Community MetaSteam | March 2023 - You know, Wo Leon, we really are the last of March

[Derrick01]

The idea of the “struggling indie” is romanticised a lot.

Yeah we live in an age where there's like 500 games coming out every single day and 99% of them aren't moneyhatted by anyone. I don't really care for hearing sob stories about how someone had to take the money anymore.

What are your predictions on Resident Evil 4 vs The Last of Us on Steam? Which one's gonna have the higher CCU?

New day 1 releases will always fare better than late ports no matter how big the game is. Tlou is obviously a much bigger game in sales and critical reception but it's still a 6 month late port of a 10 year old game. Yes it got "remade" but it was graphical only, it's the same exact game. RE4 looks to have plenty of changes and adding new stuff too (as well as cutting lots of little things out that I'm not thrilled about).

 

[C-Dub]

I think both RE4 and The Last of Us will be massive on Steam, but RE4 is going to be one of the biggest releases this year whereas The Last of Us Part I is a late port of a PS5 remake of a PS4 remaster of a PS3 game.

Other than the Oculus VR version and a few remasters over the years, RE4 hasn't been properly looked at in nearly 20 years.

RE4 will likely be more front-loaded as there's more hype there. The Last of Us Part I will be a wishlist game for many, so it'll do well over a longer period.

I've already bought both and I know which one I'll be playing first.

 

[Mivey]

I'm actually more interested in Last of Us. Just to understand a bit the hype about it, as gameplay wise it never looked interesting. With the RE4 demo I already know I'll be getting a brilliant game, and also roughly what to expect moment to moment.

 

[Mor]

Your TLOU prediction seems reasonable, but I think you're underestimating RE4.

The RE4 demo had the highest CCU for any RE demo on Steam (36k) compared to RE3 (19k), RE8 (18k), RE2 (10.8k) and RE7 (3,900). The all time peak for an RE game on Steam is RE8 with 106k. RE4 can be in the 125-150k range, especially with the nostalgia factor.

Most likely, to be honest, I think you are correct there but I was mostly talking from my own experiences, which might not translate well with the general world idea

 

[yuraya]

Hot take DQ > FF

Has always been the case.

Can't wait for the Flames of Fate. And hopefully PC gamers don't have to wait too long for it. That thing will be the a new Deck killer app tho I'm scared it being UE5 could be too demanding. Maybe Deck 2 killer app

 

[dex3108]

 

[Li Kao]

Hey, I tried Darkest Dungeon again ! It’s horribly difficult, but I would argue a good chunk of the difficulty is caused by the terribad tutorial and UI.
Then I finished the night playing it on Deck. A little small but playable.
That being said…

Has the criminal responsible for the gamepad layout been arrested, yet ?

 

[Censored]

It's been too long time since Inifinty Strash last gameplay.


It's my most wanted game from Squenix but I think they missed the point since Dai no Daibouken anime remake ended. It's should have been released when anime was airing.
I wonder if the game is still in development or it's been cancelled.

 

[didamangi]

I should play Black Mesa someday..

 

[DrShrapnel]

What are your predictions on Resident Evil 4 vs The Last of Us on Steam? Which one's gonna have the higher CCU?

It’ll probably be RE4, since it’s a beautiful remake of arguably the most popular RE game.
I fell off The Last of Us Remastered on PS4, although I was enjoying it a good bit. It remains to be seen what affect the TV show will have on numbers, as personally I can say the it had me itching to play the game again.

I’m hoping to see a big player count for Last of Us, so Sony continues bringing their games over. Feels like we should be hearing about more ports coming soon. I’m not really aware for what’s in the pipeline after TLoU?

 

[Li Kao]

Fuck the Deck, or more appropriately fuck Valve half baked functionalities. Always a little thing.
So I want to resume my Darkest Dungeon run on PC but Steam says cloud synchronization impossible.
Any idea ?

Solution - Ok, this is dumb, I have to wait for the Deck to upload the save before putting it to sleep. Can't do that in the background, so siree...
That being said, upload seems to be awfully long, is steam having a fit ?

 

[DrShrapnel]

Fuck the Deck, or more appropriately fuck Valve half baked functionalities. Always a little thing.
So I want to resume my Darkest Dungeon run on PC but Steam says cloud synchronization impossible.
Any idea ?

Solution - Ok, this is dumb, I have to wait for the Deck to upload the save before putting it to sleep. Can't do that in the background, so siree...
That being said, upload seems to be awfully long, is steam having a fit ?

Yeah, I’ve noticed that if I put my Deck to sleep during a game, the cloud will be out of sync with what my PC will have.
If you plan on bouncing between Deck and PC, it’s best to just back out of the game so the Cloud can update.

 

[STHX]

It's been too long time since Inifinty Strash last gameplay.


It's my most wanted game from Squenix but I think they missed the point since Dai no Daibouken anime remake ended. It's should have been released when anime was airing.
I wonder if the game is still in development or it's been cancelled.

Let's be serious. Even if it releases I'm positive it will end up like most of their 2022 "A" or "AA" releases: no advertisment allowed, shitty prices, mid reviews, -50% sale after a month

 

[gabbo]

I should play Black Mesa someday..

You really should. Soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission.

 

[Censored]

Let's be serious. Even if it releases I'm positive it will end up like most of their 2022 "A" or "AA" releases: no advertisment allowed, shitty prices, mid reviews, -50% sale after a month

Of course I don't expect the game to be a high end game. I usually say I miss so much AA games from PS2 era, this was my most played generation by far.
I would love japanese developers release more games like that era, It was japanese creativity pinnacle with all of those survival, action adventures and RPG games. I'm not a big fan of AAA games. For example another of my most anticipated games is Slitterhead from Bokeh Game Studio, I will play Final Fantasy XVI but I'm not so excited about it.

 

[didamangi]

Capcom put a secret or two in the RE4 demo. That's really cool.

- TMP in a well if you enter the village without an item.
- Mad Chainsaw difficulty randomly pops up when clicking new game.

 

[Alexandros]

Fuck the Deck, or more appropriately fuck Valve half baked functionalities. Always a little thing.
So I want to resume my Darkest Dungeon run on PC but Steam says cloud synchronization impossible.
Any idea ?

Solution - Ok, this is dumb, I have to wait for the Deck to upload the save before putting it to sleep. Can't do that in the background, so siree...
That being said, upload seems to be awfully long, is steam having a fit ?

This seems like kind of an extreme reaction to what sounds like a relatively minor issue.

 

[ezodagrom]

It's been too long time since Inifinty Strash last gameplay.


It's my most wanted game from Squenix but I think they missed the point since Dai no Daibouken anime remake ended. It's should have been released when anime was airing.
I wonder if the game is still in development or it's been cancelled.

Hearing rumors that there's gonna be a continuation to that Dragon Quest anime soon, and with Digimon Ghost Game apparently ending in a few episodes, episode 68, I guess the Dragon Quest anime will replace that?

 

[Censored]

Hearing rumors that there's gonna be a continuation to that Dragon Quest anime soon, and with Digimon Ghost Game apparently ending in a few episodes, episode 68, I guess the Dragon Quest anime will replace that?

Maybe Dragon Quest: The Hero Avan and the Dark Lord of Hellfire?

This is the current manga it's being published on Japan (6 volumes by now) and it's the prequel from Dai no Daibouken. Nice if it gets anime ^^.

 

[Durante]

Yeah, I’ve noticed that if I put my Deck to sleep during a game, the cloud will be out of sync with what my PC will have.
If you plan on bouncing between Deck and PC, it’s best to just back out of the game so the Cloud can update.

This is only true for games that don't support dynamic cloud sync.
(For example, our releases of Zero and Azure support dynamic cloud sync)
Of course, since you can't even expect all publishers/devs to implement standard Steam cloud support, which is exactly 0 coding effort, you most likely can't expect the usual suspects to ever implement dynamic cloud support, since that's half a day of effort.

This seems like kind of an extreme reaction to what sounds like a relatively minor issue.

And it's not even a Valve issue - they already provide a solution for it.
The fact that this solution isn't perfect for every single game on the platform is an unavoidable consequence of building a gaming platform that runs tens of thousands of existing games with mostly 0 platform-specific modifications.

 

[MomoVideo]

This is only true for games that don't support dynamic cloud sync.
(For example, our releases of Zero and Azure support dynamic cloud sync)

Is there any way to check which games support this? Not gonna lie, I would really love it if I didn't have to turn off Persona 5 every time I want to play it on my PC.

 

[Durante]

Is there any way to check which games support this? Not gonna lie, I would really love it if I didn't have to turn off Persona 5 every time I want to play it on my PC.

It's probably the "sync_while_suspended" entry on SteamDB:

https://steamdb.info/app/1668510/ufs/

 

[STHX]

Of course I don't expect the game to be a high end game. I usually say I miss so much AA games from PS2 era, this was my most played generation by far.
I would love japanese developers release more games like that era, It was japanese creativity pinnacle with all of those survival, action adventures and RPG games. I'm not a big fan of AAA games. For example another of my most anticipated games is Slitterhead from Bokeh Game Studio, I will play Final Fantasy XVI but I'm not so excited about it.

I'm not the type to start randomly advertising other games/publishers but I think Bamco is nailing the A/AA anime licenced game feel of old. I mean there is still the issue of them only working on certain series which you may or may not like but overall I ended up enjoying most of their releases despite their issues, and I'm not the only one looking at their Steam numbers (or seeing the reaction to the new Budokai Tenkaichi)
Like there is no better example than Super Robot Wars. Playing those games feel like opening a time capsule to the 90s. The dialogues, the narrative, the character, the structure of the games are straight from a weekly Monster of the Week mecha series. Just look at these cutins from SRWOG1 on GBA

There is nothing else in today's gaming age like this, just like there is nothing like, for example, Ace Combat (outside of indies that are picking up the slack)

 

[Li Kao]

This seems like kind of an extreme reaction to what sounds like a relatively minor issue.

Yeah sure, the possibility of overwriting my save is minor. Ok.

And to be precise, I exit my games before putting the Deck to sleep ! I can only suppose I should wait some time after that for the upload to finish.
Or maybe it was a fluke, never had to wait before sleep before.

 

[prudis]

Stadia’s pivot to a cloud service has also been shut down

After Stadia’s commercial failure, the pivot to Immersive Stream for Games is dead, too.

arstechnica.com

 

[lashman]

 

[Alexandros]

Yeah sure, the possibility of overwriting my save is minor. Ok.

And to be precise, I exit my games before putting the Deck to sleep ! I can only suppose I should wait some time after that for the upload to finish.
Or maybe it was a fluke, never had to wait before sleep before.

Read Durante's post above, he explains why.

 

[Li Kao]

Read Durante's post above, he explains why.

Read my post, I disagree it’s minor. And I’m not sure if Durante post is about steam cloud in general or dynamic cloud sync, which isn’t my issue… at least I think.
I’m not asking for save upload during a game.

 

[Alexandros]

Read my post, I disagree it’s minor. And I’m not sure if Durante post is about steam cloud in general or dynamic cloud sync, which isn’t my issue… at least I think.
I’m not asking for save upload during a game.

My friend, you said "fuck the Deck or more appropriately fuck Valve half baked functionalities" for something that you yourself said is "a little thing". My comment was made because I thought your reaction was disproportionately angry for a little thing that might not actually be Valve's fault in the first place.

 

[Arc]

The Source 2 hype is real.

 

[Li Kao]

My friend, you said "fuck the Deck or more appropriately fuck Valve half baked functionalities" for something that you yourself said is "a little thing". My comment was made because I thought your reaction was disproportionately angry for a little thing that might not actually be Valve's fault in the first place.

I would argue that in ‘always a little thing’, the ‘always part is important and leaving it out of your quote is dubious. Then again, I’m not interested in arguing the tone of my posts here.

About my issue, I could very well be off base and spouting shit, but how hard would it be to not really nuke the internet connexion when entering sleep mode if a save is being uploaded ? At least putting a timer in case of some issue at the end of which the Deck is really entering sleep mode.

 

[Nano]

 

[Alexandros]

I would argue that in ‘always a little thing’, the ‘always part is important and leaving it out of your quote is dubious.

As I said, Durante already explained why you shouldn't get so angry over such things:

The fact that this solution isn't perfect for every single game on the platform is an unavoidable consequence of building a gaming platform that runs tens of thousands of existing games with mostly 0 platform-specific modifications.

 

[yuraya]

The Source 2 hype is real.

Is it a coincidence?

Both numbers add up to only 2.8.

The beta release will push the account to 1.5 million followers and the game gets to 1.5 million concurrent players.

That is when Half-Life 3 comes out with the full Counter Strike 2 included.

 

[Durante]

About my issue, I could very well be off base and spouting shit, but how hard would it be to not really nuke the internet connexion when entering sleep mode if a save is being uploaded ? At least putting a timer in case of some issue at the end of which the Deck is really entering sleep mode.

Actually, I'm now not sure what we are talking about.

Dynamic cloud saves, which is a feature that games need to implement, is required so that cloud saves can be safely updated while putting the device to sleep while the game is running.

If in your case the save got corrupted even though you fully exited it before putting the deck to sleep, then I'd say that's actually a Steam issue and you should report it.

 

[Li Kao]

Actually, I'm now not sure what we are talking about.

Dynamic cloud saves, which is a feature that games need to implement, is required so that cloud saves can be safely updated while putting the device to sleep while the game is running.

If in your case the save got corrupted even though you fully exited it before putting the deck to sleep, then I'd say that's actually a Steam issue and you should report it.

Yeah, I quit the game, put the Deck in sleep mode and the save wasn’t uploaded. Waking the Deck only put me in a long upload, only to be greeted by an upload error at the end. I solved it by relaunching the game, saving again, and quitting.
Nothing to do with dynamic cloud save.

I can only suppose I put the Deck to sleep too soon after quitting. Now, why the upload didn’t work when I woke up the Deck, no idea.

 

[lashman]

via freshVeggie

 

[prudis]

hmm ... gameranx ... thats gonna be baaaad vid ... they always do shitty takes

 

[PC-tan]

I still find it weird how some Twitter accounts will point to Steam stats and say stuff but not really explain further than that. I saw a tweet from this one huge Apex account and they talked about how there was a pretty big bump in Apex number Saturday morning. But the thing is that if you know steam you know that Saturday "mornings" is always when stuff peaks, Sunday "mornings" is when stuff really peaks. Though.


Others also do something similar when they present some Steam data but don't further elaborate. I also find it funny how they will only look at Steam peaks, but hardly ever other to look at user review scores and stuff like that. "Oh I wonder how well X game is going". Seeing how those are also milestones. When it comes to users review scores it seems to mainly just be indie Devs that mention stuff like how it's crazy that they were able to get over 50k reviews and that they have an overwhelming positive score.


As of now, one of the main things bigger publishers are using as a marketing point is that the game is Steam Deck verified.

hmm ... gameranx ... thats gonna be baaaad vid ... they always do shitty takes

The video isn't terrible but it does seem like there is some misunderstanding and stuff. It's true that the PC ports of a lot of recent PC games have been bad. But some of these games have also been bad on consoles as well. It does feel like PS5 has the best version and that could be due to technical help they are getting from Sony, but also some marketing deal stuff, so focus on that version.


Now the issue with the money thing is that you have games sell better on PS5 VS PC VS Xbox.


But you also do have real life situations where the Switch version is the best selling version followed by the PC versions, but yet the PC version still seems to have issues despite it selling more then the PS5 version.


Maybe things will change in the future, it also does feel like some companies will just add a PC versions because of how likely "cheap" it is and how much money it will make without trying to optimize it.



I could go on but I'm currently tired right now.

 

[Alexandros]

The thing that's "happening with PC ports" is likely the same thing that happened during the beginning of the last console generation, which is when we got infamously disastrous ports like Arkham Knight. Developers are overworked, crunching to hit deadlines and deliver their games while working on seven or eight versions simultaneously and while transitioning to new hardware, apis and engines.

It's not just a PC thing either, Digital Foundry's videos show that a number of problematic ports also have issues on Xbox and some on PS5 too. It's more pronounced on PC due to the stuttering thing and less of an issue on console because console makers are more strict so they might reject your build before release or do a Cyberpunk and pull your game from the store.

I think the issue will go away now that most games won't be cross gen moving forward.

If in your case the save got corrupted even though you fully exited it before putting the deck to sleep, then I'd say that's actually a Steam issue and you should report it.

The save wasn't corrupted. He was playing Darkest Dungeon on Steam Deck, saved the game, exited and put the device to sleep with the cloud save upload mid way. So when he later tried to play Darkest Dungeon on PC the save wasn't there because the upload from Steam Deck was not finished.

 

[thekeats1999]

That’s the thing a lot of people outside of pc gaming don’t understand. It is not the platform that is at fault but the publishers.

I will even say things like the GTA trilogy remaster, the recent Outer Worlds debacle or Arkham Knight weren‘t necessarily the devs fault but the fact they had probably been paid a pittance and given next to no time to develop the ports.

The problem for these publishers is that the market is getting too big, the core audience too vocal and, sometimes, the PC version is very likely the biggest version that people are starting to expect better from them.

 

[bobnowhere]

There are next to no consequences to releasing games in such a terrible state. The vast majority of games media will ignore it and they just let sales numbers determine whether they fix them or not. Sell bad? Write it off against tax, shutter the studio and the CEO collects a nice share price bump bonus and moves onto another company. Sell well? Issue an apology and string players along with the resultant media bump. Another nice share price bonus bump.

 

[Cacher]

Discussion - What are you currently playing? (Week 11 of 2023)

Spring sale week! Is your wallet ready? Have you been playing the games that you got during winter sale? What are you playing this week? I am continuing Enkaku Sousa on the PSP. Started act 2 of the story. Looks like act 1 is the first half of the game where players are introduced to the...

metacouncil.com

 

[dex3108]

Did someone from here sent me friend request on Steam?

 

[fantomena]

Tried some SNES and GBA emulation today, including adding them to Steam as non-Steam game. Only had to disable Steam input on the games to get my controllers working. Very impressed. So Switch Online is a robbery. Especially the expansion pass thingy is daylight robbery when it takes less than 5 min to download the emulator and the roms.

 

[Ge0force]

Tried some SNES and GBA emulation today, including adding them to Steam as non-Steam game.

I've been trying some emulation as well the past few days. For the Steam Deck, there's EmuDeck which downloads all emulators and adds the ROMs to Steam. Incredible.

 

[Jonas]

I had completely missed that Tlou doesn't come with the online mode and for me that's a big disappointment since I loved it. Also baffling to see them charge full price for it, I'll wait for a deep sale or until pt2 is around the corner since I've completed it multiple times already.

 

[C-Dub]

Tried some SNES and GBA emulation today, including adding them to Steam as non-Steam game. Only had to disable Steam input on the games to get my controllers working. Very impressed. So Switch Online is a robbery. Especially the expansion pass thingy is daylight robbery when it takes less than 5 min to download the emulator and the roms.

I've been trying some emulation as well the past few days. For the Steam Deck, there's EmuDeck which downloads all emulators and adds the ROMs to Steam. Incredible.

EmuDeck is a gamechanger. Amazing software.

My emulation setup right now syncs emulator saves between my gaming PC, my Steam Deck and my Retroid Pocket 3. So I can pick my device and play from wherever I left off on any device.

I also have SNES and Mega Drive style controllers for classic systems on my PC to make it just a tad more authentic.

I think Switch online is not alone in its poor value. I’ve not found the “unsub and you lose access to everything” Netflix model to be at all valuable.

 

[kafiend]

I still find it weird how some Twitter accounts will point to Steam stats and say stuff but not really explain further than that. I saw a tweet from this one huge Apex account and they talked about how there was a pretty big bump in Apex number Saturday morning. But the thing is that if you know steam you know that Saturday "mornings" is always when stuff peaks, Sunday "mornings" is when stuff really peaks. Though.

At least it was just uninformed and vague

Twitter is a place where anyone can say anything. No matter how nebulous, vague, badly researched, incomplete, uninformed, misguided, disgusting, racist and/or horrifying and still find an audience that will lap it up with no extra thought. No surprise that folks take advantage for some possible Internet clout.

 

[xinek]

I had completely missed that Tlou doesn't come with the online mode and for me that's a big disappointment since I loved it. Also baffling to see them charge full price for it, I'll wait for a deep sale or until pt2 is around the corner since I've completed it multiple times already.

Factions was one of the best online games of all time. They could have sold it separately and printed money with it, especially since it would have been such a great game for streamers, too. I'm still hoping a standalone is coming for TLoU 2.