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

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TioChuck

More Yellow 🤷‍♂️
Dec 31, 2018
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I was playing The Outer Worlds and thinking to myself, Microsoft now owns Inxile and Obsidian, Obsidian should do an Wasteland spin off with The Outer Worlds framework, that would be amazing.
 

freshVeggie

almost there
Sep 7, 2018
1,030
2,896
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Tried the new library when it beta shortly but went to the old style again.
Now that's it's out, here my quick thoughts.

Good
sorting by tags, MC score, hours played, size
collections
updates integrated into library
quick access to installed games
integration of community elements into game pages
sleeker look, animated backgrounds/banners
vertical banners remind me of old school big box pc gaming lol

Needs work

snappiness
different view options (banner, list etc.)
right-click in library to have hotlinks to storepage, community hub etc.
family shared libraries need to be selectable on their own
new library design philosophy is unliked from store & community

All in all, move in the right direction. Needs more polish and features that shouldn't be too much to ask.
 

PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
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Remember everyone it's only on the eShop where you can buy "non asset flip games" for just $0.09 USD!!!

The eShop is very oversaturated. I'm guessing that devs want to get the price low since that's the only real way of discoverability that the store has.

But more importantly with how the eShop works and rewards people, if you buy games you get gold coins that you can "cash in" to spend on the eShop, its not that hard to get $0.10USD worth of eShop credit. Which explains why devs are able to do this and still make money.

If you have credit and see a game that you can buy (because getting something like $1USD worth of credit takes time, at least of you buy physical games) cost less than what you have you might just end up buying it. This is something that I have tried with eBay in the past since their ebucks don't really get you squat unless you buy expensive stuff.
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
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Just finished Outer Worlds on PC Game Pass. Decided to use a bunch of cheats from WeMod and mainly focused on ther story missions. Will play without cheats and do as many side missions as I can and explore as much as I can when the Steam version is out. It's just that knowing that I will play the game more in the Steam version makes me not care that much about exploration and side mission on the game pass version.

It was pretty good and looking forward to whatever Obsidian is able to make with MS budget. Thanksfully with a day 1 Steam release.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
7,819
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You played it too? Didn't see you on the "friends who played" list.
I didn't play it, I just thought you wrote a very instructive review. I may share or not your opinion if I play it someday, but yeah, great write-up.
 
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Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
5,205
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I love Soulcalibur 6 six now :sweaty-blob:

Spent 1 hour in the character creator with my cousin and then we fought each other with them and random characters afterwards. So much fun. The game also looks really good.

That character creator tho, I love it.
Here are our creations:



And the masterpiece, meet the HolyBirdKing:
 

Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
4,054
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I didn't play it, I just thought you wrote a very instructive review. I may share or not your opinion if I play it someday, but yeah, great write-up.
Well, thanks, that's nice to hear.
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
7,626
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Oman
ko-fi.com
93 games completed to date.
Travis Strikes Again is...sure is something. Suda51 games are style over substance, so don't go in looking for deep well thoughtout gameplay.
In fact, I feel like Suda51 needs to take some pointers from Falcom. They really know how to take simple gameplay and keep the gameplay loop engaging and wortwhile.
But man....the style in Travis Strikes Again? The amount of WTFness in this game? It just makes you wonder what kinda acid this guy puts in his ramen and coffee every day, o make all this weirdness come out so passively in his games without him being all 'matter-of-facty' and not too 'talking directly to player and offering 5 minute of direct exposition'-like. There are a few direct stuff in the game, but the rest of it is just having you roll with the batshitness.
For Crom's sake people: THERE ARE SHIRTS WITH ART FROM DOZENS OF INDIE GAMES YOU CAN BUY IN THIS GAME.
HOW DO YOU GET AWAY WITH THAT?!?!?

Also Bugxtra is best Grandpappy


Imagine playing a game where a recurring NPC spouts nonsensical gibberish that has a tang of sensibility.
 

Dragon1893

MetaMember
Apr 17, 2019
1,569
3,847
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Tried the new library when it beta shortly but went to the old style again.
Now that's it's out, here my quick thoughts.

Good
sorting by tags, MC score, hours played, size
collections
updates integrated into library
quick access to installed games
integration of community elements into game pages
sleeker look, animated backgrounds/banners
vertical banners remind me of old school big box pc gaming lol

Needs work
snappiness
different view options (banner, list etc.)
right-click in library to have hotlinks to storepage, community hub etc.
family shared libraries need to be selectable on their own
new library design philosophy is unliked from store & community

All in all, move in the right direction. Needs more polish and features that shouldn't be too much to ask.
I was actually looking for a way to separate my games from the family shared games, weird how that's not an option in the filters.
 
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Theswweet

Dirty Weeb
Mar 12, 2019
984
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God fucking damnit. Wanted to play Gears 5 co-op with my roommate, and for whatever reason my Game Pass copy no longer wants to launch and will no longer reinstall. Now if I want to play I'm pretty much forced to use my XB1X copy. Also ran into the lovey issue with allocated disk space.

Fucking UWP.
 

Rando10123

Junior Member
Sep 15, 2019
432
362
63
Just saw Garry mention this on Twitter found it interesting even though I don't think the situation is nearly as bad as he's making it out to be, not yet anyway.
I don't agree with everything but having your studio in one of the most expensive cities in the world seems like the dumbest thing you can do as an indie.
There's also some good comments in the replies.
Thanks for the interesting article. I do agree that living in an expensive city is a huge mistake if you don't actively network and not having income to work on games. Though the talks about being pro-union, mental health and anti-crunch is weird because I never seen that applied in a larger scale or any at all? I always hear postmortems from developers who worked on their games 70-80 hours a week while living in less then decent conditions, and still never make it because, well, either the marketing wasn't good or they weren't lucky that their game got an audience. There are games trying to cater to China, but that's just one market and I don't know a single Chinese game that is well known in the west. The comments also brought up good points and they go further in detail. At this point, who knows, there are so many companies like Google that are trying to steer the game industry in a far worse direction if that ever happened.
 

PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
3,630
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California
So I think I am done with Apex Legends again. It is fun (I have said this multiple times) but the game keeps crashing.

Right now I maybe had one of my best runs (in the first two minutes of landing I took down 5 enemies and carried my team, they were both knocked down multiple timed and I was able to get them back up). I think the most kills I have ever gotten was maybe 4 or 5 in a match. So I was already there in the first 2 minutes of this match and then I died. I was even going fist to cuffs with this one person that didn't seem to have any weapons. It was amazing but the game crashed... I wonder if Origin is the issue.

I have had crashes with other games that I have played but I have doubts its my PC. I was able to play things like Sekiro from start to finish on my current PC without the game ever crashing. I did have DMC V crash on me a few times but that way maybe less than 5 times in my 15 or so hours of playing that game. Code Vein I did have a number of crashes but not as many and as frequent as Apex (and others have also had issues with Code Vein as well).


Ya, by the way when it crashes it locks down my PC and I have to restart my PC. Where would be the best place to make get some help with this?
 

madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
3,034
11,338
113
Remember everyone it's only on the eShop where you can buy "non asset flip games" for just $0.09 USD!!!

The eShop is very oversaturated. I'm guessing that devs want to get the price low since that's the only real way of discoverability that the store has.

But more importantly with how the eShop works and rewards people, if you buy games you get gold coins that you can "cash in" to spend on the eShop, its not that hard to get $0.10USD worth of eShop credit. Which explains why devs are able to do this and still make money.

If you have credit and see a game that you can buy (because getting something like $1USD worth of credit takes time, at least of you buy physical games) cost less than what you have you might just end up buying it. This is something that I have tried with eBay in the past since their ebucks don't really get you squat unless you buy expensive stuff.
Kinda like Steam before niin poetics and limiting of coupon and card eligibility


lmao

http://valeroa.com/ (DRM company)
down by FBI , cyber crime suspected
Nomen est omen. Vale in finish means fake/lie.

Was it ever used?
 
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PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
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Kinda like Steam before niin poetics and limiting of coupon and card eligibility
Ya it was an issue, I remember that people use to refer to it as "devs racing to the bottom" or something like that.

As of recent it might actually be going the other way and the way you get your game noticed is by charging more for it. So have it be $20USD or more. The higher the price the higher the quality? It at least Mike Rose was talking about something like that.

What's niin poetics?


The profile limiting does sort of sucks since there are some games that affect and this games are "good" games it's just that they have been overlooked?


I do wonder if Nintendo will do something about it since the eShop is important to a lot of people. I still have like $30USD worth of eShop credit that I have not used yet. And it seems like "Moon" is not out in the NA eShop

Also when is Nintendo going to being back "reviews"?
 

Wok

Wok
Oct 30, 2018
4,923
13,188
113
France
Just saw Garry mention this on Twitter found it interesting even though I don't think the situation is nearly as bad as he's making it out to be, not yet anyway.
I don't agree with everything but having your studio in one of the most expensive cities in the world seems like the dumbest thing you can do as an indie.
There's also some good comments in the replies.
This sounds more about coding than game development. Sure, if one just wants to decrease the cost of coding, one solution is to outsource this task to regions were labour is cheap and workers are not protected. If you want to code a clone of Candy Crush, just hire coders, I guess... However, game dev is more than coding. Blow, McMillen, Yu, etc., they all bring something unique, and they collaborate with coders Tyler Glaiel, Blitworks, etc. Game dev is not doomed outside of China.

If you asked me how to lose money by writing software, I guess three of my best ideas would be to hire people with as little experience as possible, ensure they were only vaguely pressured into working real hard, and also place them in the most expensive office space I could find. That should do the trick.
I am a huge workaholic. I will work myself to death in order to win. I LOVE finding myself in a situation where the person who works the most wins, because then I know I will win. This is very unhealthy, and very bad, and rightly looked down upon. Its also the predominant attitude still in a huge swathe of the world, especially the ‘developing’ world, or to put it another way: China.
Also, I cannot take someone who believes the following seriously. You don't get an engineering job at a GAFAM that way...

California/Seattle/Vancouver are rich. The middle class kids who lightly rebel against their parents by having dyed hair, a mac book air and a copy of unity need not fear too much that they will end up in the gutter hungry. The game dev thing is their dream, but if it fucks up, they can get a job at facebook/microsoft/amazon for a high six figure salary anyway. Their parents likely own houses that have quintupled in value and will bail them out anyway. Do you think the average seattle indie dev has the same hunger to work on their game as a kid from a poor family in Shenzen who sees this as their ONE CHANCE to escape life in a factory?
Finally, sure, it is nicer to hire someone with work experience. However, he is pushing for the caricature. A lot more than 10 years of experience do not necessarily sound enticing. Technology evolves fast, I am not sure 30 years of experience is so great.

Plus, it is quite paradoxical to advocate for cheap labour and go after people with years of experience. It was clear from the interview of the devs behind Dead Cells that you don't hire people with experience with an offer of a low salary. I believe the part about the age is not consistent with the rest of the blog post, and it was his way of pushing for his bias (he is 50, and he likes to mention it), so it makes sense that he likes older people.

Newsflash: You get at better at programming with experience. You get better at art with experience. You get better at almost EVERYTHING with experience. I am vastly, hugely, hilariously better at coding now than when I was 40 (I’m 50). The code I wrote when I was 30 was embarrassing. The code I wrote when I was 20 was a joke. I started coding aged 11. I am still learning. The code in Production Line is way better than Democracy 3. If I was hiring coders now (I’m not), someones advanced age (assuming equiv experience) would be a HUGE factor in selection. Your grey hair might not be a huge boost for your prospects on tinder, but they are a boost for your prospects as a potential employee at my company. Why? Because I’m not a total idiot. People with 30+ years of experience are BETTER at stuff. How is that even up for debate.

But the average age of indie developers seems to be going down each year. Its crazy. Your first attempt at making a game is usually awful. You think its better than it is because unity superficially makes stuff look better than it really is. The western attitude of praising youth over experience is a crippling flaw. The flipside view in many asian countries makes vastly more sense. Its 2019, much work is now mental, not physical. A 20 year old laborer is more productive than a 50 year old laborer. But coders….lol no.
 
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QFNS

Plays too many card games
Nov 18, 2018
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Anyone know why Square Enix never discounts the FFXII PC port? All the rest of the FF games go on sale but not that one? What gives?
 

NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
Apr 6, 2019
8,987
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Anyone know why Square Enix never discounts the FFXII PC port? All the rest of the FF games go on sale but not that one? What gives?
It has been several times on sale tho, that's how I bought it haha
 
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bobnowhere

Careful Icarus
Sep 20, 2018
1,679
4,307
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God fucking damnit. Wanted to play Gears 5 co-op with my roommate, and for whatever reason my Game Pass copy no longer wants to launch and will no longer reinstall. Now if I want to play I'm pretty much forced to use my XB1X copy. Also ran into the lovey issue with allocated disk space.

Fucking UWP.
I had this issue with Creature in the Well, wouldn't run and uninstalling did nothing becasue windows doesn't uninstall things. The only way to get it working again was to install a 2nd copy on a different disk.
 
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PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
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So I guess this should not come as much of a surprise but you would think that Bandai would try to do more with SCVI.

Right now it seems like Bandai didn't do much to promote the SCVI Humble Monthly I am guessing that there are some issues, but I would imagine that in general they would want as many people to buy the game in order to keep it's user base active and therefor keep it alive.

Is it weird how stuff like R6S technically makes use of the Steam broadcast feature for some tournaments?

It's just sort of strange.

Also I guess that one free to play Gundam game will just keep on being a PS4 only game (the Operation game)
 

FunnyJay

Powered by the Cloud
Apr 6, 2019
1,472
3,850
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Sweden
I played through Costume Quest this weekend, and what a treat it was!
Short but sweet, even if the combat was starting to drag a bit at the end.

I really enjoyed it!

And after that, I started a playthrough of Phantom Doctrine. So far, I really like it!
The emphasis on stealth makes it stand out a bit compared to XCOM, which is the closest comparison I have.
 

Le Pertti

0.01% Game dev
Oct 10, 2018
8,418
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Paris, France
lepertti.com
Ah finished The Outer Worlds. Quite liked it! It was kind of a Bethesda lite and because of the green dot always showing exactly where to go it also made it feel very linear. But I can't wait to see what Obsidian does with Microsoft money. While I would love more CRPGs from them I also want a full fledged open world RPG.
 
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sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
Dec 8, 2018
610
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Somewhere else
Song of Horror: The Permadeath QTE Simulator

Whoever come up with the idea that a QTE will decide between life and permadeath needs to be flogged. Really.
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
7,337
12,411
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Ended up ordering HDMI and DP cable from China.
Be careful with Display Port cables as a non-compliant/Badly Made DP cable can create a power loop and fry your card.
Damn, i sound like such a killjoy but we've had it happen at work.


Edit:
Is there a way to get this stupid new Steam Client to rotate my screenshots as backgrounds/banners like it used to or do i have to choose one image and stick with it?
I enjoyed having a different screenshot every now and then to keep things fresh and remind me of events in the game. :(
 
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crimsonheadGCN

MetaMember
Jan 20, 2019
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Clifton, New Jersey
www.resetera.com

Apple reportedly has partnered with US game developer Valve to develop AR head-mounted display devices, which may be released in the second half of 2020 at the earliest, with Taiwan's ODMs Quanta Computer and Pegatron said to handle the assembly job,...
The article is under subscription.
 
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