Community MetaSteam | November 2019 - You Can't Spell Steam Without EA

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Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Don't expect ANY launch discount on Steam at all, if anything we will have a shadowdrop and that's it, theoretically the game should be out on Steam in 9 days (it's Early December, so, yeah) and depot is already ready.

But yes, it's really funny to see this kind of movements, no moneyhatted at all, it's working perfectly.
 

Tizoc

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Oct 11, 2018
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:coffee-blob:

Don't expect ANY launch discount on Steam at all, if anything we will have a shadowdrop and that's it, theoretically the game should be out on Steam in 9 days (it's Early December, so, yeah) and depot is already ready.

But yes, it's really funny to see this kind of movements, no moneyhatted at all, it's working perfectly.
Eh just wait for bundles.
I know we all have a 'grudge' to bear against these, but best to quietly leave them be.
 

Arsene

On a break
Apr 17, 2019
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Don't expect ANY launch discount on Steam at all, if anything we will have a shadowdrop and that's it, theoretically the game should be out on Steam in 9 days (it's Early December, so, yeah) and depot is already ready.

But yes, it's really funny to see this kind of movements, no moneyhatted at all, it's working perfectly.
Wait the depot is ready? Did people find its SteamDB already?
 
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fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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Don't expect ANY launch discount on Steam at all, if anything we will have a shadowdrop and that's it, theoretically the game should be out on Steam in 9 days (it's Early December, so, yeah) and depot is already ready.

But yes, it's really funny to see this kind of movements, no moneyhatted at all, it's working perfectly.
Link to depot?

Edit: I guess this is the one: SteamDB Unknown App 1174180 · AppID: 1174180
 

Deku

Just nothing
Oct 19, 2018
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The dev for OutDrive, one of the removed games, isn't happy about the ban.
Guys.
Ban is absolutely wrong.

The ban’s reason is “bundle abuse”, but I’ve never done that.
A year ago, the last publisher abused this, after which I broke the contract with them, to take the game myself.

I wrote a letter to the Valve asking me to sort things out.
appID Outdrive 2 is also banned.

I am absolutely broken inside ...
 

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The loss of Dagestan's (or whatever they were called) games is no big deal, since most of their titles aren't much of a game anyway.

But, some of the titles that are gone were fairly enjoyable, so it's sad to see them go.
A few days ago I "cried" about a Chinese publisher's titles being removed from Steam with no warning nor information.

Now, a few more enjoyable titles are gone. Like the already mentioned Failed State, who I happen to own, and who had positive reviews/impressions, even from places like RPS:

And now these games are gone, with developers apparently without knowing what options they have:




I'm still not sure why Valve acts on some developers and publishers, because of "abuse of Steamworks tools", but developers and publishers who do stuff like using Steamworks to run their beta tests on Steam, with no intention of launching on Steam, only to launch on a competing store exclusively, and merely using the store and community pages to promote their launch elsewhere, or to offer support for those very same games that aren't available on Steam, and won't be until at least a year later (if ever), is fine by them.
I mean, from what is know that is in violation of their terms, but they don't act on that.

Zen Studios used the Steamworks tools and Steam community to test their game Operencia.
Then, they launched exclusively on the EGS, but still kept updating the release date to 2019 (essentially using the "coming soon" section for promotion of their launch elsewhere; their game kept appears on my "coming soon" section for months).
Why isn't that game, or the developer/publisher (it's a self-published game) gone from Steam as well?

I really dislike when a company uses certain justifications to act on some, while conveniently ignoring others.
 

Stone Ocean

Proud Degenerate
Apr 17, 2019
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What even counts as abusing Steamworks? Like an exploit?

Can individual devs affected by publisher decisions get their games back in? Or at least appeal in some capacity?
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
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I'd give that dev the benefit of the doubt but it does sound like a lot of these games will have troubled publishing/development issues and some of them do sound like some of the excuses in the VAC ban threads tbh. Plagiarism, dodgy publisher, stolen keys etc.

Hopefully Steam Support can deal with the claims and get the legit games back on the store.
 

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What even counts as abusing Steamworks? Like an exploit?

Can individual devs affected by publisher decisions get their games back in? Or at least appeal in some capacity?
I assume "abusing Steamworks" means violation of their terms.

Some of these publishers seems to have been banned for "bundle abuse", whatever that means.
I say whatever that means, because there are surely titles who, despite not being bundled, are sold for much less outside of Steam, so they will have a ratio of purchases vs key activations pending firmly to the later.

If the problem is indeed with some of these publishers, I'm hoping Valve may help some of these developers getting back on Steam, self-published.
 
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Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Steam Chess is back?
Probably, yeah.

Steam Chess?
It was a minigame back when Steam was still green hehe




As for the violation of terms, I'm almost sure that's just the public version and not the internal version of this story, we have seen bans for that and they doesn't look like anything near of what happened last night, if I have to guess something very fishy was happening and some legit devs got burned with the real problem, for those I think best thing would be self-publish, to be honest, I don't know how a fishy pub can help you and your game, if anything, it makes this kind of problems way more probable to happen.

Anyway, some pubs/devs were same entity but with alt-accounts, so I kinda expect the internal reason is going that way, something illegal for sure but at the same time there's some kind of investigation on-going.
 

Cordelia

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Jun 10, 2019
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Being a toxic Steam fanboi allow you to avoid this shit

[November 25, 2019] General / Miscellaneous – PC
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when changing Windows audio devices/settings while the game was running
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when launching the game after switching between Vulkan and DirectX 12
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when graphical settings were changed and applied while close to the VRAM limit
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash during loading screens when launching Story Mode or Red Dead Online
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when attempting to quit the game
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when switching between several input devices
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash during gameplay when using keyboard and mouse controls
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when transitioning between Story Mode and Red Dead Online
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when entering Photo Mode while the player was in cinematic camera mode
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash during certain weather conditions on systems with multiple graphics cards
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in graphical errors and other instability when using Vulkan with multiple graphics cards
  • Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a random crash during gameplay when using DirectX 12
  • Improvements to address issues that resulted in random crashes during gameplay in Story Mode and Red Dead Online
 

bobnowhere

Careful Icarus
Sep 20, 2018
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A lot of these Russian published games were selling keys on other sites for peanuts, a couple of cents each all the time. Plati, Dig etc... I thought a while back steam might catch on to that, they don't like large permanent price differentials, temporary sales are fine.
 
OP
lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
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Is shadow dropping RDR2 on Steam with no announcement or promotion part of the deal with Epic? It’s stupid we don’t have a launch date yet.
sure seems like that might be the case

That's because SteamDB put a staff note in saying it was Red Dead 2. I think what Wok meant was how did they figure out it was RDR2?

SteamDB's devs shouldnt have access to the real identity of Unknown SteamApps.
they don't ... the appID is hard-coded into rockstar's wonderful launcher :p just hidden













 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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Any spanish peeps on here have Mort and Phil Adventure in Cine? I cannot for the life of me launch the game and I don't know why .
think the .exe is trying to launch certain files but fails, so I wonder if the game requires being instaleld in C drive to launch or if someone could figure out what actions the launcher is doing I might find out what I need to get it working on my end.

Oh and Quake runs fine for me now that I realize that the music this whole time has been ambient :p
 

madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
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Mobile app has reference to steam app id long ago, just didn't have value.

A lot of these Russian published games were selling keys on other sites for peanuts, a couple of cents each all the time. Plati, Dig etc... I thought a while back steam might catch on to that, they don't like large permanent price differentials, temporary sales are fine.
This most likely. Basically in business of selling Steam keys rather than games themselves. Valve has warned that doing so could lead to consequences.
 

FunnyJay

Powered by the Cloud
Apr 6, 2019
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Sweden
What's the consensus on State of Decay? Every same I add it to the cart but inevitably end up removing it. Right now it's pretty cheap on HB but it's not really a question of how expensive it is and more if it's worth the time investment.
OK, let's talk State of Decay! 😀
I played it back before the YOSE edition was released, but I own all the DLC!

Main game:
Story is your classic "Ahh zombies! What to do? Military acting suspicious!"
Nothing groundbreaking, but the way you interact with the systems of the game is cool.
Eventually you get to choose your survivor from your safe house (permadeath exists) and use them to explore and scavenge whatever materials you need / build outposts filled with traps / continue the story missions. This survivor will get tired/hurt and needs to be swapped out with another from your base, so you can continue exploring. Hence, you need to equip several characters and stock your base's equipment locker with all kinds of equipment.
Your characters are regular humans, they will tire quickly and cannot kill zombies indefinitely. Running away or sneaking is often a valid option.
The safe house can be improved with different rooms (workshops /beds etc) and different characters have different abilities that can help (chef/botanist/gubmaker etc).
You can and will move your safe house between several possible buildings during gameplay.

Now, all these systems in play are quite interesting. So what are the bad parts?
A weirdly implemented real-time system, were the game supposedly plays itself when you do not play.
so when you shut off for the night, and get back a week (real-time) later, rations might be consumed, characters might be away or missing etc. How much this affects the game can be discussed, and the developers claim that they have patched it to be forgiving if you leave the game for extended periods of time.
This "real-time" aspect can be turned off with mods, but I haven't tried that personally.

My biggest pet peeve with the game is that it throws A LOT at you at all times.
You need to scavenge more food, and bullets, and of course some material to build that new room you want in your safe house. But then one of your survivors radios in, telling you he needs help getting back home. And the other room you are building has stopped construction because you need to scavenge some random part from somewhere.
While dealing with any of these issues, you are notified that two new wandering hordes have gathered and are moving towards home.
Dealing with that, a new infected house shows up in your neighborhood that needs clearing out, and one of the special infected are roaming the town as well.
Now one of your survivors is having a tough time so you need to go talk to them (read: take them out to kill some zombies).

During all this, you realize you never took the time to scavenge those supplies you needed at the beginning.

See my point? You are bombarded with content and missions all the time and never get to feel "done", and therefor seldom find a good place to end you game without risking the game screwing you when you get back (due to the real time aspect) if you leave the game in a "bad state" (whatever that is). EDIT: Note that the game never totally screwed me over with this real-time aspect and left the game "unwinnable" but you have no way of knowing what will happen next time you boot it up.

The DLC Breakdown is just the survival aspect of the main game, but the "story" is replaced with attempting to fix an RV and getting out of the state with your chosen number of buddies (only 5-6 allowed to take with you). Then the next "level" starts where you end up in the same map, with the buddies you chose, attempting to survive again and repairing a new RV to do it all again. For each "level" there are special characters you can unlock by performing certain achievements. Game supposedly gets more difficult for each level as well.

Breakdown is the purest form of State of Decay, and really enjoyable if you like the game.

The last DLC is some separated story about a conclave of soldiers defending some base. I've actually never tried this one.

So, to sum up:
State of Decay is a pure zombie survival game where you play and manage your group of survivors!
I find it very enjoyable but there are definitely negative aspects in the game as mentioned above.
Plus, it has a good soundtrack by Jesper Kyd!
 
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EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
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How many caveats did they add to that announcement? lol.

Glad it's doing well though, i'm really enjoying it. Makes me want to fire up the KotOR games for another playthrough. It's been a few years since i did a Star Wars Dark Forces/Jedi Knight/KotOR binge.
 
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beep boop

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Dec 6, 2018
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The only two games that came out this year that I really want to play are Sekiro and Disco Elysium.
Just found out Sekiro's on sale now for 36 euros. Pretty good price. But I didn't expect it to drop that deep and was planning on getting DE.
Not sure which of the two to get and I don't want to buy both right now, because I won't have the time D:
 
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Eferis

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Nov 12, 2018
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The only two games that came out this year that I really want to play are Sekiro and Disco Elysium.
Just found out Sekiro's on sale now for 36 euros. Pretty good price. But I didn't expect it to drop that deep and was planning on getting DE.
Not sure which of the two to get and I don't want to buy both right now, because I won't have the time D:
Two terrific games but very different from each other. Just buy the kind of game you want to play the most right now, you can't go wrong either way.
 

beep boop

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Dec 6, 2018
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Two terrific games but very different from each other. Just buy the kind of game you want to play the most right now, you can't go wrong either
Didn't think about it in terms of genres, but you make a good point. I just remembered that MHW Iceborne is releasing in January, so I’ll get my soul crushing action-RPG fix there. Doubling up might be too much to handle. Disco Elysium it is!
 
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Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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Yessss! They're finally putting down optic fiber near my house! Not clear if they'll also offer optic to the home, or only optic to the street, but still: huge improvement! :partyblob:
Soon you will experience what 5 MB download speed feels like. At least.


 
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