The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[pakoito]

there's no reason why Escape the Omnochronom doesn't make millions.

Is the game any good? The premise sounds good, the 0 current players, 3 all-time top doesn't.

 

[Country_Gravy]

VD made this thread great again.

Thanks, dude.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Funny how I don't see anyone complaining about just as shitty lazy positive reviews

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"game is not in chineze" - refund and negative review (steam page specify the game is only in English) playtime 0.10

Yeahh, steam is great when it comes to reviews...you can review bomb without any effort. Maybe in 5 years, will actually have some a proper review system. I dont care that much, but when i see things like this, the stupidity of some of the users, oh my...

chinese people should be banned from the internet

 

[Spectacle]

Valve knows a lot about the users, so when calculating the review average they should be able to give more weight to reviews posted by refined gentlemen with good taste, and less weight to reviews posted by idiots with poor grammar who only own popamole games.

 

[Edija]

I bought games because I was to lazy to pirate mods, since Workshop is a thing. Steam should play more on convenience than anything else.

 

[Dexter]

My favorite recently was BT4 review were some dude complained that he can't play the game because he didn't receive his key.

People can't review games on Steam without owning the game, additionally only games bought on Steam count towards the Store, outside keys afaik don't add to it.

"game is not in chineze" - refund and negative review (steam page specify the game is only in English) playtime 0.10

Yeahh, steam is great when it comes to reviews...you can review bomb without any effort. Maybe in 5 years, will actually have some a proper review system. I dont care that much, but when i see things like this, the stupidity of some of the users, oh my...

This is an indication of your product being desirable and an untapped market, if you get a lot of those and not just 1-2 maybe think of doing something about it or as a business opportunity.

 

[Infinitron]

My favorite recently was BT4 review were some dude complained that he can't play the game because he didn't receive his key.

People can't review games on Steam without owning the game, additionally only games bought on Steam count towards the Store, outside keys afaik don't add to it.

Presumably this person didn't receive his Kickstarter key so he bought the game on his own to give it a bad review.

 

[LESS T_T]

For fun, most wishlisted games at the moment: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?filter=popularwishlist&os=win

(*: games currently NOT taking pre-order on Steam)

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
RESIDENT EVIL 2 / BIOHAZARD RE:2
Metro Exodus
OVERKILL's The Walking Dead
Devil May Cry 5
Insurgency: Sandstorm
BIOMUTANT*
Call of Cthulhu
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
LEFT ALIVE
Darksiders III
HITMAN 2
Farming Simulator 19
Artifact*
Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Beyond the Baltic Sea*
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2*
Yakuza Kiwami*
Just Cause 4
GTFO*
Desperados III*
Satisfactory*
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord*
Generation Zero*
Football Manager 2019
Tropico 6*

 

[Country_Gravy]

I'm holding out for Farming Simulator 20 Enhanced Director's Cut.

Amateurs.

 

[Shackleton]

Incredibly, on the second page you can find:



Who the hell is wishlisting a free mod you can download by just typing the name into Google? Is it too hard for people to follow the extremely simple installation instructions? Rest of list is derp as expected, but this really did have me scratching my head.

 

[Spectacle]

"game is not in chineze" - refund and negative review (steam page specify the game is only in English) playtime 0.10

Yeahh, steam is great when it comes to reviews...you can review bomb without any effort. Maybe in 5 years, will actually have some a proper review system. I dont care that much, but when i see things like this, the stupidity of some of the users, oh my...

This is an indication of your product being desirable and an untapped market, if you get a lot of those and not just 1-2 maybe think of doing something about it or as a business opportunity.

It's completely useless information for any potential buyers who aren't chinese though. Reviews should be buying advice for other gamers, not a way to signal to the developer that you're butthurt over some stupid shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

My favorite recently was BT4 review were some dude complained that he can't play the game because he didn't receive his key.

People can't review games on Steam without owning the game, additionally only games bought on Steam count towards the Store, outside keys afaik don't add to it.

"game is not in chineze" - refund and negative review (steam page specify the game is only in English) playtime 0.10

Yeahh, steam is great when it comes to reviews...you can review bomb without any effort. Maybe in 5 years, will actually have some a proper review system. I dont care that much, but when i see things like this, the stupidity of some of the users, oh my...

This is an indication of your product being desirable and an untapped market, if you get a lot of those and not just 1-2 maybe think of doing something about it or as a business opportunity.

you know what else is an untapped market?
people who want the game at 100% off, they should all be allowed to leave a negative review too

 

[Dexter]

you know what else is an untapped market?
people who want the game at 100% off, they should all be allowed to leave a negative review too

You wouldn't profit from that if you didn't have other business models like Ad markets or "DLC" or "F2P/P2W" (which ample games offer by the way, that's why there were a lot of "Free to Play" MMOs and why there's a lot of "Free" Mobile games, because they hope to hook people and get them to spend money e.g. tap an otherwise untapped market. A lot of the most successful and profitable games recently like Fortnite or League of Legends/DOTA are such.

It's pretty stupid to ignore the demands of a sizable amount of customers (to the point that negative reviews might start to matter) that apparently bought your product and indicate they want to give you more money and there's potentially tens or hundreds of thousands out there that just wish you'd translate your product into their language. These are customers, not only engaging with the product but actively telling you how to easily make the product appeal to them. I guess you could choose to be butthurt over it instead though, to whatever end.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

you know what else is an untapped market?
people who want the game at 100% off, they should all be allowed to leave a negative review too

You wouldn't profit from that if you didn't have other business models like Ad markets or "DLC" or "F2P/P2W" (which ample games offer by the way, that's why there were a lot of "Free to Play" MMOs and why there's a lot of "Free" Mobile games, because they hope to hook people and get them to spend money e.g. tap an otherwise untapped market. A lot of the most successful and profitable games recently like Fortnite or League of Legends/DOTA are such.

It's pretty stupid to ignore the demands of a sizable amount of customers (to the point that negative reviews might start to matter) that apparently bought your product and indicate they want to give you more money and there's potentially tens or hundreds of thousands out there that just wish you'd translate your product into their language. I guess you could choose to be butthurt over it instead though, to whatever end.

translating a game into communism isn't worth all the money in the world

 

[Dexter]

translating a game into communism isn't worth all the money in the world

Imagine how much less popular PUBG would have been without China...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

translating a game into communism isn't worth all the money in the world

Imagine how much less popular PUBG would have been without China...

thanks for proving my point that communists aren't worth catering to

 

[Dexter]

You're starting to sound very communist yourself, friend. Maybe try making a logical argument instead why near effortlessly growing one's market and making loadsomoney would be wrong.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

why aren't you taking the time to translate your entire game to communist moonrunes so they can buy it at 98% off in their local currency

ok

 

[LESS T_T]

Another week, another Steam weekly top sellers by revenue. There are new games! Or sequels of old games!

Also PUBG under five.

#10 - Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition
#9 - RimWorld
#8 - WARRIORS OROCHI 4 with bonus
#7 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#6 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider
#5 - World War 3
#4 - Football Manager 2019
#3 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#2 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#1 - Assassin's Creed® Odyssey

What happened to Monster Hunter World? Looks like it's the effect of 20% discount ended 2 weeks ago, it consumed the purchases that could happen last week.

WAR!

#10 - RimWorld
#9 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#8 - Kingdom Come: Deliverance
#7 - Cities: Skylines - Industries
#6 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#5 - Rise of the Tomb Raider
#4 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey
#3 - Football Manager 2019
#2 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#1 - World War 3

And PUBG bounced back. At least we also got Kingdom Come back.

 

[LESS T_T]

WAR!

#10 - RimWorld
#9 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#8 - Kingdom Come: Deliverance
#7 - Cities: Skylines - Industries
#6 - SOULCALIBUR VI
#5 - Rise of the Tomb Raider
#4 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey
#3 - Football Manager 2019
#2 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#1 - World War 3

And PUBG bounced back. At least we also got Kingdom Come back.

Halloween Sale is not necessarily for horror-themed games, but for Valve secretly and scientifically trying to measure what is the most horrifying monster of all time.

Here are the results:

#10 - Rust - G-Man aka Garry Newman, an FBI agent who thought he is secretly investigating Gabe Newell. Exposed by Newell at the time of Half-life 1 (reportedly punched in the face), and then turned into a game developer, now making a ton of money with Valve.

#9 - The Forest - The Lone Survivor, known for butchering innocent cannibalistic tribes of remote islands.

#8 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - AssCreed, ass-shaped former-assassin turned into an RPG imposter. Most horrifying to Codexers, I heard.

#7 - Call of Cthulhu - Cthulhu, it's only seventh? What a wimp.

#6 - Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition - Talking skeletons with genitals. Most adored by Codexers, I heard.

#5 - DARK SOULS III - The Fire Fades Edition - Souls-like. Similar to the RPG imposter, you can't escape them.

#4 - Grand Theft Auto V - Car thieves, actual modern horror. They all once dreamed of becoming a rock star, though.

#3 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS - Takeshi Kitano.

#2 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition - Of course, Halloween should have witches.

#1 - Football Manager 2019 - It's official, bigfoot is the most horrifying monster. Hear their sound, you'll know why.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

For fun, most wishlisted games at the moment:

But where's Grimoire?

Who the hell is wishlisting a free mod you can download by just typing the name into Google? Is it too hard for people to follow the extremely simple installation instructions?

To be fair I've been waiting for the Dark Mod to show up on Steam ever since they got greenlit, so I can kind of understand it in the sense that I've done similar shit for no good reason.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/45705/

Steam Client Update Released

Client Update - Valve
8 Nov

A new Steam client has been released and will be automatically downloaded.

General

• Fixed friends chat and other UI being visible when authorizing an in-game mictransaction

New Steam Chat

• Unread messages or active voice chats will now update your Steam tray/taskbar icons to indicate these states
  
• When displaying a Steam store link in a chat window, extra information about the game, such as screenshots, video and price, are now displayed in the chat history

Windows

• Significantly improved performance and decreased memory usage for HTML based UI (Store, Community, etc) in the main Steam desktop window

Steam Input

• Added the ability to change controller type in the “Define Layout” screen. This only affects the glyphs and configurations recommended for the device and the limits of whatever low-level API the controller is read through still apply. For example if a PS4 controller is currently treated as an Xbox controller because of a driver or non-Steam Input remapping software presenting the device over Xinput reclassifying it to a PS4 controller will only correct the glyphs and the gyro/trackpad will not work.
  
• Fixed an issue with devices with digital triggers and buttons bound to trigger outputs
  
• Added Steam Input per-game settings to the desktop client’s game properties page.

In-Home Streaming

• Streaming from Mac OS X Mojave is currently disabled

Big Picture Mode

• Added the new chat functionality to Big Picture Mode. If you’re using a custom Big Picture Mode controller configuration please update to the new recommended configuration under Settings->Base Configurations->Big Picture Mode. Hit X/Square to browse configurations and apply the recommended configuration.
  
• Added "Invite to Game" action to Big Picture chat
  
• Chat scaling is now done automatically based on whether Big Picture is running on a large monitor (>40" diagonal) or running in VR with the option to override regular and VR scaling settings individually
  
• Default chat controller bindings for Steam Controller/Xbox are:
  • Left Trackpad/Stick: Scroll the UI, press to show/hide the friends list
    
  • Long press of joystick/D-pad press:
    • Up: Invite currently selected chat friend to game
      
    • Down: Close the current chat tab
      
    • Left/Right: Switch between chat tabs
  • Right Trackpad/Stick: Mouse cursor, press to show/hide the on-screen keyboard
    
  • X: Accept game invite from friend
    
  • Y: Start/end voice chat
    
  • B: Exit chat panel
    
  • A: Select item under cursor
    
  • Start: Submit entered text
    
  • Back: Open emoticon list
    
  • Left Bumper: Switch to web browser
    
  • Right Bumper: Return to main menu
    
  • Left Trigger: Open context menu under cursor
    
  • Right Trigger: Click/double click at cursor

VR

• The VR overlay keyboard is now opened when the Show Keyboard button is activated
  
• Added a Back button to the left of the Show Keyboard button that shows while running in VR

 

[Gerrard]

Just wanted to mention a funny thing, the difference between peak and bottom player numbers for the top games, in case of DOTA2 and CSGO it's around 220 and 200%, but in case of PUBG it's a staggering 700%, and you can see based on the time which regions of the world are the most declined.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/steam-bug-could-have-given-you-access-to-all-the-cd-keys-of-any-game/

Steam bug could have given you access to all the CD keys of any game
Bug affected a Steam API and was patched in August. Downgrading your Steam client won't help you get free games.


Ukrainian vulnerability researcher has found a bug that would have allowed him to download all the activation keys (also known as CD keys) made available through the Steam gaming platform, for any game, ever.

Discovered by Artem Moskowsky, the bug resided in Steamworks, a platform that Valve runs to help developers with building and publishing games via its Steam gaming client.

Moskowsky found the bug in a Steam web API located at partner.steamgames.com/partnercdkeys/assignkeys/.

This is the API that lets game developers or affiliates retrieve CD keys made available to Steam users so their customers can activate a game installed via the Steam client.

This API is accessible using a regular Steam account and takes several parameters, but the ones most relevant are appid (representing the game), keyid (representing the identifier of a set of CD keys), and keycount (representing the number of CD keys that Steam needs to return inside a CD key set).

Moskowsky says that under normal circumstances when he attempted to retrieve CD keys for games he didn't own, Steam's API gave him an error, which is what's supposed to happen.

But the researcher found that by setting the keycount parameter to "0" he could bypass the API's limitations and retrieve a file with CD keys belonging to any game, even if the user was not supposed to have access to that game's CD keys collection.

In an interview with ZDNet, Msokowsky told us the bug wasn't complicated to figure out, "but it was not obvious enough" for the casual observer.

"Here, my intuition helped me," he said.

During his tests, and before notifying Steam, the researcher said he was able to generate and download over 36,000 CD keys for the Portal 2 game.

Further, as he explored the bug's reach, he also realized that an attacker can go through all Steam games IDs and gradually download all their CD keys, as the appid and keyid parameters were easy to guess.

Moskowsky reported the bug to Valve in August via the company's HackerOne bug bounty platform, and the company fixed it within days but only recently allowed him to go public with his findings.

It is unclear if anybody else ever found or exploited this issue before Moskowsky stumbling upon it. "Valve did not provide me with this information," the researcher told ZDNet. "But I personally think that no one used the vulnerability." Valve also didn't respond to a request for comment from ZDNet.

The researcher received a $20,000 reward for reporting this particular bug to Valve, one of the largest bug bounties the platform has ever paid.

A month before that, Moskowsky had previously earned Valve's top reward of $25,000 after discovering and reporting an SQL injection flaw in the same Steamworks portal.

Moskowsky tells us he's had a very fruitful year, overall, also previously collecting $18,000 from the ViaBTC mining pool, and another $13,300 from Samsung.