Blog Archives

Hold on to Your Wallets! The Steam Fall Sale Starts November 26

With American Thanksgiving coming up this week, you knew that it wasn’t a matter of if there would be a big Steam sale this week but when it would be. An email from PayPal has revealed that this year’s Steam Fall Sale will start on Wednesday, November 26th at 1:00 PM EST.

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Tags: PSA, Steam, Steam Fall Sale, Steam Sale, Valve

Paranautical Activity Pulled From Steam After Dev Threatens Gabe Newell

Oct 22

Posted by Steve Murray

With all the focus on death threats as part of the ongoing #GamerGate drama, the most prominent death threat we’ll be talking about this week isn’t part of that saga but from an indie dev who was unhappy with Steam. Mike Maulbeck, one of the developers behind the procedurally-generated FPS Paranautical Activity, tweeted what he called a sarcastic death threat towards Valve boss Gabe Newell on Monday night.

This resulted in Steam pulling Paranautical Activity from Steam and ending their relationship with Code Avarice.

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Tags: Mike Maulbeck, Paranautical Activity, Steam, Valve

Steam Converts Canadian Gamers to Canadian Dollar Pricing

Oct 9

Posted by Steve Murray

With a couple of week’s notice, Valve has added local currency pricing for Canadians. This past Tuesday, October 7th, Canadians found the Steam Store showing prices in Canadian dollars rather than US dollars. This resulted in a price increase on the face of the store but this may actually be working to the benefit of the Canadian consumer.

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Tags: Business of Gaming, Canada, Steam, Valve

A Look at Steam Discoverability with Indie Devs, Writers and PR

With the recent Steam Store overhaul to improve discoverability of games and customization of the store, Popular YouTuber and common sense advocate John Bain, better known by his nom de plume, TotalBiscuit, held a panel discussion to look at the effects of the changes to Steam and the advertising of video games.

As part of his three-hour roundtable, he is joined by indie developers Howard Tsao (Guns of Icarus), Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone) and Andrew Spearin (Insurgency), writer Mike Rose (Gamasutra) and PR rep Tom Ohle (Evolve PR) for the discussion.

Posted on October 7, 2014 | Video

The Steam Halloween Sale Starts October 30th

Oct 6

Posted by Steve Murray

Are you a fan of big discounts? Are you a fan of horror games? Well, if you answered yes to either of those questions (but preferably both questions), Valve has you covered. The Steam store will be running a special Halloween Sale from October 30 to November 3rd so you can get discounts on your favourite Halloween themed games.

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Tags: Business of Gaming, Steam, Steam Halloween Sale 2014, Steam Sale, Valve

Steam Overhauls Store to Improve Discoverability and Customization

Sep 24

Posted by Steve Murray

If you’ve been on the Steam store since Monday evening, you might have noticed that things look a little different. Gone is the familiar black, white and grey. In is a mix of blue, white and grey that is just a little bit easier on the eyes.

The fresh coat of paint isn’t the only change that the Steam store launched this week. The whole front page and games listings have been given an overhaul designed to improve discoverability of new games and customize your Steam store experience.

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Tags: Business of Gaming, Steam, Valve

Valve Releases Source 2… In Dota 2 Steam Workshop Tools

Aug 12

Posted by Steve Murray

Most companies will launch their new game engines with a quick little sizzle reel or tech demo showing off how spectacular their new engine looks and fill in devs on the back-end bells and whistles later. Valve isn’t most companies, though. While we knew they were working on Source 2 behind the scenes, the first look at Source 2 in the wild appears to be in the Steam Workshop Tools for Dota 2.

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Tags: Dota 2, Source 2, Valve

Steam Reportedly Adding Movie, TV Shows and Music to the Service

Aug 12

Posted by Steve Murray

With Steam trying to move into the living room with Steam Machines and the other console manufacturers trying to shift into roles as multimedia devices for your living room, a couple of lines of code in the latest Steam client beta shouldn’t surprise you but it’s making big news. SteamDB has found new binaries in the latest Steam beta referring to movies, TV series and music.

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Tags: Steam, Valve

Valve Changes Steam Controller to Add a Thumbstick

Jul 24

Posted by Steve Murray

The Steam Controller was one of three new Steam-themed projects that Valve announced last fall and it’s undergone a lot of testing and revising since the initial announcement. While it hasn’t been officially revealed, the latest Steam client beta was mined for data and it looks like the next iteration of the Steam Controller prototype will swap out the d-pad for a thumbstick.

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Tags: Steam, Steam Controller, Valve

Newbee Wins The International 2014

Jul 22

Posted by Steve Murray

A whole year of competition, two weeks in Seattle and one tournament featuring the top Dota 2 teams led to one final Best of Five series for the biggest prize in the history of eSports. But in the battle of #1 seed Vici Gaming and plucky underdog Newbee, there could be only one champion. After a long and odd season, it was Newbee who raised the Aegis of Champions and took home $5 million as The International 2014 champion.