Just saw via IsThereAnyDeal that it's $.99 since Monday. Checked things out, and it's not a sale, its the new price. However I also discovered dev has been discontinued as of last year and it is still listed as Early Access. But i'm sure I can get more than $1 of fun out of it.
lol Valve, why is a billion dollar company ran like a garage indie game dev?
Valve strikes me as an entire company who things they're the smartest people in the room. They don't want to do the most obvious, well known thing to solve problems. (Like hiring people to moderate and curate their bullshit) they want to invent ways to automate or otherwise fix the problem with the least human interactions possible.
I think Valve's goal is to eventually have the entire company run by Gabe Newell uploaded into a computer, GLaDOS style.
I think the best solution is to have the only built-in avenue for communication inside of the app to be a complex series of emotes acted out by a digital avatar.
lol Valve, why is a billion dollar company ran like a garage indie game dev?
Valve strikes me as an entire company who things they're the smartest people in the room. They don't want to do the most obvious, well known thing to solve problems. (Like hiring people to moderate and curate their bullshit) they want to invent ways to automate or otherwise fix the problem with the least human interactions possible.
I think Valve's goal is to eventually have the entire company run by Gabe Newell uploaded into a computer, GLaDOS style.
It’s about 60% complete.
They still haven't fixed the bug where it always stalls out in the 3rd step
Given Valve's preponderance predilection for utilizing that joke, I'm surprised it's still as popular as it is. It's basically been Dad-ified at this point.
lol Valve, why is a billion dollar company ran like a garage indie game dev?
Valve strikes me as an entire company who things they're the smartest people in the room. They don't want to do the most obvious, well known thing to solve problems. (Like hiring people to moderate and curate their bullshit) they want to invent ways to automate or otherwise fix the problem with the least human interactions possible.
I think Valve's goal is to eventually have the entire company run by Gabe Newell uploaded into a computer, GLaDOS style.
It’s about 60% complete.
They still haven't fixed the bug where it always stalls out in the 3rd step
Huh. They just released three new DLCs for Hyperdimension Neptunia 1, which even on PC is nearly four years old at this point. That's kind of random.
Re;Birth 1+ recently came out in Japan. I think the English community was, uh, less than impressed at the original announcement and I think IFI took that to heart so they're just bundling all the new features from 1+ as DLC for the already-released RB1 PC version instead of doing a separate full-game release.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg) Backlog Challenge List
Don't know if this got posted yet. I still need to go back and actually play the first one. I got like a couple hours in and dropped it. This seems promising, though.
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Probably. Except for the odd stupid game that saves in %appdata% folders. (I'm looking at YOU, Dark Souls 2...)
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
You'd want to copy the saves from one folder to the other, I'd think. Doesn't Steam use the userid # or something similar for the folder name? I don't think you can tell it to go looking in another user's folders for your saves.
0
Werewolf2000adSuckers, I know exactly what went wrong.Registered Userregular
In better 'communications from Valve' news, there's a blog post about the 'dealing with controversial games' issue:
It's been a few months since we talked about how we want to approach shipping games with controversial content. In that blog post we talked about some of the tools we felt we needed to build and we thought it would be good to give you an update on where we are. We've done a number of things since that post, some which may seem unrelated, but if we are going to maintain an open view of what gets onto the Store, then you'll need good tools to find the games you want, as well as avoid the things you don't.
The first set of our changes focused on improving how you can find new games. We've added Developer & Publisher homepages so you can easily get from a game you love to others made by the same creators, or follow them if you want to be notified whenever they say or make something. We significantly reworked how our Upcoming Games Lists functioned, so they're much better at showing you upcoming games that you might be interested in, or upcoming extra content for a game you've been playing a bunch.
A second set of changes was focused on improving how you can ignore things you're not interested in. In the past you've been able to ignore individual games or product types (like VR, or Early Access) you didn't want to see again. But now we've added ways for you to also easily ignore individual developers, publishers, and curators.
We've also improved the game tag filters on your account preferences. Previously, it was a list of 3 game tags that you wanted to see less of. We've now increased the number of tags you can list to 10, and made them into a harder filter - in short, the Store now assumes you want to ignore all the games that feature any of those tags in their most popular tags, instead of just using them as suggestions to our recommendation engine.
We did our best to ensure you can safely ignore swaths of games in the store, but still find them if you look directly via the search tool. If the game that we think you're searching for is hidden due to your mature content settings, we identify that and let you know in a safe way. For example, if you have your preferences set to hide mature games with violence, but you search for The Witcher 3, you'll see this:
If there are games that your search should contain that you're ignoring for other reasons (due to its developer, or game tags, for instance), we'll still include it in the list, but we'll blur it out and when you hover over it you can see why it is darkened. For example, if you've chosen to ignore games by Valve, and then search for Left 4 Dead, you'll see this:
A third set of changes focused on allowing you to have better control over the kinds of mature content you see. So far, the Store has allowed you to filter out games that feature Frequent Violence/Gore or Nudity/Sexual Content. After looking at the mature content in submissions we're receiving, and at some games that are already in the Store, we've added two more options. The first is a general Mature Content filter. We often see developers who tell us their game contains mature content, but not sex or violence, and you can now filter those games out if you wish. The second is an Adults Only filter, which allows you to filter out games that feature explicit sexual content.
We're also now requiring developers of games with violent or sexual content to describe the content of their game, and we're using that information to help you decide whether a game is something you're comfortable with. We think the context of how content is presented is important and giving a developer a place to describe and explain what's in their game gives you even more information when browsing and considering a purchase. When you're looking at the store page of a game with mature content, we'll display that developer-written description to you. We're also displaying it on the interstitial page we show you if you ever follow a direct link from outside steam to a game that should be filtered for you:
Finally, we've continued our efforts in removing bad actors from the Store. Last year we made changes to Trading Cards to address the ways a small set of developers were producing 'games' that generated revenue without anyone actually buying and playing them. Recently we made more changes to address other ways these bad actors were continuing to do it. We've also permanently banned several developers of games that we felt fit the "straight up trolling" description of games we're not going to allow onto the Store. There's actually a surprisingly small number of individuals behind almost all of these games, and their bans have been a straightforward series of decisions, thus far. You can read more about the shorthand of "straight up trolling," and the process of making those decisions in the Q&A below.
With these sets of changes, we hope you have a better sense of how we're approaching building a store that works for all developers and players. There's still plenty of work to do. In our previous post we identified a range of things, from parental controls to tools for developers to manage their communities. In addition, some of the changes described in this post will require more options when we see new kinds of content in game submissions. Going forward, we aim to continue this strategy of shipping features as they're finished, and posting periodic updates as to the nuts and bolts and the thinking behind their development.
Q&A
Q: What about games that are already in the store that include mature content?
A: Every developer will be encouraged to update their game with the customer-facing descriptions outlined above but in most cases Valve moderators will going back through the catalog and making sure games are complying with the new requirements.
Q: What do you mean, in practice, when you say you won't ship games that are "outright trolling?" That seems vague.
A: It is vague and we'll tell you why. You're a denizen of the internet so you know that trolls come in all forms. On Steam, some are simply trying to rile people up with something we call "a game shaped object" (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is "good"). Some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items, others are looking for a way to generate a small amount of money off Steam through a series of schemes that revolve around how we let developers use Steam keys. Others are just trying to incite and sow discord. Trolls are figuring out new ways to be loathsome as we write this. But the thing these folks have in common is that they aren't actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone. When a developer's motives aren't that, they're probably a troll.
Our review of something that may be "a troll game" is a deep assessment that actually begins with the developer. We investigate who this developer is, what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more. All of this is done to answer the question "who are we partnering with and why do they want to sell this game?" We get as much context around the creation and creator of the game and then make an assessment. A trend we're seeing is that we often ban these people from Steam altogether instead of cherry-picking through their individual game submissions. In the words of someone here in the office: "it really does seem like bad games are made by bad people."
This doesn't mean there aren't some crude or lower quality games on Steam, but it does mean we believe the developers behind them aren't out to do anything more than sell a game they hope some folks will want to play.
Q: Sometimes I see blurred out games on my Store front page. Why is that?
A: There are a number of sections on the front page that we fill with games, and to ensure the servers behind it don't melt down as everyone tries to use it, we do a lot of data caching. This works great for data sets that we can easily pre-compute - so if there's a game you shouldn't see due to your mature content filters, you'll never see it on the front page. But if you've chosen to do some more personal filtering of particular developers, or specific games, we can't do that pre-computation as easily. As a result, it's possible you'll see a blurred out game on the front page because your personal filters should cause it to be hidden. In practice, though, this will only happen if you've filtered out so many games that it can't find enough to fill a section of the front page, and again, like the search results, we'll blur that game out and tell you why.
Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store?
A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating, but know we're filling out those age gates too.
As you'd expect, the comments are a mixture of people saying 'yeah, most of this seems sensible' and rabid idiots frothing at the mouth about the SJWs and how Valve deciding what they allow on their privately owned marketplace is Stalinist censorship.
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Naw, just copy the save file. They're somewhere in your documents folder. maybe in mygames\civ5. You can't copy the cheevo progress though. So say, you're 199/200 in some achievement, he'll have to start from his own achievements(ie, starts at 0/200 for the same achivement).
Don't know if this got posted yet. I still need to go back and actually play the first one. I got like a couple hours in and dropped it. This seems promising, though.
I need this on my wishlist posthaste.
I mean, same problem as Universim, not the time nor money to play, but it can linger there, taunting me.
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Naw, just copy the save file. They're somewhere in your documents folder. maybe in mygames\civ5. You can't copy the cheevo progress though. So say, you're 199/200 in some achievement, he'll have to start from his own achievements(ie, starts at 0/200 for the same achivement).
There is nothing stopping you from buying Hitler waifu sim2018, you just need to go outside of steam and manually download the files from private servers and pay more for the investment the developer made to create it and host it.
This is the issue with niche products catering to adult tastea, distribution.
Well, after installing another drive I now have 2.25 TB total on this computer. I remember the days when I was blown away by a 40 GB hard drive because it seemed like way more than anyone could fill. Of course, that was before there were 85 GB games.
Hrm. For both of those things I want the answer to be yes. My older son is nearing the age of acquiring his own Steam account, and I've got a "You can play these" category set up for him on my account (for each of my sons actually) so he doesn't go wandering through my account willy nilly.
I guess for games where he has a lot of hours built up already, we'll have to decide whether to get him his own copy to start from scratch or to let him keep playing those on my account.
It will be sad when he's no longer farming Civ V and VI cheevos for me. :razz:
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Naw, just copy the save file. They're somewhere in your documents folder. maybe in mygames\civ5. You can't copy the cheevo progress though. So say, you're 199/200 in some achievement, he'll have to start from his own achievements(ie, starts at 0/200 for the same achivement).
Can Steam Mover help you move or copy saves?
I have no experience with steam mover, so I can't help you there. My impression is that steam mover just moves the game's installation location from one drive to another, and has nothing to do with save games. I don't think it moved games from one account to another. I don't think it deals with save games.
I had computers long before hard drives were commonplace - my school had one for the whole school, and called it a Winchester disc. I have no idea what its capacity was*, but I'm guessing it wasn't much; not that it needed to be, our sole computer room at the time had about 20 BBC Model B's in it, and eventually an Acorn Archimedes.
But I digress... my first hard drive sporting machine had an 80MB drive, which was small even then (Doom took up over a quarter of it); I augmented that with a 426MB drive - I swear to God it was that specific about its size - and that was enough to last me the next several years.
@SoundsPlush hi5, 2.25TB buddy! I'm rocking the exact same. Piffling compared to what some people here are using, right?
If someone is saying stuff you don't like in Artifact, how is that Valve's fault/problem? As long as they include some sort of mute button, players will be able to solve the " My opponent is saying things I don't like" problem with a single click.
Trying to moderate player communication isn't something I expect from a game developer, you can't babysit the internet and players will always find new and inventive ways to get around any sort of automated moderation system if they're really that desperate to call you a fag or explain in detail what your mother likes to do in bed with the entirety your local college football team (or whatever). I've just come to expect the occasional low effort trashtalking as being an integral component of playing games with the unwashed masses, and it's one of the reasons why I don't play with randos (also, the golden rule of online gameplay - pubs are scrubs).
If the game is any good there will probably be a thread and a PA group with enough people that you shouldn't have too much trouble finding people to play against that you can assume will have some standard of decency if the idea of unmoderated livechat is distasteful to you.
If someone is saying stuff you don't like in Artifact, how is that Valve's fault/problem? As long as they include some sort of mute button, players will be able to solve the " My opponent is saying things I don't like" problem with a single click.
Trying to moderate player communication isn't something I expect from a game developer, you can't babysit the internet and players will always find new and inventive ways to get around any sort of automated moderation system if they're really that desperate to call you a fag or explain in detail what your mother likes to do in bed with the entirety your local college football team (or whatever). I've just come to expect the occasional low effort trashtalking as being an integral component of playing games with the unwashed masses, and it's one of the reasons why I don't play with randos (also, the golden rule of online gameplay - pubs are scrubs).
If the game is any good there will probably be a thread and a PA group with enough people that you shouldn't have too much trouble finding people to play against that you can assume will have some standard of decency if the idea of unmoderated livechat is distasteful to you.
Or they could just not have chat because there is no meaningful chat that could possibly occur?
Or they could have a "your opponent is attempting to chat, click here to subject yourself to verbal abuse" button. If one single click isn't an issue for other people, surely it wouldn't be an issue for you, right?
There is nothing stopping you from buying Hitler waifu sim2018, you just need to go outside of steam and manually download the files from private servers and pay more for the investment the developer made to create it and host it.
This is the issue with niche products catering to adult tastea, distribution.
Or they could just not have chat because there is no meaningful chat that could possibly occur?
Or they could have a "your opponent is attempting to chat, click here to subject yourself to verbal abuse" button. If one single click isn't an issue for other people, surely it wouldn't be an issue for you, right?
I wouldn't need to click, because I don't allow anonymous people on the internet to hurt my feelings.
+1
21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
I had computers long before hard drives were commonplace - my school had one for the whole school, and called it a Winchester disc. I have no idea what its capacity was*, but I'm guessing it wasn't much; not that it needed to be, our sole computer room at the time had about 20 BBC Model B's in it, and eventually an Acorn Archimedes.
But I digress... my first hard drive sporting machine had an 80MB drive, which was small even then (Doom took up over a quarter of it); I augmented that with a 426MB drive - I swear to God it was that specific about its size - and that was enough to last me the next several years.
@SoundsPlush hi5, 2.25TB buddy! I'm rocking the exact same. Piffling compared to what some people here are using, right?
If I recall correctly, my first hard drive when I upgraded to a PC from 8/16-bit machines in 1990 was about 30-40MB, meaning a round of deciding what I could afford to delete about every other time I wanted to install a new game. Thankfully my current hard drive is nearly 6TB, so those days are ov-
KOOPAH's TROOPAH's continue to amass glory, C-Bills and delicious salvage.
Here's a recent shot of the top tier lance mechs:
From left to right that's an Orion, Shadowhawk, Centurion and Jagermech. The Orion is a pretty bog-standard build, with an AC/10 (aka powerful autocannon) and then a lot of short range missiles (SRMs) since I happened to have two SRM 6's with +damage. Total tonnage of the starting lance was 175, and now we're up to 245. So we're definitely punching harder these days. Right after this photo (actually during this mission) we scored an LRM variant Jagermech. So that's just come into production as a lopsided long range missile boat, replacing the Centurion.
Things are going well and we're probably ready to take on the Smithon story mission (which may be the hardest of the game, relative to the mechs and pilots you have at the time.)
Part of the charm of BATTLETECH is you sometimes have FTL-style story events. In this one, my rambunctious mechwarriors turned a spare hallway in our dropship into a bowling alley of sorts.
Normally I adhere to a strict hands off policy when @dresdenphile and @Pixelated Pixie want to play with balls, but in this case I knew letting it go on was going to damage the ship in some way. So we decided to have just one more round:
Or they could just not have chat because there is no meaningful chat that could possibly occur?
Or they could have a "your opponent is attempting to chat, click here to subject yourself to verbal abuse" button. If one single click isn't an issue for other people, surely it wouldn't be an issue for you, right?
I wouldn't need to click, because I don't allow anonymous people on the internet to hurt my feelings.
Posts
Just saw via IsThereAnyDeal that it's $.99 since Monday. Checked things out, and it's not a sale, its the new price. However I also discovered dev has been discontinued as of last year and it is still listed as Early Access. But i'm sure I can get more than $1 of fun out of it.
Steam ID: Good Life
I think the best solution is to have the only built-in avenue for communication inside of the app to be a complex series of emotes acted out by a digital avatar.
They still haven't fixed the bug where it always stalls out in the 3rd step
EDIT: I can't word properly.
this hurts
No brain, I have no time to play now.
I really didn't want to read that. I already don't play the games I have. I don't want to buy more to then not play.
But think of the fun I could have if I had the power of a god. I'm sure I'd be a just and merciful god.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Re;Birth 1+ recently came out in Japan. I think the English community was, uh, less than impressed at the original announcement and I think IFI took that to heart so they're just bundling all the new features from 1+ as DLC for the already-released RB1 PC version instead of doing a separate full-game release.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
That is some take, holy shit.
That people are more prone to misbehaving (here, explicitly being shitty to other people) when they do NOT have anonymity is crazy talk.
Don't know if this got posted yet. I still need to go back and actually play the first one. I got like a couple hours in and dropped it. This seems promising, though.
Hide?
You revel in that shit. Make people on your friends list uncomfortable.
OK thanks.
I'm going to make one called Gabe Nudell's Half-Lived 3some.
Late to the party but can you back up the saves files on a portable drive and put them on his PC?
Steam / Origin & Wii U: Heatwave111 / FC: 4227-1965-3206 / Battle.net: Heatwave#11356
Wouldn't it be a 2some since he avoids the number 3?
Edit: Or was that part of the joke that I missed? I'm terrible with jokes... I just use the excuse that I'm an Engineer and we have no sense of humor.
Steam: betsuni7
Thanks!
He'll actually be on the same computer, now that I think of it. So I should just be able to map to my save folder, yes?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Probably. Except for the odd stupid game that saves in %appdata% folders. (I'm looking at YOU, Dark Souls 2...)
You'd want to copy the saves from one folder to the other, I'd think. Doesn't Steam use the userid # or something similar for the folder name? I don't think you can tell it to go looking in another user's folders for your saves.
The first set of our changes focused on improving how you can find new games. We've added Developer & Publisher homepages so you can easily get from a game you love to others made by the same creators, or follow them if you want to be notified whenever they say or make something. We significantly reworked how our Upcoming Games Lists functioned, so they're much better at showing you upcoming games that you might be interested in, or upcoming extra content for a game you've been playing a bunch.
A second set of changes was focused on improving how you can ignore things you're not interested in. In the past you've been able to ignore individual games or product types (like VR, or Early Access) you didn't want to see again. But now we've added ways for you to also easily ignore individual developers, publishers, and curators.
We've also improved the game tag filters on your account preferences. Previously, it was a list of 3 game tags that you wanted to see less of. We've now increased the number of tags you can list to 10, and made them into a harder filter - in short, the Store now assumes you want to ignore all the games that feature any of those tags in their most popular tags, instead of just using them as suggestions to our recommendation engine.
We did our best to ensure you can safely ignore swaths of games in the store, but still find them if you look directly via the search tool. If the game that we think you're searching for is hidden due to your mature content settings, we identify that and let you know in a safe way. For example, if you have your preferences set to hide mature games with violence, but you search for The Witcher 3, you'll see this:
If there are games that your search should contain that you're ignoring for other reasons (due to its developer, or game tags, for instance), we'll still include it in the list, but we'll blur it out and when you hover over it you can see why it is darkened. For example, if you've chosen to ignore games by Valve, and then search for Left 4 Dead, you'll see this:
A third set of changes focused on allowing you to have better control over the kinds of mature content you see. So far, the Store has allowed you to filter out games that feature Frequent Violence/Gore or Nudity/Sexual Content. After looking at the mature content in submissions we're receiving, and at some games that are already in the Store, we've added two more options. The first is a general Mature Content filter. We often see developers who tell us their game contains mature content, but not sex or violence, and you can now filter those games out if you wish. The second is an Adults Only filter, which allows you to filter out games that feature explicit sexual content.
We're also now requiring developers of games with violent or sexual content to describe the content of their game, and we're using that information to help you decide whether a game is something you're comfortable with. We think the context of how content is presented is important and giving a developer a place to describe and explain what's in their game gives you even more information when browsing and considering a purchase. When you're looking at the store page of a game with mature content, we'll display that developer-written description to you. We're also displaying it on the interstitial page we show you if you ever follow a direct link from outside steam to a game that should be filtered for you:
Finally, we've continued our efforts in removing bad actors from the Store. Last year we made changes to Trading Cards to address the ways a small set of developers were producing 'games' that generated revenue without anyone actually buying and playing them. Recently we made more changes to address other ways these bad actors were continuing to do it. We've also permanently banned several developers of games that we felt fit the "straight up trolling" description of games we're not going to allow onto the Store. There's actually a surprisingly small number of individuals behind almost all of these games, and their bans have been a straightforward series of decisions, thus far. You can read more about the shorthand of "straight up trolling," and the process of making those decisions in the Q&A below.
With these sets of changes, we hope you have a better sense of how we're approaching building a store that works for all developers and players. There's still plenty of work to do. In our previous post we identified a range of things, from parental controls to tools for developers to manage their communities. In addition, some of the changes described in this post will require more options when we see new kinds of content in game submissions. Going forward, we aim to continue this strategy of shipping features as they're finished, and posting periodic updates as to the nuts and bolts and the thinking behind their development.
Q&A
Q: What about games that are already in the store that include mature content?
A: Every developer will be encouraged to update their game with the customer-facing descriptions outlined above but in most cases Valve moderators will going back through the catalog and making sure games are complying with the new requirements.
Q: What do you mean, in practice, when you say you won't ship games that are "outright trolling?" That seems vague.
A: It is vague and we'll tell you why. You're a denizen of the internet so you know that trolls come in all forms. On Steam, some are simply trying to rile people up with something we call "a game shaped object" (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is "good"). Some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items, others are looking for a way to generate a small amount of money off Steam through a series of schemes that revolve around how we let developers use Steam keys. Others are just trying to incite and sow discord. Trolls are figuring out new ways to be loathsome as we write this. But the thing these folks have in common is that they aren't actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone. When a developer's motives aren't that, they're probably a troll.
Our review of something that may be "a troll game" is a deep assessment that actually begins with the developer. We investigate who this developer is, what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more. All of this is done to answer the question "who are we partnering with and why do they want to sell this game?" We get as much context around the creation and creator of the game and then make an assessment. A trend we're seeing is that we often ban these people from Steam altogether instead of cherry-picking through their individual game submissions. In the words of someone here in the office: "it really does seem like bad games are made by bad people."
This doesn't mean there aren't some crude or lower quality games on Steam, but it does mean we believe the developers behind them aren't out to do anything more than sell a game they hope some folks will want to play.
Q: Sometimes I see blurred out games on my Store front page. Why is that?
A: There are a number of sections on the front page that we fill with games, and to ensure the servers behind it don't melt down as everyone tries to use it, we do a lot of data caching. This works great for data sets that we can easily pre-compute - so if there's a game you shouldn't see due to your mature content filters, you'll never see it on the front page. But if you've chosen to do some more personal filtering of particular developers, or specific games, we can't do that pre-computation as easily. As a result, it's possible you'll see a blurred out game on the front page because your personal filters should cause it to be hidden. In practice, though, this will only happen if you've filtered out so many games that it can't find enough to fill a section of the front page, and again, like the search results, we'll blur that game out and tell you why.
Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store?
A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating, but know we're filling out those age gates too.
As you'd expect, the comments are a mixture of people saying 'yeah, most of this seems sensible' and rabid idiots frothing at the mouth about the SJWs and how Valve deciding what they allow on their privately owned marketplace is Stalinist censorship.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Naw, just copy the save file. They're somewhere in your documents folder. maybe in mygames\civ5. You can't copy the cheevo progress though. So say, you're 199/200 in some achievement, he'll have to start from his own achievements(ie, starts at 0/200 for the same achivement).
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I need this on my wishlist posthaste.
I mean, same problem as Universim, not the time nor money to play, but it can linger there, taunting me.
Can Steam Mover help you move or copy saves?
This is the issue with niche products catering to adult tastea, distribution.
As far as the game trolls go, suck it.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Oh well, here we are. *Install*
The compaq with six gigs we got years later was a revelation.
I have no experience with steam mover, so I can't help you there. My impression is that steam mover just moves the game's installation location from one drive to another, and has nothing to do with save games. I don't think it moved games from one account to another. I don't think it deals with save games.
But I digress... my first hard drive sporting machine had an 80MB drive, which was small even then (Doom took up over a quarter of it); I augmented that with a 426MB drive - I swear to God it was that specific about its size - and that was enough to last me the next several years.
@SoundsPlush hi5, 2.25TB buddy! I'm rocking the exact same. Piffling compared to what some people here are using, right?
Edit: * - "The term Winchester comes from an early type of disk drive developed by IBM that had 30MB of fixed storage and 30MB of removable storage; so its inventors called it a Winchester in honor of its 30/30 rifle." And to put that in perspective, that was for a school of almost 1,000 pupils, plus all the staff.
Steam | XBL
Trying to moderate player communication isn't something I expect from a game developer, you can't babysit the internet and players will always find new and inventive ways to get around any sort of automated moderation system if they're really that desperate to call you a fag or explain in detail what your mother likes to do in bed with the entirety your local college football team (or whatever). I've just come to expect the occasional low effort trashtalking as being an integral component of playing games with the unwashed masses, and it's one of the reasons why I don't play with randos (also, the golden rule of online gameplay - pubs are scrubs).
If the game is any good there will probably be a thread and a PA group with enough people that you shouldn't have too much trouble finding people to play against that you can assume will have some standard of decency if the idea of unmoderated livechat is distasteful to you.
Or they could just not have chat because there is no meaningful chat that could possibly occur?
Or they could have a "your opponent is attempting to chat, click here to subject yourself to verbal abuse" button. If one single click isn't an issue for other people, surely it wouldn't be an issue for you, right?
2007.
I wouldn't need to click, because I don't allow anonymous people on the internet to hurt my feelings.
Check it out (for your health)
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
If I recall correctly, my first hard drive when I upgraded to a PC from 8/16-bit machines in 1990 was about 30-40MB, meaning a round of deciding what I could afford to delete about every other time I wanted to install a new game. Thankfully my current hard drive is nearly 6TB, so those days are ov-
-er…
Fuck.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Here's a recent shot of the top tier lance mechs:
From left to right that's an Orion, Shadowhawk, Centurion and Jagermech. The Orion is a pretty bog-standard build, with an AC/10 (aka powerful autocannon) and then a lot of short range missiles (SRMs) since I happened to have two SRM 6's with +damage. Total tonnage of the starting lance was 175, and now we're up to 245. So we're definitely punching harder these days. Right after this photo (actually during this mission) we scored an LRM variant Jagermech. So that's just come into production as a lopsided long range missile boat, replacing the Centurion.
Things are going well and we're probably ready to take on the Smithon story mission (which may be the hardest of the game, relative to the mechs and pilots you have at the time.)
Part of the charm of BATTLETECH is you sometimes have FTL-style story events. In this one, my rambunctious mechwarriors turned a spare hallway in our dropship into a bowling alley of sorts.
Normally I adhere to a strict hands off policy when @dresdenphile and @Pixelated Pixie want to play with balls, but in this case I knew letting it go on was going to damage the ship in some way. So we decided to have just one more round:
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
cool