Community MetaSteam | February 2019 - The Frontier of the Hyper-Toxic Pro-Consumer Computer Cowboy

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RionaaM

Vogon Poetry Appreciator
Sep 6, 2018
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Believe me when I say a lot of people understand this conflict. You want to say something more forceful, but is afraid that will get you a ban/warning.

I lost count on how many replies I have started to type (and lost some time because of my bad English) and ended up deleting before posting. In fact I just did that two times right now when the main PC Era thread got a little heated.
Sometimes the process of writing is cathartic enough, and once you let it all out you don't feel the need to post it anymore.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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The Messenger continues to be pre-tty good~

The Twitch client is starting to annoy me tho. I wanted to add The Messenger as a non-Steam game to Steam to use Steam Input to take screenshots with my controller instead of having to use ShareX + the print key on the keyboard.
But just pointing it to the exe doesn't work apparently and it looks like you need to jump through some hoops so I stopped bothering :unamused-face:
If you're client doesn't give me a Screenshot button I can use on a controller at least let me add the games to Steam so that it can pick up your slack dammit
 

Routa

Non-Stop MMO Searcher
Dec 22, 2018
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Battle Brothers is getting more DLC.



We’re excited to announce that we’re working on another DLC for Battle Brothers. In other words, there’s going to be even more content for that game that you like. The name of the upcoming DLC is going to be ‘Warriors of the North’.

As the name suggests, the focus of the DLC will be on introducing a new human faction hailing from the north. This faction follows the old ways of raiding and sacrificing prisoners to cruel gods. They’ll bring more regional flavor to the northern parts of the map, as well as a different challenge to fighting brigands in the north at every stage of the game. This DLC will be focused on new content, and it will be smaller in scope than ‘Beasts & Exploration’. This also means that you won’t have to wait quite as long until you can play it!


Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:
  • A variety of new human opponents with their own fighting style and equipment, providing a fresh challenge at every stage of the game, including the late game
  • Different origins to pick for your company, each with different starting characters, equipment and circumstances, as well as special rules that impact your campaign from beginning to end
  • New nordic and rus inspired banners, armors and helmets
  • A new legendary location
  • New contracts
  • New events
In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, we’ll explain all major features and most minor ones in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why. We expect to be finished within the next few months and will announce a release date and final feature list once we’re closer to the finish line.

Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update again. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions.

Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC!
 

OSatan

OFather OSun
The Messenger continues to be pre-tty good~

The Twitch client is starting to annoy me tho. I wanted to add The Messenger as a non-Steam game to Steam to use Steam Input to take screenshots with my controller instead of having to use ShareX + the print key on the keyboard.
But just pointing it to the exe doesn't work apparently and it looks like you need to jump through some hoops so I stopped bothering :unamused-face:
If you're client doesn't give me a Screenshot button I can use on a controller at least let me add the games to Steam so that it can pick up your slack dammit
I used it with my games and they work, I wonder if they changed something recently.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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I used it with my games and they work, I wonder if they changed something recently.
You're right, they appear now.
Guess it took some time to refresh the Library page? I take back my criticism. Stupid Steam.
 
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QFNS

Plays too many card games
Nov 18, 2018
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OSatan thanks for the tip! I'll probably check this out soon. I am a big fan of Talisman and this looks definitely in the vein. Digital Board games can be really fun if they are supported well.
 
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708

MetaMember
Oct 20, 2018
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There was a cheap (like $4-5) indie first person early access game with "sword" in the title, anyone remember its name?
Edit: Found it. It's no longer in EA though.
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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I know GI.Biz is industry/dev side so it's going to heavily skew that way with its articles, but this is still rather funny:





I'd expect better than "Lul, it's just a launcher icon you have to click" from someone writing about PC gaming, but my expectations are probably beyond their ability to reach at this point.
It's both sad and hilarious at the same time. But gi.biz isn't the only website writing stuff like this. Even sites like pc gamer are describing Epic's moneyhats as a necessary evil. I didn't expect that to be honest.

I think it must have something to do with the developers strongly disliking Steam as it is now. The latest poll showing that only 6% of the devs think that Valve deserves the 30% cut confirms this. They want change and Epic is using this to take a piece of the huge pc gaming cake.

This all makes sense, but what I don't understand is why devs and publishers who have been very successful on Steam are joining Epic in their attack on Steam as well. While big publishers like Ubisoft and Koch Media probably just want more money, it seems indies like Coffee Stain and Zen really want to make a statement.

I wish they could explain to me what exactly this statement is. Is it only about the 30%? Or is there more? I mean, these devs are still releasing their games on consoles where they lose 30% as well and Epic charging less on pc won't push them to change this. And discovery on psn and Xbox Live isn't that great either.

Don't get me wrong: I strongly disagree Epic's moneyhats and I won't buy any games involved. But I'd love to understand why the industry is supporting them.
 

Deleted member 113

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Yeah, I'm missing the AC7 launch DLC too =/
Sorry to hear it. :(

The stores (Voidu, Fanatical, ...) are already aware, it was a mistake from Bandai Namco who sent them the wrong keys, and apparently early next week (Monday?) they are sending keys to their customers with the DLC.
But, when I contacted Voidu, they actually ended up adding a new key to my account page, which was for another copy of the game (not just the DLC), with the missing content. They were pretty awesome. Every time I needed something, Voidu came through. (y)

Check your account page, to see if you have two keys.
Otherwise, you may want to drop a message to Voidu, and they will surely fix it. Or, on Monday, things should fix themselves, since stores will surely start sending the keys for the launch edition DLC to their customers.
 

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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They are gaining goodwill with the devs and publishers, so more codes and previews for them.
One of the comments on the article on gi.biz pointed out that the only exclusives on EGS are paid moneyhats tho.

On another article on gi.biz, a developer commented that releasing on Steam is actually better than Epic's strategy. He even defended the forums and user reviews.
 

Ex-User (307)

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Dec 11, 2018
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Sometimes the process of writing is cathartic enough, and once you let it all out you don't feel the need to post it anymore.
The ol' "write your nasty letter, stick it in an envelope and wait a few days to see if you really want to send it" trick probably applies to a good portion of internet discussion as well.

But the nature of constant, fast-paced discussion encourages us to spew something first and think about it later. It's hard not to do when you see people spouting the same ignorant tomfoolery time after time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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「Echo」

竜の魔女。
Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
lashman did you write like all the recommendations except Helheim by yourself? o_O I could have done the animu games you know!

Also, thanks for the hard work. (y)

=======================



Playing it with the Retroarch core will take screenshots in your native resolution. I highly recommend it. Like this, for example.

OwO what game is this with such a lovely 90's aesthetic?
 

OSatan

OFather OSun
One of the comments on the article on gi.biz pointed out that the only exclusives on EGS are paid moneyhats tho.

On another article on gi.biz, a developer commented that releasing on Steam is actually better than Epic's strategy. He even defended the forums and user reviews.
Yeah sorry the pcgamer part got in my mnd and I assumed that when talking about industry in my mind.

For that, the devs want money pure money for them is better than things that help the industry and right now there is no better money than a guaranted down pay just to exist in epic store, the devs that see how this is bad will say it but money is money for a lot of them, damn the costumers.
 

Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
OwO what game is this with such a lovely 90's aesthetic?
As Tizoc has said, the game is Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan.





It's a top-down dungeon crawler with difficult dungeons, monsters, trick levels and super awesome music. One of the best series Falcom has ever put out.

You can read a little more about it here. I seem to have lost the link to Falcom's own page.

Brandish 3 the sequel to Brandish 2 THE PLANET BUSTER
You should post the superior version, brother.



 

zkylon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOxkGD8qRB4
Nov 2, 2018
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well league of legends is still the only game i'm playing

no signs of that changing in the slightest
 
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AHA-Lambda

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God damn the new RE2 is fucking tense!!

Sorry to hear it. :(

The stores (Voidu, Fanatical, ...) are already aware, it was a mistake from Bandai Namco who sent them the wrong keys, and apparently early next week (Monday?) they are sending keys to their customers with the DLC.
But, when I contacted Voidu, they actually ended up adding a new key to my account page, which was for another copy of the game (not just the DLC), with the missing content. They were pretty awesome. Every time I needed something, Voidu came through. (y)

Check your account page, to see if you have two keys.
Otherwise, you may want to drop a message to Voidu, and they will surely fix it. Or, on Monday, things should fix themselves, since stores will surely start sending the keys for the launch edition DLC to their customers.
I've emailed them so we'll see what happens from here.
 

RionaaM

Vogon Poetry Appreciator
Sep 6, 2018
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Weird, they added the Resident Evil 2 demo to the library. It stays there even if you uninstall it. It wasn't like that before, wonder why they changed it. Besides, given that you can only play it for 30 minutes max it doesn't make sense to keep it there forever.
 
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「Echo」

竜の魔女。
Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
Brandish 3 the sequel to Brandish 2 THE PLANET BUSTER
As Tizoc has said, the game is Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan.


It's a top-down dungeon crawler with difficult dungeons, monsters, trick levels and super awesome music. One of the best series Falcom has ever put out.

You can read a little more about it here. I seem to have lost the link to Falcom's own page.



You should post the superior version, brother.


(Deleted Pictures to save space.)
I should have known! Shame on me. o_O orz

I wish the PC-98 style would make a comeback. I also wish some of these games would get modern ports, but not remakes, I don't want the graphics changed! My Papa collected PC-98 games for a while so I have a big box but no hardware to play them on. :unsure: I keep meaning to look into something that would fix that problem... Like restoring an old PC-98 or seeing if an emulator can run them somehow.

Edit: Deleted the quoted pictures to save space.
 

MegaApple

Just another Video Game Enthusiast
Sep 20, 2018
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By the way, anyone played Mean Greens Plastic Warfare?
Looks very interesting and seems to have gotten a good playerbase.

And they reduced the base price.
 

Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
I wish the PC-98 style would make a comeback. I also wish some of these games would get modern ports, but not remakes, I don't want the graphics changed! My Papa collected PC-98 games for a while so I have a big box but no hardware to play them on. :unsure: I keep meaning to look into something that would fix that problem... Like restoring an old PC-98 or seeing if an emulator can run them somehow.
I love the dithering so much in many of the PC-98 games. It's kind of a shame that although many games with pixel art style are still being made today, almost none of them tried to emulate how dithering look. Although I do understand the reasoning behind it. I suppose I feel a certain fondness for it the way other people love CRT scanlines (I dislike scanlines).

PC-98 emulation scene is still alive, although definitely not as prominent as others. The np2kai RetroArch core is still being developed and the standalone NP21/W emulator is still thriving. If finding/importing a working unit from Japan proves difficult, emulating it through RetroArch is still the next best thing.
 

Ex-User (307)

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Dec 11, 2018
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Oh my God, I'm listening to one of my usual gaming podcasts and they're talking about the EGS and spouting off. Something was just said to the effect that with the Metro exclusivity, now "there's no resellers buying a bunch of Russian keys and selling them to everybody for cheaper." Obviously there are some key sellers that seem to still buy physical games in cheaper locations to resell, but haven't games been functionally region locked since like...2014?

Does no one in games media know anything about how Valve's key generation works? How can you be paid to write about this industry for a living, and be that ignorant?
 

TheGreenArrow

Ask me about my podcast damn it
Nov 20, 2018
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www.thecellarletters.com
Oh my God, I'm listening to one of my usual gaming podcasts and they're talking about the EGS and spouting off. Something was just said to the effect that with the Metro exclusivity, now "there's no resellers buying a bunch of Russian keys and selling them to everybody for cheaper." Obviously there are some key sellers that seem to still buy physical games in cheaper locations to resell, but haven't games been functionally region locked since like...2014?

Does no one in games media know anything about how Valve's key generation works? How can you be paid to write about this industry for a living, and be that ignorant?
Easy Allies right? At least they said the metro thing was the worst way to go about exclusivity:/
 

Ex-User (307)

MetaMember
Dec 11, 2018
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Easy Allies right? At least they said the metro thing was the worst way to go about exclusivity:/
Yep, it was them. I don't get how you could have a group of guys who get paid something like half a million dollars a year to talk about video games being so ignorant about an entire facet of the industry. I shouldn't be too hard on them since I like them, but honestly it's even more frustrating when it's coming from people you normally like.

Bah.
 
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lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
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lashman did you write like all the recommendations except Helheim by yourself? o_O I could have done the animu games you know!
I think they're just from the store page :coffee-blob:
But, you have to admit it was a marvellous copy and paste job. :p
well you're not wrong - i did just copy and paste the text from the store pages :p

and † Echo †, you can still write recommendations for whatever you want - i can always replace them :) that's what i did for Queen's recommendation :) so if you still want to do it - go right ahead! :D

Oh my God, I'm listening to one of my usual gaming podcasts and they're talking about the EGS and spouting off. Something was just said to the effect that with the Metro exclusivity, now "there's no resellers buying a bunch of Russian keys and selling them to everybody for cheaper." Obviously there are some key sellers that seem to still buy physical games in cheaper locations to resell, but haven't games been functionally region locked since like...2014?

Does no one in games media know anything about how Valve's key generation works? How can you be paid to write about this industry for a living, and be that ignorant?
Yep, it was them. I don't get how you could have a group of guys who get paid something like half a million dollars a year to talk about video games being so ignorant about an entire facet of the industry. I shouldn't be too hard on them since I like them, but honestly it's even more frustrating when it's coming from people you normally like.

Bah.
you know ... it's really sad to see, but i know why it's happening (or, well, at least i think i do): it's because most of those people don't really use steam as a platform, they use it as a launcher. They buy a game, install it, launch it, play it for a while ... and that's it. They don't really interact with any of the features steam provides. They don't visit forums, probably don't use the friends list, or guides, or achievements, or the activity feed, probably not even the wishlist, or anything else really. So for them it really is just another launcher. And combine that with all the negative sentiment they're seeing among their gamedev friends (and people they follow on twitter in general) ... and voila.​
Add to that the fact that volvo doesn't really communicate with journalists at all (unless they're launching a game once in a decade or something ... and even then it's barely a press release really. Hell, even when shit goes down and they try to contact volvo for comments - they usually don't get back to anyone) and you have what we can see right now. They don't know anything about steam because volvo doesn't send out press releases about new features or changes. This of course doesn't exonerate them from not actually willing to educate themselves about what's going on ... but hey, what can you do - that's most of the gaming journalism nowadays, barely anyone is willing to go beyond press releases ... UNLESS it's a hot story (usually when something blows up) because those generate clicks. Not that i can really blame them (for not willing to do more than the absolute minimum, just re-posting press releases) - journalism (especially games journalism) is a WOEFULLY underpaid job. You wouldn't be willing to go beyond absolute minimum if you were paid $30 (or less) per article either, i bet.​
And yeah, most of those articles sound the same because they ARE the same - epic is more than happy to send out press releases about every small thing they do or are planning on doing in the future. And Tim tweets ... a lot .... so does Sergey. Can you name even ONE volvo person on twitter (who isn't ex-Campo Santo, and without googling) who's willing to actually talk to people on a regular basis? Or even just one volvo employee on twitter AT ALL? (they are there, i know ... but they're all basically private accounts really)​
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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ko-fi.com
So Youtube showed me a trailer for Project Black Sun, and I went to look it up online
Starflower Games - Project Black Sun

Game can be bought for $2 over at Gamersgate.com, on Macgamestore if you want a Mac copy (but no Windows copy?!) and on the Japanese Playism games store (but not English!)
It was on Steam Greenlight but nothing happened since then. I'm gonna go buy it soon myself, but it's a bummer it didn't get released on at least itch.io and I'd much rather a platform like that than whatever kind of installer that GG uses >_>

At any rate, 2 of Starflowergames' titles are on itch.io curiously enough
starflowergames - itch.io

I wonder if it is beause that game was by a different development team?

It would make sense for him to start with Fork knife. Will give his later videos a watch if it's about various other games.
 
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Alexandros

Every game should be turn based
Nov 4, 2018
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And I just got banned from ERA, didn't even receive a message or any sort of satisfaction just a ban after I spoke about how bullshit the moderation for PC threads is. There was even a mod in said thread tip-toeing the OP's statement on how PC is finally getting rid of Valve's shackles.
Yeah, I saw that post and it's a shame. Although I have seen an increase in bannings and warnings to people who come in PC threads with the intention to troll, which suggests that there has been a slight policy change in that regard, there are still double standards when it comes to the treatment of inflammatory posts in console and PC threads. The moderators on that site are not to blame. It's the weird policy of "Steam is not a platform, therefore you are free to shit on Valve for no reason and with very few repercussions.' Almost everyone in the PC community pointed out to the administrators that Valve threads would become shitshows but they didn't listen.

In any case, it is what it is. It goes without saying that this place is way, way better for normal and meaningful discussion. When posting on the other place, I would suggest always keeping calm and answering with brief posts and simple facts. Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of pro-Epic arguments are made by people who don't game on PC and don't know anything about the market, they completely collapse under the tiniest level of scrutiny.

I know GI.Biz is industry/dev side so it's going to heavily skew that way with its articles, but this is still rather funny:
I always smile when I see articles like these, especially when they start popping up frequently over a short period of time, for one simple reason. This frantic scrambling for damage control means that actual damage is being done. These people are writing one article after another in a desperate attempt to change the public's perception of Epic because the community backlash was too big, they can't put a lid on it and things aren't going as planned. I'm really enjoying it.

Don't get me wrong: I strongly disagree Epic's moneyhats and I won't buy any games involved. But I'd love to understand why the industry is supporting


It's as simple as that. Epic has money and they're willing to spend it on moneyhatting and advertizing. Developers, publishers and journalists are either too shortsighted to realize or simply too greedy to care about the long-term damage to the health of the platform because Epic is dangling dollar bills in front of their faces. It's not about competition, the cut, the poor struggling publishers or any of that crap. It's about the fact that Epic is spending money around and Valve isn't. If Valve ever decided to open its coffers and start spending money on moneyhats and advertizing you'd see a drastic shift in coverage of the issue. I sincerely hope that they're smarter than that and that they'll stay their current course.
 
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madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
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Epic also charging 5% fee for paying like g2a and other shady sites in certain countries.
Seems like they only try on US and regions where Steam don't have regional pricing (which is good for them, though).
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
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Well damn, I just reached the second part of The Messenger and got my mind blown.
This game is *really* good. I hadn't read or watched any coverage about this game, so I'm not sure how much of that was given away, but reaching this part with no knowledge I was like whoaa
 
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