Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages: THERE’S A STEAM SALE~! → Read More
A funny thing happened at the weekend. One of the Steam deals was for Risen, an RPG that came out in 2009. I hear it’s pretty good, actually. Well, at least the PC version was OK. Anyhow, the game was on sale for $14.95 (50 percent off its regular price, in other words), and so many people bought the game that its publisher, Deep Silver, ran out of activation keys! Yes: Steam sold more games than the publisher was even prepared to sell! → Read More
Some people just won’t accept their obsolescence quietly. A number of game retailers in the UK are outraged that their customers might get games from the secure and convenient Steam instead of leaving their houses and traveling across town to get it from their brick-and-mortar store. Consequently, they are threatening not to stock games from publishers who use the digital distribution service.
So their theory is that if people can’t get the game from a store, they won’t buy it at all? Cute! → Read More
Happy Halloween! Why not celebrate with a brand new game or two (or three) courtesy of Steam. If the game is scary, features zombies, or ghosts, it’s probably on sale. I mean, what are you going to do this weekend? Go to lame party party filled with a bunch of neckbeards and trashy girls? Forget that, turn off you lights, put your candy on a chair with a sign politely asking people to only take one piece and load up L4D2. → Read More
A fancy e-mail just arrived in my inbox, which is 94 percent full right now, saying that the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops is now available for pre-order on Steam. Hilariously, they’re charging $59.99 for the game, which may be acceptable if you’re gaming on a PS3 or 360, but is patently ridiculous on the PC. Have to pay for that non-existent PC license fee, I see? No, this isn’t merely a complaint post; it has a far nobler point. Fallout: New Vegas came out on Tuesday and it shipped with Steamworks, Valve’s platform to handle achievements, updates, and the like. Fallout 3 didn’t use Steamworks, but instead used Games For Windows Live, which is pretty much universally loathed. → Read More
Bethesda released Fallout: New Vegas for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC yesterday. The reviews fill me with great hope, particularly Canard PC’s take. (Canard PC was one of the few publications to note that Fallout 3 was, in fact, a hot mess, at least from the perspective of presenting a well-written game.) But there’s one problem with the game, specifically as it relates to the Steam version: it’s broken. Yes, it’s broken, and it’s all The Cloud’s fault. All hail The Cloud, right? → Read More
Lest any of you doubt the raw power of Steam, the latest numbers should, um, erase that doubt. Yes, that’ll do. Valve says that Steam has seen 178 percent new account growth in the past year and more than 200 percent growth in sales. There’s now more than 30 million Steam accounts out there, and I just used mine to pre-order Fallout: New Vegas. → Read More
A certain video game that once upon a time featured the Taliban has leaked. I only bring this up because this prompted me to check Steam to see how much they want for the game: oh, right, $59.99. But then I also noticed this: last year’s FPS—that’s first-person sensation—Modern Warfare 2 is on sale right now on Steam. → Read More
Good news for Mac gamers: Left 4 Dead 2 is coming tomorrow. If you already own it for the PC, you will own it on the Mac. If you don’t own it yet, go buy it. Steam is including all of the previously released DLC as well, so you won’t miss out on any of the L4D2 gaming goodness. See the press release after the jump. → Read More
Oh, how annoying. Direct 2 Drive, the IGN-owned Steam-like digital distribution service, will be the exclusive home of the Digital Collector’s Edition of Fallout: New Vegas. Why do I, the average gamer, have to have an Excel spreadsheet open just to determine which store has what content? → Read More
Looks like we won’t be playing Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition on the PC anytime soon. (Meh: we’re all busy playing Civilization V and F1 2010.) Capcom blames piracy, as always. → Read More
Well there you have it: digital sales have outpaced physical sales. For PC games, that is. According to the all-seeing, all-knowing NPD Group, there were 11.7 million digital sales of PC games during the first half of 2010. That compares to 8.2 million physical sales. Clearly Steam and others like it are on the right track. → Read More
Time for some weekend FPS goodness. Steam is running a sale on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. Best part, it’s $9.99. How can you pass up a deal like that? → Read More
This week being QuakeCon and all, Steam has set up a special deal on all of the current Id and Bethesda games. If you bought these separately, the over all value on the software in the package would be over $300. In light of QuakeCon though, Valve is selling the whole package for $69.99. Just to hit a few highlights from the list, you get Wolfenstein 3D, Ultimate Doom, everything related to Quake, and Fallout 3 – Game of the Year Edition. Go buy it! → Read More
Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I found “Medal of Honor Beta” in my Steam Library What?! I didn’t pre-order the game (seriously, $60 for a PC game? No thank you.) so something was “up,” as the kids say in 1988. But then Matt Burns, angel that he is, did a little bit of sleuthing. Turns out that anyone who bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has access to the beta. Lucky me! → Read More
Note: A reader sent us this interesting take on Steam and DRM, but requested to stay anonymous due to the nature of the article. We of course obliged.
Up until a few weeks ago, the last PC game I purchased and didn’t pirate was Team Fortress 2 via the digital download service, Steam. The last PC game I purchased in a retail box was Half Life 2. Yet like many, I’ve still managed to play every PC hit over the last decade. I simply couldn’t justify spending $50 on a game when pirating offers so many real benefits verses owning a legit copy.
Part of my motivation was that it’s just so damn easy to pirate a game. It’s like three clicks of the mouse to download a torrent and even less on Usernet. The files download as fast as my cable modem allows and I have the full game with simple cracking instructions a few minutes later. Why in the world would I want to drive to a store and give them $50 for the same thing? → Read More
Friendly reminder: Steam has a killer summertime sale going on right now, and it runs through July 4. → Read More
Just a heads-up to let you Mac users out there that Counter-Strike: Source, “the number one online action game in the world,” is now available on Steam for Mac. → Read More
Remember back when anti-mac fanboys use to say that “the Mac doesn’t have gaming, it’s not 1337”. Then Apple entered the gaming world as a noob, and now look, OS X is running Steam. → Read More
It’s so appropriate yet sad that Alyx is tasked with announcing the six-year old Half-Life 2′s Mac launch. But really there’s no shame in playing the some-what old Half-Life 2 even today. It’s one of the games that we agreed with in PC Gamer’s top games of all time list. But it’s yet another sign that the Mac gaming scene still has a long way to go. → Read More
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