STEAM!

[Keyrock]

I decided 67% was enough of a discount and bought DX:MD just before I left yesterday morning to go to the airport for my trip to the frozen north for X-Mas, started downloading it, and set up "shutdown -h 720" (shutdown after 720 minutes for the non-Linux folks out there) as I walked out the door. I wonder how much of the game downloaded before Anonymous or whoever killed Steam?

[Agiel]

A good friend of mine gave me this over Steam for Christmas:

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/379980/

 

I suppose laughter is the best medicine for the pervading sense that civilisation is dying.

[Gorgon]

Wanted to get hitman, discovered it was always online. Now, I may never see the 'disconnected from server' notification, internet is pretty stable where I'm at all things considered, but this is a single player game.

 

Go away with your ****ery Square Enix.  You are worse than EA.

[Agiel]

Wanted to get hitman, discovered it was always online. Now, I may never see the 'disconnected from server' notification, internet is pretty stable where I'm at all things considered, but this is a single player game.

 

Go away with your ****ery Square Enix.  You are worse than EA.

Well so long as you earned the unlocks while online you are free to use them offline, which was a situation that was a damned sight better than what was a few months ago (being offline basically meant you were limited to using your trusty coins, fiber wire, and basic pistol).

[Deadly_Nightshade]

The Steam version of Civ4 is tricky to get working with mods, including the near-essential BUGmod. I tried and gave up, reinstalled from disc instead. No disadvantage these days because the final patch removed the disc-check DRM.

I suspect that if you copied the Steam files into another folder and used the DRM-free .exe from the disc version you might be able to get mods working (I had to do something similar for Bloodlines and a couple of other games). And it's easier to have a backed up .exe in case the discs fail or get lost than the entire game... Although not by much given how cheap storage is now.

[Tale]

You know you have a serious game buying addiction when you're browsing Steam Horror games for something to buy and can find nothing. So you google up a best of Horror games list and find out you already own half the titles in the top 25 and have never played them.

[Fenixp]

Apparently, the best horror game on Steam is called "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Expansion Pass"

[Tale]

The tag system is a real mess.

[Katphood]

Didn't buy much this Winter Sale, just Red Alert 3+Uprising Expansion and Quake IV. I am thinking of buying Edge of Twilight and Turok too.

[BrotherFerg]

PRetty much everything on sale until Jan 2. You can get some games for less than a dollar! Check out Sacred Gold and games "like it".

[Vaeliorin]

Steam needs to fix their stupid algorithm that decides what to advertise to you.  The biggest advertisement on the front page for me was for the XCOM franchise, but I already own every single XCOM (and X-Com) game on Steam.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

You know you have a serious game buying addiction when you're browsing Steam Horror games for something to buy and can find nothing. So you google up a best of Horror games list and find out you already own half the titles in the top 25 and have never played them.

 

I'm the opposite. I spend time finishing games to the point of being a completionist and trying to get every achievement if the game has them, before going onto another game. It's probably why I don't have many games on Steam. I can't even fathom how some people have hundreds of games and not even play them. I find it also saves me a lot of money.

[Gorgon]

Theres is too much crap now on steam. It makes me more suspicious of small games and less likely to buy anything not from a large publisher. A shame really. 

 

Almost 40% of steam's entire inventory of games were released in 2016. It's really great for small developers and really unfortunate for those same small developers that there is no filter for quality. Almost 6000 games on steam altogether if memory serves. 

 

Who would take a chance on anything with so many turds among them

[Blodhemn]

Watch some videos to get the idea of the gameplay. Also look for the few negative reviews and see why it's rated that way.

[Fenixp]

Who would take a chance on anything with so many turds among them

All I usually have to do is check the reviews. If it's mixed or lower, I don't even take a look at such a game. When a whole bunch of people actually like something though, I have a tendency of looking further into it - naturally, that doesn't mean it's not a POS and I tend to automatically skip anything Early Access, Multiplayer-only and Survival, but all in all, I found some cool games that way.

 

Well, Westerado.

 

And I didn't really like it very much.

 

... Eh, it can work's what I'm saying. Alternatively, just ignore Steam and watch GOG releases.

Edited January 2, 2017 by Fenixp

[Gorgon]

It used to be really easy to inflate the stats and I don't think they fixed that retoactively. If you give away a couple of thousand keys with the simple message 'if you liked the game please consider writing a positive review', well that's going to get you a positive score, unless you sell millions and depend on traditional advertising or your game is so terrible that it can't garner positive word of mouth at all.  

 

For a while now in order for a review to count it has had to be a STEAM purchase, it can't be a redeemed key, which is also a bit misleading since most discerning people get the STEAM key from a reseller usually taken from a physical media that never gets used. We can thank regional pricing and the odd privileges still afforded to brick and mortar stores for that, but that's another matter. 

 

 They really need for review and campaign giveaway keys to be unique and recognisable in the review system.

[Rosbjerg]

It now states whether you redeemed, played before acces or got the key for free in your reviews

[Gorgon]

So it does. Looks like the change was in november. 

[Keyrock]

Steam reviews can be useful, but you need to read a bunch of them and use your judgement to formulate an overall picture and filter out the legit reviews from the meme reviews, fanboy reviews, and people that have a bone to pick with the developer reviews (I never understood these, but they exist for some reason).

[Gorgon]

As far as I can tell keys redeemed from physical media still don't count. I wonder what that's for. A simple FU to the resellers who after all take a big bite out of STEAMS profit ?

 

Anyway you can still spam the review list with positives, say leading up to a sale, even if those reviews don't count towards the total score. As long as you have a 'mixed' rather than a 'negative' that's still going to help you. 

 

'This change doesn't impact the review score. Each game's score will continue to be calculated based only on customers that purchased the game via Steam.'

[Fenixp]

As I said, Steam reviews alone don't actually mean much - just that the game works and does what it advertises to, more or less. Which alone serves as a good filter to start research by, say, opening Youtube and watching gameplay videos.

[Hurlshort]

I enjoy it when I scroll down for a Steam review and I find one of you guys at the top of my list as the reviewer. That's typically my best source of information.

[Gfted1]

I'm not gonna lie, I look at the Metacritic score. I know, I know...Metacritic is owned and operated by Satan, but for me it serves the purpose of getting a general opinion.

[Fenixp]

for me it serves the purpose of getting a general opinion.

That's fine as long as your general opinion's positively aligned with Satan's

[Gfted1]

Now that you mention it, dude does know how to throw a party.