RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - BATTLE ROYALE

[the_dog_days]

I hate achievements. I think they're stupid and are usually used to encourage people to play in ways they don't want to.

[Zoraptor]

 

PSN will soon become the new Steam: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-07-29-games-with-easy-trophies-help-indie-studios-get-the-funding-needed-for-future-projects

Wait, do people buy games just to get trophies? Are trophies some sort of social standing currency? Is this a thing?

 

 

It's been a thing for some time, dating right back to the first x360 achievements. Not really any different from buying win button or cosmetic dlc etc to make yourself look and feel good, if you're into that sort of thing*.

 

Indeed, it's an older meme sir, but it checks out. And I have to admit I always thought that was shopped and never once considered it was 'genuine' marketing. Targets people's innate tendencies towards platform investment and addiction, and some people really do take steam level and platinum trophies seriously.

 

A lot of the shovelware steam releases are there for achievement farming for badges/ cards etc.

 

(I suspect most of that isn't actually news to anyone though)

 

*Though of course considering buying a Vega64 for a thousand kiwibux to play approximately 4 high graphics games a year is completely different, and a 100% rational consideration.

[Keyrock]

Personally, I'm indifferent toward achievements. I don't much care about them myself, but I understand some people can see them as extra "value" as it may increase their play time. Of course, I don't necessarily equate play time with value, but I know some people do.

 

I find achievements that you would aquire naturally in a normal playthrough completely worthless. When I see a popup in a Steam game come up "Achievement Unlocked - Completed Chapter 1" I roll my eyes and dismissivewank.gif. Also, I don't see the value in achievements of doing something you normally do in the game to an excessive amount, like kill 100,000 enemies. That just seems like it requires a lot of boring, tedious grind to achieve. On the other hand, I find achievements that require playing the game in a different way or to go off the beaten path or solve a hidden puzzle at least interesting, even if I'll usually not bother with them myself.

 

Still, I can definitely see achievements as an extra bit of fun for some people, even if I don't care about them myself. However, the notion of achievements being a primary purchasing decision factor boggles my mind. That seems really stupid.

[Keyrock]

double post

 

Stupid phone and crappy connection

Edited July 29, 2018 by Keyrock

[SonicMage117]

Hmm... I see...

 

Well, me personally, I have never felt "forced" by achievements/trophies but a good thing about them is that they are quite like bookmarks. A great way to mark progress, especially if you go away from a good game for months and totally forget where you left off.

 

100%ing a game is a pretty big thing. Speedrunning and completionism in gaming have been things for years but only a few years back have achievements/trophies been made specifically to recognize or reward the people who can do such things. They deserve it. So while I'm no supporter of lover of these things, I'm thankful they exist to that end.

 

It's also a good way to tell which reviewers are being honest. Some people review a game with 20-30 hours with zero achievements/trophies which would indicate that they idle the game for cards and time value (you get rewarded on Steam for running the game after a certain time-frame). On the other hand Killer Instinct has over 460 achievements - which is overkill. Get an achievement for jumping lol

[Katphood]

I like my trophies, some of them go back to some 10 years ago when I first bought the PlayStation 3. Good times...

 

 

 

PSN will soon become the new Steam: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-07-29-games-with-easy-trophies-help-indie-studios-get-the-funding-needed-for-future-projects

That can only be a good thing, excluding drm, Steam seems to always be ahead of the curve.

Ahead of the curve? Yeah, when it comes to releasing shovelware* maybe...

 

They sure are big, but I could easily see GOG taking over PC gaming in a few years.

 

 

*'Crapware' is more like it actually, I've had a lot of fun with actual shovelwares back in the days but when a game is equal to a 2 hour Unity Project, it's not a game anymore, it's just a scam.

[SonicMage117]

GoG will never catch up with Steam, whther we are talking about market share or userbase, I'd be surprised if it ever even got 1/1000th of Steam's market or active users at any given time. Steam's crappy games are exaggerated only because they are more visible. The catalogue on Steam is so huge and reporters often cover Steam and forget GoG even exists so therefore there are more bad games and also better games than what is on GoG.

 

Not only that, but nobody seems to want to give Steam - or should I say Valve credit where it's due (for it's positive aspects). Most people are confused and just ride Valve/Steam off as "Greedy" but refuse to accept that Greenlight has started more great indies than worse ones and while GoG has been taking cues from Steam, I highly doubt they will ever be as efficient in that regard. Now PSN on the otherhand actually has a good chance since they seem more constructed and experienced with this, it's just too bad that they're on console only, of course.

Edited July 30, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Zoraptor]

Everyone including Valve thought Greenlight was an awful system. Of course, being Valve, they replaced it something even lower effort.

 

Steam's main threat is what it's always been- MS getting their crap together and WordPerfect/ 1-2-3/ Netscaping them via their OS dominance; if one were a suspicious person one might think that they'd be looking to update SteamOS sometime nowish based on the xbox evolution rumours that have been floating about.

[Bartimaeus]

Totally unrelated news: Abstractism [on Steam Has] Virus Crypto Miner and TF2 Scam Items

 

 

​tl;dr: Title gore aside, Valve's quality control is so bad, they've now allowed cryptocurrency "viruses" that mine cryptocurrencies for the developer, as well as drop spoof items that look like official, valuable items from other games (such as TF2). Ahead of the curve, folks.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[SonicMage117]

Ahhhh yes, Greenlight was pretty bad but it did bring us some gems that would have never had a chance otherwise, I guess that doesn't matter to people who look at Valve or Steam as evil corporate tyranny.

 

As far as the viruses and hackers, that's not really anything new, and it really isn't Valve's fault is it? That's like saying GoG is responsible for people selling fake copies of DRM-free games. There are hackers everywhere, people get hacked all the time on Steam from accepting a bot friend request. This could be solved easily of people use common sense. Nevermind that if GoG, Origin or any other Marketplace had as much traffic as Steam, they'd have far worse time sorting the messes.

 

But while we're at it, let's blame Valve for the Christmas hacks every year too

[Mamoulian War]

If they completely ignore Q&A, when putting new stuff on their store , the fault is solely on their shoulders. It's the same, like if a grocery would sell food contaminated by salmonella, because they completely ignored the basic hygiene rules.

[SonicMage117]

Viruses ahd hacks have nothing to do with Q&A or quality control though. All they can do is some re-programming and ban-waves (which they already do). Nothing can solve the issue because people can make new accounts under different IP's with bounces. As far as the shovelware, they could close the gates on indie devs entirely, that wouldn't be good for anyone. Half of Steam's active user base plays RPGmaker games that re-use assets, made by teens. Some are horrible, some are great. Half of Steam's userbase also plays f2p mmo's so the vast majority of Steam's users don't see the problem with how things are.

 

Are the problems isolated? Definitely not but it's rare that unrecoverable scams happen, even with the "poor" customer support. You'd literally have more of a chance of being banned than hacked or catching a virus.

 

On getting jipped by publishers/devs, hmmm.. if I had a dime for every time someone said "This game looks horrible, it's just an asset flip" and the game turned out to be good, I'd wager that I'd probably be rich by now. And then there's the gaymes which everyone thinks are great and they are while in early access but then the developer leaves and Valve gets blamed for the abandoned game. It's really not their responsibility but I suppose there are some who will see it that way.

[Katphood]

Ahhhh yes, Greenlight was pretty bad but it did bring us some gems

Replace 'Greenlight' with 'World War 2' and then you'll understand why we still hate Greenlight.

[Melusina]

 

Ahhhh yes, Greenlight was pretty bad but it did bring us some gems

Replace 'Greenlight' with 'World War 2' and then you'll understand why we still hate Greenlight.

 

 

Que?

[Hurlshort]

If they completely ignore Q&A, when putting new stuff on their store , the fault is solely on their shoulders. It's the same, like if a grocery would sell food contaminated by salmonella, because they completely ignored the basic hygiene rules.

People tend to blame the companies that release the contaminated food first as long as the store is active about putting up notices, removing the product, and issuing refunds once the contamination is known.

[Katphood]

@Melusina

 

 

World War 2 was bad but it brought us a whole lot of new inventions. Truth is that humans work a whole lot harder when they are under the pressure of a global war.

 

Still, WW2 will be remembered as a bad event even if it did push technology a bit further.

 

Fun fact: Did you knew that the guy who placed Neil Armstrong and his crew on the moon, was the same guy who created the V2 rockets? Look for 'Werner von Braun' on wikipedia.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Katphood

[Mamoulian War]

 

If they completely ignore Q&A, when putting new stuff on their store , the fault is solely on their shoulders. It's the same, like if a grocery would sell food contaminated by salmonella, because they completely ignored the basic hygiene rules.

People tend to blame the companies that release the contaminated food first as long as the store is active about putting up notices, removing the product, and issuing refunds once the contamination is known.

Yes the groceries do that, because it's the right thing to do. But have you noticed similar behaviour from Valves side? If yes, please ignore my rambling

[Hurlshort]

 

 

If they completely ignore Q&A, when putting new stuff on their store , the fault is solely on their shoulders. It's the same, like if a grocery would sell food contaminated by salmonella, because they completely ignored the basic hygiene rules.

People tend to blame the companies that release the contaminated food first as long as the store is active about putting up notices, removing the product, and issuing refunds once the contamination is known.

Yes the groceries do that, because it's the right thing to do. But have you noticed similar behaviour from Valves side? If yes, please ignore my rambling

 

 

I've been happy with the Valve return policy since they implemented it. It's a step ahead of the physical stores, for the most part.

 

Stores have a lot of junk food, Steam has a lot of junk titles. I find it is pretty easy to avoid both by simply reading up on it first. I don't really blame anyone for it.

[injurai]

If greenlight never existed, I think the gems would have fought their way through the prior-existing vetting process. What greenlight was was a poorly sourced voting system based on whatever people managed to project their product as.

[SonicMage117]

Interesting, very interesting. It's like Diablo but you are a demon hehe

[Zoraptor]

 

If they completely ignore Q&A, when putting new stuff on their store , the fault is solely on their shoulders. It's the same, like if a grocery would sell food contaminated by salmonella, because they completely ignored the basic hygiene rules.

People tend to blame the companies that release the contaminated food first as long as the store is active about putting up notices, removing the product, and issuing refunds once the contamination is known.

 

 

A grocery store isn't a great comparison because there are legal requirements to selling food to people that are far more strict than selling them games, but if you had a grocer that allowed anyone to sell via it with no quality controls then it would absolutely end up with a garbage reputation when people started coming down with food poisoning from there, and only there. "How could we have known a dodgy Chinese supplier was selling pork meat from pigs that had died from infection?" is not a defence you want to be making for your food quality.

 

It's the same reason the fake sellers, counterfeit goods and scams sold through Amazon hurt Amazon's reputation despite the items technically not being Amazon's most of the time- if you're selling the product you are standing behind it as being fit for purpose as part of the most basic contract at the heart of selling something in the first place. It's one thing for steam to stock its store with the gaming equivalent of custard and chocolate filled 'croissants' that are 99% fat/ corn syrup, but the inevitable result of no curation is scams, and steam has had a fair few scam or dodgy products (stolen assets frequently used in games, similarly named inferior games to, selling free mods when they had the mod market, games with monitoring software inside them etc); cryptomining trojans and the like being tried are absolutely inevitable.

[Hurlshort]

What is your definition of a fair few? Scams and trojans still seem to be a pretty rare occurence on Steam. This is the first I've heard about it at least. I am not the most hip gamer, but still seems like it would be making bigger waves if it was really commonplace.

 

Edit: For example, the game in the video has already been removed.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Hurlshot

[Zoraptor]

Fair few = too many to easily list individually, hence not listing them individually but by category.

 

Certainly most of them aren't individually that 'bad'- some random indie using assets from other games is pretty low grade as problems go and things like the DayZ/ WarZ fiasco in the end require some dumbness from the buyer (and happened before the open door policy)- but valve's policy makes them and things like cryptomining trojans inevitable, because that's human nature and they're a quick and easy way to make money at minimal risk. The problem with not really caring about the quality of the stuff you sell in some sort of libertarian, charitably- or minimal effort for maximum profit, less charitably- philosophy is that you will end up selling garbage from people who cut corners and are dishonest.

 

If you have some sort of even basic curation you wouldn't cut out all of the bad stuff, but you'd make it a lot more difficult; and that is usually enough to discourage the vast majority of scammers who are, after all, wanting to make money easily.

[Hurlshort]

I just find it hard to believe that there isn't curation happening. As I said, the game in the video was removed, so clearly there is a process for removal. You can report titles from the store page for a lot of different reasons.

 

We don't really know what it happening behind the scenes at Valve, and really that is to be expected from a private company.

[Malcador]

A Cyberpunk game may have political commentary. What a surprise.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-quest-designer-says-its-inherently-political/