This is a big, busy thread. There are some guidelines to keep things nice and orderly:
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:
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.
How do I join the Steam groups?
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. 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 is going to make you buy games. All the games.
How do I join the chat rooms of the PA Steam groups?
Each PA Steam group has its own chat room which you can freely join once you are a member. They are happy places with no monsters.
To enter a group chat you must follow these steps:
- On the main Steam menu, go to your username submenu and then click on the "GROUPS" option

- Then, click on the link showing the number of people present in the chat of the group that you want to join. This will launch the Steam client (in case it is not already running in your system) and open the group chat in it

- In case your web browser is not able to launch the Steam client, the following window will show giving you the option to open the group chat directly in your web browser (web chat) or to download the Steam client

- Alternatively, you can go to the main page of a Steam group and then click the "Enter chat room button"

- Want to chat and use Steam, but not at your computer? There are apps for that!
Android Steam or iOS Steam
- Don't want to install the full Steam App, but still want to chat...there are apps for that as well!
Android Chat or iOS Chat
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. Sync your Steam wishlist 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?
They don't.
Steam Game Categories
You can make a copy of of the file below to backup your category tags!
\Steam\userdata\*USERIDHERE*\7\remote \shareconfig.vdf
Trading cards? Badges? Steam profile levels? Boosters? FOILS?! What the hell?
Jrraghen put together this helpful guide:
The House of Cards!
But that's pure, diabolical evil!
Yes, that's right.
Can we trade cards in the thread?
Yes, but it's inefficient. Use the Steam feature that shows which of your friends has the cards you need. Join our Steam group for trading cards:
PA Card Sharks
Check this
handy tip from HiT BiT:
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"
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.Previous Years Winter Sale Drives
2019: $2,407.09
2018: $2,190.06
2016: $5,315.84
2014: $9,248
2013: $11,903
Fanda
shared this with us:
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.
I have too many games! How do I move them to my new hard drive?Steam Mover makes transporting your massive library easier.
But wait! I have ALL OF THE GAMES installed! I need more hard drive space! What do?You download Tikione Steam Cleaner and clean it up.Steam Cleaner also available through GitHub!That helped! I have more room for stuff. Free stuff.Isorn wrote:
Someone on a Steam forum made
a nice list of all free DLC you can add to your Steam account 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?!
During 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.
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?
Steam > Settings > Downloads + Cloud to change your download region until things improve. Sometimes other regions are less populated and you can get somewhat better results even if the new server is in another country.
VR - You know, the thing with the goggles and doo-dads.
EvmaAlsar did a great write up about various
VR game options on Steam.Want to review and download your cloud saves?
Follow this magical
Cloud Link of Saves and Wonder!!!
What was the PA Friday Night Game Fever?
CorriganX had this crazy idea of getting some folks together to play games and thus Friday Night Game Fever began. Each week a game was posted as the Friday selection and at 9pm EST/6pm PST people would get online and fire up some multiplayer action. The games were typically streamed by at least one or two folks for viewing as well. The game night and its Steam group are not actively managed any more.
Old PA G&T Friday Night Game Fever banner made by HiT BiT
Conan: To gift your enemies, decimate their wishlists, and hear the lamentations of the backlog.
, building on the work of others for the OP.
Posts
Mmm. New thread smell.
Anyways, time to be a heretic and ask: What games have you guys finished recently?
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
I was so annoyed at how long it was I looked up a guide and was discovered that I was a few missions from the end.
Then I saw there were two epilogue chapters after.
So I made my peace with the game and uninstalled it. I might finish it later, but I’m finished with it for now.
Finished? 😂
I'm 120 hours into Persona 5 and still no end in sight.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Again.
There's a bunch of games I've never finished, but somehow I managed to play through that timesink of an RPG six times already.
Stuff like COD MW2 multiplayer, MtG Arena, Ark, numerous roguelikes/-lites etc.
It's the barest-bones nothing you can think of. It's got some nice basic systems and a whole lot of bugs and jank. Very little that was promised when EA hit, and almost nothing from the trailer is actually in the game. To top it off, I encountered a bug about a dozen hours in that swapped my character's class on loading a save, locking me out of my skill tree forever. Going on the Steam forums to try and find a solution, I notice a dev news post from a couple days ago basically admitting that the game went from an earlyish beta build to full release with no changes, that the game is probably not going to get anything new going forward, and it's the fault of the players and their high expectations.
Uninstalled it immediately after. Years ago, Osiris was the game that broke my habit of buying Early Access games sight unseen based on a cool premise, and I guess that education was worth whatever money I paid for it.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I'm still alive.
Looking forward to the new Stellaris pack coming soon which will be adding some story-heavy origins that revolve around first contact with pre-FTL civilisations, and uplifting. It'll be introducing a megacorporation that specialises in offering their technology to primitive civilisations for a nominal fee*
Looking forward to The Last Starship, developed by Chris Delay and Mark Morris of Introversion, more famous for DEFCON, Darwinia and more recently Prison Architect. There's a demo on Steam, and they're offering playtests of the creative shipbuilding mode. It's looking like it'll have an FTL style campaign but with the ability to design and build your ship however you see fit.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Most of which are boomer shooters though because that's become my brand basically.
When you let kerbals attach rocket motors to a thread it goes from 0 to 100 pretty fast.
I don't understand the question...
What games have you finished purchasing while on sale never to be played again.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
I follow Joshua. The only winning move is not to play.
Steam: betsuni7
Something something character editor it sounded like?
How to steam sale:
Buy $200 worth of games and DLC on sale.
Continue playing Civ 6 and Assassins Creed Valhalla on rotation for 3 more months until the next sale.
I tend to play one “non-narrative” game (so strategy/city builder or competitive fps) and one “narrative” game at a time. I don’t know how people possibly keep up with and justify paying for new games at full price.
Just in time to be in the danger zone
I definitely feel you on part of that. I've actually come back to PC gaming in the last year after getting a Steam Deck, which then got me to upgrade what was at the time a nearly 10 year old gaming PC. I can't tell you how good playing games in high refresh 1440p ultra with HDR looks. I've played more PC games in the last 6 months than I did in 5 years before that.
But there are also days where I go "you know what, I sit in front of a computer all day for work, I don't want to do that to play games tonight" That's where the Steam Deck comes in, but also quite a bit of Xbox still. I have a Series X and at least a couple times a week instead of playing on a PC I play something there, just becuase it's not my desk setup that I've spent 8 hours a day playing at. And that's ok.
It isn't being derailed due to other games. It is being derailed due to the fact that it is just so good on the afore mentioned 1440p ultra high refresh on the 6950 that I might actually 100% the game since I'm having so much fun just web slinging around Manhattan. I literally have not used fast travel once since it's just more fun to traverse the world.
I'm doing pretty solid, actually. Recently did Miles Morales, rebeat Dark Souls 2 (still one of the best soulslikes, fight me), and I'm making strong progress on OlliOlli World. Just last month took out the new Pokemon and Raji: An Ancient Epic.
A couple of old faves: Mass Effect 1 (in the Legendary Edition on PC, played on my Steam Deck, going through ME2 again now) and the newly re-released Goldeneye (on Xbox) that I blasted through on Agent difficulty over the weekend and am now going through again on Secret Agent and getting some unlocks. It's like the last 25 years never happened playing that again, I've been loving it, warts and all.
My current bread-and-butter non-narrative game is PUBG on Xbox that I now play regularly with an IRL friend. In a way it's like we finish that in about half an hour repeatedly, because of its nature.
Steam | XBL
Let's be perfectly honest the danger zone encompasses the entire thread and Steam chat regardless of page or time.
So let's take the highway...
Steam | XBL
I've actually tried to be much better actually finishing games in the last year. I'm not going to finish every game I start, but I had a really bad habit of playing a game for 5 hours before bouncing to the next shiny thing. I'm working on sticking to games longer. It makes it harder since I have less time to play games than I did 5+ years ago, which is why I got into the habit of not finishing games. Now I want to play fewer games, but finish more. I also mostly want to stick to playing one game at a time, unless I'm playing something on console as well. The only game that i started but truly bounced off was Days Gone, and that was mostly becuase of the stupid save system that had me replaying the first chunk of the game 4 times before I gave up.
since roughly last April, I've played, and finished (not in order):
Resident Evil 2 Remake
Death Stranding Directors Edition
Tales of Arise
FF VII remake
Tomb Raider 2013
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The Outer Worlds
Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga
F1 Manager 2022 (not a game you technically finish, but I played to my satisfaction)
It's a good mix of 40-50 hour games and 10-20 hour games. I try to alternate between a long game and a short game so I don't burn out only playing long games. That's been part of my problem with RPG's and other long games, if I try to play them back to back I get bored with the fact that it feels like I've only played one or two games over the course of a couple months.
I haven't really started too many other games. I've played TMNT Shredder's revenge on my Steam Deck during times when I care about the battery life on it, but haven't finished. I have played about 15 hours of Vampire Survivors, and not sure you can say I've "finished it" but that's another battery friendly game on the Deck I'll go back to.
EDIT: oh and also I forgot that I did play and finish a couple games on Switch last year, mostly earlier in the year. I did finish Mario+Rabbids Sparks of hope recently, and I am currently playing Pokemon Shining Pearl.
I finished signalis recently and the more I sit with it the more I think it’s like a top 5 horror game (generic term I don’t have a ranking system).
There is no freedom, only gifts.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
I mean, I recently finished a game on the Switch, and am nearing the end of two more. Does that count? I haven't actually played anything on Steam for a bit too long now.
I want to punch pig men and pile drive furries
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
*sees Jar Jar Top Gun*
No, on second thought, I think I'm good!
It absolutely counts!
Steam | XBL
I finished Citizen Sleepers (though many endings I may go back to) and Bugsnax. Beat Evil West a little while back, that was fun.
I retired Ravenous Devils and Going Under because it had been just too long since I played them so I'd only be able to build up the rhythm again by starting over.
Near the end of Cult of the Lamb.
Oh in that case I've finished a couple. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Fire Emblem Three Hopes in the last month ish.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I don't recommend playing Evenicle.
Petition to replace all actors with Jar Jar.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Okie-day!
Steam | XBL
You sayin', wee-sa gonna wake up Mr. Freeman?
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Here lies the post Christmas thread , may it live longer than the pre Christmas thread.