Welcome to the Steam thread!
This is a pretty neat community of people who like to talk about video games, sales, digital distribution, hat economies, classiness and classholery. We enjoy long walks on the beach, digital hoarding, gifting, the suffering of longtime members, and raising money for charity.
This is a big, busy thread. There are some guidelines to keep things nice and orderly:
- Be civil.
- This thread is for Steam-related discussion. Try to look for other, more appropriate threads before discussing games or other topics in here. Let's not drain other threads of precious content!
- If you feel someone's acting inappropriately, then quietly report the responsible parties to forum mods.
- Don't post links to active kickstarters without prior mod permission. Forum-wide rule.
- Linking your Steam profile in your sig will help community members find you, see what kinds of games you like, invite you to MP games, etc.
- Do not beg for games.
PA Steam Groups
We have two core Steam groups: Both of these groups have chat, and both are used sometimes to try to limit giveaways to community members. If you've just arrived, hang out here in the thread for a while and talk games with us before you ask for membership. When you do ask, include a link to your Steam profile. Steam name search is poop from a butt.
Penny Arcade is a general Steam group for folks from the PA forums.
PA G&T Adventure Team is a group that was originally created to get multi/coop going for smaller or older titles. Because it is actively moderated, a lot of folks use it as a giveaway group (to avoid problems we've had in the past with non-forumers scooping up gifts intended for the community.) Membership is locked during major sales.
Occasionally we also go on quests to slay a dragon and win the heart of a princess
The Newell needs those hearts (apparently they are used as power supply for the Steam servers).
PA G&T Friday Night Game Fever!
@CorriganX had this crazy idea of getting some folks together to
play games and thus Friday Night Game night began. Each week a game is posted as the Friday selection and at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific we all get online and fire up some multiplayer action. If there is a big enough reception, a second round of the game is usually played on Saturday or Sunday at Noon Eastern/6pm Central European so our friends from across the big drink can join us without needing to pull an all nighter. The games are typically streamed by at least one or two folks for viewing as well.
Thanks to
@HiT BiT for this awesome banner!
On the nature of gifting.
Sometimes people gift games.
- Don't feel that you have to gift games to be a part of this community. It's just one of many things that go on. Some people can give lots of games. Some people can give a game or two a year. Some people make amazing images. Some people find hidden indie gems and report about them. Some people relay amazing gaming moments. Some people report sales. Some people are hysterical. Etc. There are many ways to participate in this community. Gifting is just one of them and is not required.
- If you run a contest, have entries PMed to you. The thread gets too cluttered otherwise. You can, however, post the winning entries.
- If you receive a gift, then take a moment to thank the gifter. Use the notification system so they can see your thank you post! ( @NAME. Use quotes around names with spaces.) See below for an example.
- If you win a Steamgifts giveaway, in addition to thanking the gifter, be sure to mark the gift as received on Steamgifts. You tie up a gift 'slot' for the gifter until you do.
- In addition to contests, wishlist gifting, ninja gifting, revenge gifting, pile-on gifting and Steamgifts.com giveaways, we have the new [ codes ][ /codes ] tags which can fire off one or more Steam codes (or activation links). More info about [ codes ] below.
A Steam thread participant preparing for gifting...Rare footage of a gift fight in action...
Steam sales are legendary. From small to honking massive:
Daily Deals: One game a day goes on sale at 10am PT for 24 hours.
Midweek Madness: Starts 10am PT Tuesday and ends Thursday afternoon.
Weekend Sale: Starts midday Thursday and ends with the sale rollover Monday. Sometimes accompanies free play weekends for MP titles.
Publisher Sale: Many of the publishers games will get a modest discount with a single title or franchise getting a featured day with a deeper discount. Follow the big sale guidelines.
Seasonal Sales: Mardi Gras time here in the thread. Huge swaths of games go on discount, with daily specials, flash sales, community vote sales, and whatever else the evil geniuses at Valve cook up to separate us from our money. There are often metagames such as sale achievements or collectibles or other madness that rewards buying, playing and gifting games and participating in Steam's community. The summer sale usually starts in the last week of June and runs for two weeks, and the Winter sale usually runs for two weeks across Christmas and New Year's.
Other retailers like Amazon and Green Man Gaming get into the act now too, so there are often great values to be had during sales for Steam-activatable games from other sites.
Seasonal Sales Birthdays are basically a big deal around this thread.
Important Note: If you are waiting for a particular game, be sure to mind
the countdown timer on the game's store page. Starting Winter 2013, the last day of the sale was just a recap of top sellers. Most games went back to full price.
Steam's refund policy, Abuse section:
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you.
We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.How do I join the Steam groups?
Membership to the two Steam groups is for reasonably active community members. If you have been on the PA forums for a while and have participated, post a link to your Steam profile here in the thread and a Steam group mod will take care of you.
If you've been on the forums for three days during a major sale and your only posts have been to casually express your strong desire for certain games, your request is unlikely to find a positive reception. Ditto if your very first post on the forum is to ask for group membership. Sadly this does happen sometimes.
The best parts of this community are available to you now just by showing up. Read some posts, make some posts, ask to be invited as a guest to chat, buy some games, play some games, etc. Group membership is modest icing on delicious cake.
Warning: This guy's going to make you buy games. All the games.How do I tag someone in the thread?
If you want to @ someone with spaces in their name, use quotation marks around the name so it looks like this:
Which will then turn into this:
Oh, and if you
quote text that has an
@alert in it, please take a moment to remove the @ (unless you really want that person to get another notification.) Sometimes we get to chatting and someone will get 3, 4, 5+ notifications all at once.
Where are you guys getting those nifty Steam Signatures?
Check out
Alabaster Slim for his lovely signature generator.
Has Game X ever been Price Y? How can I keep track of all the sales and discounts?http://isthereanydeal.com/ is your friend. You can sync your Steam wishlist to it if you like and get notifications when prices drop. Double check that you are getting a Steam key from a 3rd party site before buying.
How do the new [codes ][ /codes] tags even work?
Put a series of Steam activation codes (or activation links, or movie quotes, or winning lottery numbers...) inside the tags, each on its own line like this (without the spaces inside the brackets, of course):
[codes ]code 1
code 2
code 3
...
code n[/codes]
That will create a little box with a clickable link and a number. Each forumer who clicks the link will get a popup and a PM with the next line. Each line can only be sent out once and each forumer can only click once. It was originally designed to allow developers to hand out lots of codes for a game without some goose grabbing the lot.
Just one code thingy per post!
Note: [ code ][ /code ] is a different tag. Be sure to get that "s" up in there!
Trading cards? Badges? Steam profile levels? Boosters? FOILS?! What the hell?
Some games (more every week) now have trading cards. You can earn some of these cards by playing/idling the game. Some of them you'll need to get by trading or buying them from the Steam community market. Completing a set lets you craft a badge, which gives you an emoticon, a profile wallpaper, a coupon (usually) and profile experience. Leveling up your profile increase your friend cap, earns you customization options for your Steam profile and, allegedly, increases your chances of getting a booster. Boosters are packs of three cards that show up in your inventory sometimes. You can open them or sell them on the market. Sometimes cards are foil. Each game has a regular badge with five levels and a single-level foil badge. Oh, and you must be a certain level to get your card drops.
But that's pure, diabolical evil!
Yes, that's right.
Can we trade cards in the thread?
You can but it's inefficient. Use the Steam feature that shows you which of your friends has the cards you need. Oh, and join the Steam group we created for trading cards:
PA Card Sharks
Also check this handy tip:
A little Steam trading trick some of you may not be aware of:
-Go to your Steam Inventory
-Click on the "Trade Offers" button
-Then click on the "Who can send me Trade Offers?" link
-Below you will find a "Trade URL"
You can share this URL with other Steam users to allow them to directly send you a trade offer even if they aren't on your friends list.
You can share this URL anywhere, including your forum sig.
If you have shared or posted your URL and would like to stop receiving trade offers from it use the "Create New URL" button. A new Trade URL will be created turning the previous one inoperative.
Is Steam down?!
Is it Tuesday? It's probably scheduled maintenance.
It's not Tuesday. Is Steam down?!http://issteamdown.com/What are you people talking about? Why hats and what is an "Isy?"
Check out the handy Steam Thread Primer, written by
@Smokestacks!
Steam Thread Primer:
Gaben/The Newell - Gabe Newell, Director of Valve Software. Called "Gaben" because in the commentary for older Source Engine games he would tell players to email him at "Gabe N. at valvesoftware.com" with user feedback.
Serve the Newell - To buy games on Steam, to give Gaben your money. From this comic edit.
Bad Rats - An incredibly awful 'physics' based puzzle game, available on Steam, notorious for being as awkward as it is broken. Will haunt your dreams. Popular gift to give to people.
Class - An attribute demonstrated by people who will generously purchase games and then give them to internet strangers.
Class War - When two or more forumers buy each other games back and forth until one of them gives up. I know this sounds really crazy, but it happens.
Bundle - Originally the Humble Indie Bundle, which was a "pay what you want" system for a group of games, now usually means any website selling a group of games (usually able to be registered on Steam) for a low price.
Giveaway/A Giveaway - Usually refers to a giveaway on Steamgifts.com, a website where you list a game you want to give away, people enter, and then a winner is randomly decided among all entrants after a set time period.
Hats/The Hatconomy - The purchase and sale of in-game hats or sometimes other items in TF2. Some hats are very valuable, which is funny because they are just hats for videogame characters. People who have valuable hats or other items in their inventories sometimes get messages from random people on Steam begging for those items.
Backlog - The list of games you have purchased, but have not gotten around to playing yet. Tends to grow over time, often to immense proportions. If you do not have a backlog yet, between the thread and the sales you will get one.
Spies/Russian Spies - People who lurk the thread or try to get into the various PA Steam groups not to participate in the community, but to try and get free games.
Steamsigs - Custom forum signatures that display a link to your Steam profile, as well as an image of a game you are currently playing, have played the most in the last two weeks, or have played the most over all time (if you haven't played any games on Steam in the last two weeks). Available here courtesy of forumer Suds. Having a Steam sig (or some sort of clickable link to your Steam profile in your signature) makes it considerably easier for people to add you to their friends list.
Child's Play - A charity started by the writer and artist behind PA that raises money for videogames/toys that go to children's hospitals, originally started in '03, has grown every year. Helps sick kids feel better about their time in the hospital while simultaneously refuting the idea that gamers are antisocial jerks.
Isy - Big Classy, a forumer. Formerly known as "Big Isy", he was granted the new name after donating a hefty amount of money to Child's Play during a fundraiser. Sometimes referred to as Isy, which might cause confusion to people who haven't been around very long.
Summer Dale - A phone's auto-correction of "Summer Sale", which through some sort of internet voodoo produced an actual entity, a smooth voiced funk loving man who lives in a world where the 80s reign eternal and supreme. Also sometimes used to describe the upcoming Summer Sale itself.
Rainbow and/or Slash - Two forumers by the name of Rainbowdespair and slash000 who are notable for developing the third and fourth installments of the Penny Arcade: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness series. Also developed Breath of Death VII and Cthulu Saves the World, two RPGs that, along with the Rainslick games, are available on Steam.
Also, sometimes shit gets real. Like that time we all murdered each other for
bloodsport games. And there was a kabob conspiracy and a kind of Cthulhu bunny.
@akajaybay took us
down that particular rabbit hole.
Why are you people obsessed with Bad Rats and Amnesia?
A moment of ill-advised swagger from anoffday turned into a horrifying LP of Bad Rats which,
because reasons, turned into over $6000 raised for Child's Play.
CorriganX raised over $1100 for Child's Play via Amnesia.
Classy Christmas
We raised $11,903 dollars for charity
in December 2013 and another $9,248
in December 2014!
For our Christmas fundraiser to restore TychoCelchuuu's threadmaking privileges (and help the kids), I donated to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. This week I received a nice letter from them! I figured I'd share part of it with y'all, since this applies to all of you at least as much as it does to me.
What is this Steamgifts site? I wish to create a giveaway! I cannot enter a giveaway!
Steamgifts is a neat site that lets people create giveaways for games on Steam. Points for entering giveaways are accumulated over time, so just wait a bit if you need points. Entry to giveaways can be limited by Steam group membership to prevent mooches from getting games.
How do I make one of those cool Steam Gifts signature giveaway banners?What are all these bundles you people keep talking about?
In addition to Steam sales and sales of Steam keys on other sites and gifts, we live in a golden age of bundles! Bundle sites sell batches of games for modest amounts of money, often as low as a few dollars. Many, but not all, contribute to charity and many, but not all, give you Steam keys for the games. Sometimes you'll buy an indie gem that isn't even on Steam, and later when arrives on Steam you will get a key through the bundle site. Be careful if you plan to gift some of the games, as sometimes the bundled games will come in a single Steam key. We have a separate
bundles thread.
I have too many games! Which do I play?Steam Roulette randomly picks a game for you to play.
I have too many games! How do I move them to my new hard drive?Steam Mover makes transporting your massive library much easier.
But wait! I have ALL OF THE GAMES installed! I need more space on my hard drive! wat i do?You download Tikione Steam Cleaner and clean up that shitSteam Cleaner also available through GitHub!Okay that helped. Now I have more room for stuff. Free stuff.
Someone on a steam forum made [url="
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/29711524/#Comment_29711524"a nice list of all free DLC you can add to your steam account[/url] if you have the base-game but that thread is currently not available so I figure I post it here. Since it is pretty easy to miss some of these.
The sale prices aren't right! What's going on?! Oh God, the darkness is closing in...
During the seasonal sales, you are one of a million monkeys hammering F5 at 10am PT to see the new sales. The system is always borked for 5-20 minutes. Take a deep breath. The Newell will deliver, and the new dailies will be available for 48 hours.
Why are some games not available in my region?
Publishers determine what countries get what games. Someone in a suit decided that it wasn't worth the money to make the game available to your region, so it isn't available on Steam. This also applies to cases of games having edited/censored versions showing up on Steam in certain countries. The good news is that you can generally get around this by having someone from another region gift or trade you the game.
Steam is downloading slowly. What gives?
You can head to Steam -> Settings -> Downloads + Cloud and change your download region until things improve. Since other regions are typically less populated, you will probably get somewhat better results even if the new server is in another country.
I enjoy watching video game streams. Where can I find some streamers that call the Steam Thread home?@Houn has made a hub for finding
Steam Thread Streamers.
The Steam thread has a proud tradition of marrying our love of Steam and Penny Arcade in comic edits:
GALLERY OF EDITS:
Posts
All images lovingly stolen from Valve because I'm terrible at photoshop
- Sell them on the market
- Build a full set of cards
- Trade/gift them with/to friends
The market works like a stock market - you'll put yours up for sale at whatever price you're looking for, and buyers can list the prices they're interested in buying cards at. There's even historical data for the card available on the card's page if you check before listing, so don't just list it for 3 cents, or whatever the current cheapest one is. Maybe you can make more of a profit!- There will be special badges for the sale, with 10 cards per level
- The badge can be leveled up infinitely, including the foil badge. Some of these go up STUPID high. For example, here is the Holiday Sale 2013 badge for level 2000+:
- You will get one card for every set of other cards you craft, in place of coupons
- You will get one card for every $10 you spend in the store.
- You will get one card for per day when you vote in the User Choice poll (number of times will vary depending on number of polls per day).
- Cards will expire one day after the sale ends, so they must be sold or crafted by then, or they will disappear.
- In some sales (NOT the Winter 2014 sale), you will get some bonus item for a free to play game which can be redeemed for your account or sold if you craft a sale badge, 3 items if it's a foil.
This past summer, there was another metagame where everyone was split into teams, so it was potentially better to hold onto your cards. This past holiday, there was an auction prior to the sale starting, so crafting early would have been a benefit as you'd have more items to make more gems to bid. Holiday 2013, there was just items and some of them were quire rare and valuable, so crafting as soon as possible was the best option. I'd recommend taking a stance of "wait and see," particularly for the first morning of the sale - Steam gets hammered at the start of the sale, and it's not uncommon for item drops to get screwed up if you craft around update (10am PST). Either commit to being early, or wait until the rush has passed. So that's the long and short of it. If you've got any questions, feel free to PM me. Some other resources for you to check out:Twitch/Mudzgut
Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.
Naruto 4 this Friday! Get your pre orders in!
Thank you for Knight Squad! I don't ... what even is this? It looks crazy.
Remember: Up the alley! Not across the street!
Do not engage the Watermelons.
At this rate, he might be promoted to 3/4 of an assed
Lara comes to a damaged tomb. Complains about all the damage previously done by amateur excavation.
Wuuuuuut? Lara, sweetie... really?
How's she supposed to enjoy breaking something already broken?
Ash magic forever.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
It's Bomberman with Knights and it's fantastic!
Speaking of fantastic, IT'S GIVEAWAY TIME~!!!!
Here's another copy for you guys, it ends Tuesday. Good luck!
Switch FC: SW-7588-7027-0113, Steam/PSN: Halfazedninja
neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1178556
where it turns out you get things like the localization files being just excel spreadsheet files, and " a DRM thats called VMProtect, that creates a new *.exe everytime the game starts."
What the eff.
Steam | XBL
Edit: Though, the rest of it is bullshit, yes.
And then this happened:
@Big Classy strikes again. Thank you so much for more Witcher, can't get enough of it, you're the best!
And now to play Hearts of Stone while waiting for the big one later this year, Blood and Wine.
My gut impression is Zestiria's development factored the PC port in at some point, whereas Symphonia, which did not, was more involved than they anticipated. It wouldn't surprise me if it's just some halfassed emulation whose QA consisted of "does it run at all? Y/N".
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Light the Durante signal!
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
There's no reason why we should assume that a new PC port will release broken. All of the people who are recommending we "just wait until modders fix it" are not helping. Just don't buy it. Vote with your wallet. If you absolutely must play it than wait a few months and grab it during the summer sale or something I guess but please do your best not to support developers like this.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
My Backloggery
11. And something to chuckle about. Apparently the one who is in charge of the discussionforums for this port was called "Lazy Mofo" on Steam. After being called out, he changed his Steam name.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/ant-simulator-canceled-after-team-spends-the-money-on-booze-and-strippers-499697.shtml
I don't see how they're legally covered for spending dev money on things like that though.
According to the dev's in followup to his YouTube announcement:
Of course, this requires someone to sue first... wonder if they took any money from lawyers (or people connected to them) who'd love to try and set a precedent here?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Thanks to whichever monster called upon the Nobody Anonymous Gifting Service, I bet it was @Madican. juz cuz.
The game needs Adminstrator rights to write temp files to the root of the C: drive. The VMprotect DRM causes a new .exe to be generated every time, which goes in a new folder in root C:, which gets filled with empty folders (they don't remove the folder that contains the current running game session). And if you have no C: drive (admittedly surely rare)? You'll need to change the drive letter of an existing partition or use an external drive.
I say again, what the eff.
Steam | XBL
EDIT: Not on GoG - boo!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Unless they lost the original source and had to hack the port together or something that's entirely inexcusable. Any professional coder worth his salt should be using relative file paths off the executable's directory (or off of pseudo-absolute locations like the Windows documents folder).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
My favorite thing was realizing you can possess the spider to wreck havoc on the enemy colony. And infesting the whole yard causing the humans to move out. And leading my colony to victory over the red menace.
I really loved Sim Ant.
I had SimAnt on my Mac in the late 80s/early 90s. Loved that game. It had a fairly interesting campaign (for the time) that involved taking over a house's yard and interior a square at a time. It culminated in driving the (unseen) family out of the house, which I believe happened when you took over 75% of the property.
My Backloggery
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2016/02/01/ant-simulator-business-partners-respond-devs-claims-100-percent-bull.aspx?utm_content=buffer883c5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
I'm plugging along in C&C 3 and finally face the third enemy as NOD.
Rather sad to see Australia end, fun times. Ayers rock became easy as I had started a mini base near where one of the late stage objectives was and could just walk right in with avatars and capture it after clearing out defenses.
He was in Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive too.
Steam | XBL
Never do business with Friends or Family if you want to remain such. I don't know what percentage of blame is on each side, but it's pretty clear no matter who's ultimately "liable", shit broke down between them a long time ago.