout. Refusing to abide by these guidelines could get you in trouble, which includes being kicked out of the thread entirely if you are a real pain.
- This thread is for Steam-related discussion. Try to look for other, more appropriate threads before discussing games or other topics in here. Let's not drain other threads of precious content!
- Do not beg for games. This will make you unpopular and probably less likely to get anything.
- If you did get a gift, then thank the person for their generosity! Use the notification system so they can see your thank you post! ( @NAME OF PERSON )
- Likewise, if you give a gift, then you should probably mention your PA handle somewhere in the message.
- Do not whine over who got a gift.
- The person is spending money to give back to the community, and they have final say in who gets the gift.
- If you feel something is amiss in the thread, then quietly report the responsible parties. Posting about it will accomplish nothing, and probably just exacerbate things.
- Giving away games via contest? All entries must be PM'd to you! The thread gets too cluttered otherwise. You can, however, post the winning entries.
I have too many games! Which do I play?
Steam Roulette randomly picks a game for you to play.
I have too many games! How do I move them to my new hard drive?
Steam Mover makes transporting your massive library much easier.
How can I feel as bad as possible about owning these games?
Steam Calculator tells you how much money your account is worth, you terrible person.
How do I organize my games into categories more easily than the built in way of doing it?
Check out Depressurizer.
How do I make one of those cool Steam Gifts signature giveaway banners?
Steam has downloaded DirectX twice for every game I own and now I'm out of disk space - what do I do?
Steam Cleaner is a program that gets rid of a lot of the unneeded crap that some games install on your PC.
What's on sale? Like, if I don't want to tediously check Steam.
Check out Steam Game Sales and this sales tracker.
Steam stopped doing stuff. It broke.
Delete or rename ClientRegistry.blob in your Steam directory.
Why did Steam reject this CD-key?
Only games that also run under Steamworks will have their CD-keys accepted by Steam if bought elsewhere. If a game is not Steamworks, then it will ONLY install on Steam if you buy it via Steam. Most digital distributors will now mention Steam if it is required to run the game, but another list can be found here. Note that you can make shortcuts in Steam that will play non-Steam games through Steam. As far as your friends list is concerned, you will be "In-Game" but it'll just give a generic "Non-Steam game." Also, no community perks like achievements.
Why are some games not available in my region?
Publishers determine what countries get what games. Someone in a suit decided that it wasn't worth the money to make the game available to your region, so it isn't available on Steam. This also applies to cases of games having edited/censored versions showing up on Steam in certain countries. The good news is that you can generally get around this by having someone from another region gift or trade you the game.
Look at those neat signatures for Steam! Where do I get one?
Try here.
What is this Steamgifts site? I wish to create a giveaway! I cannot enter a giveaway!
Steamgifts is a neat site that lets people create giveaways for games on Steam. If you cannot enter a giveaway, then you either lack points or aren't in a group required by the giveaway. Points are accumulated over time, so just wait a bit if you lack points. The group thing is generally done by communities to prevent mooches from getting games. If you are new to the forums, then spent a few months in the thread proving that you are serious about being a member of this community. Eventually, you will invited to the group that is required to enter our giveaways.
Steam is downloading slowly. What gives?
When a big title (or Team Fortress 2 content patch) comes out, you may notice really shitty download rates. This means you are likely on one of the default servers for downloads, which is being assailed by millions of people. Head to Steam -> Settings -> Downloads + Cloud and change your download region until things improve. Since other regions are typically less populated, you will probably get somewhat better results even if the new server is in another country. There are other ways to force Steam to switch which server you are downloading from, but these are just video games and maybe you should learn a little bit about patience.
This edit
started a trend in various fan creations dedicated to a portly man and his magic, money-munching machine.
Nodody expects the PA Inquisition!
Rorus Raz on
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You guys really have to source this stuff. What are you even quoting now?
Can't tell if serious....
Or obviously sarcasm
Look, I'm just here for the race cars. I bought Burnout Paradise, which leads to me buying Trackmania. It makes perfect sense!
Yeah, I was about to say...
Actually interesting fact, SHODAN was voiced by Terri Brosius, who also did the voice of Viktoria in Thief 1/2. Also, wife of Eric Brosius who was responsible for the amazing sound design of Thief 1/2 and SS2.
I pronounce it bee-log.
Tripped me out when I realized she voiced your powersuit's voice in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri. Bad omens man.
She was apparently involved in Dishonored as well, though as a writer. Neat stuff.
Anyone know how well it runs on modern machines? I kinda got bit in the ass last time I bought an older game.
Yeah, I've been a little wary of older games since they run at random speeds on my machine. Far Cry doubles in speed each time I load the game, rendering it quickly unplayable. Deus Ex just randomly chooses a speed between bullet time and fast as hell, which can be rewarding in short spurts. If SS2 gets consistent remarks about playability, I might give it a shot.
EDIT: The new bracket thing is pretty darn sweet.
Except it had nothing to do with GoG as far as anyone's aware.
But yes, the mysterious Dark Engine patch made Thief 1/2 and SS2 all playable on modern machines with widescreen resolution support, no muss no fuss. Even fixed the video playing as I recall, as those Indeo codec videos were frequently a problem on modern machines as well.
Now to wonder if I should wait for the next big sale or go ahead and get it 30% off...
Well yeah, that's one of their advertised points, but that doesn't mean they always follow through. Their Thief release, for example, was pretty notably shitty and required nearly all of the same steps that getting it to run in the past required for a lot of people. They patched it but they still have quite a few games that have issues for a lot of people.
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
Good to know, thanks!
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
Those people being Night Dive Studios
I have HEARD RUMORS to the effect that they're looking into getting the rights for No One Lives Forever and also looking into re-patching System Shock 1 for modern machines (UR WELCOM, TYCHOCELCHUUU). I think basically they're a combination legal firm (working on buying up distribution rights to stuff) and ... I guess... game archivist group??? Game restoration team? I dunno.
My Backloggery PSN: Bigisy24
But with that in mind, I wish those pinball tables were cheaper. I mean I love me some pinball but... man.
My Backloggery
You'd be a monster for not having it right now. It's that simple.
MONSTER.