The All New Gabriel Newell's Digital Wonder Emporium, aka, The Steam Update Thread

Malor wrote:
Unfortunately, they tend to run like garbage.

They tend not to run well on the Mac, because Apple usually chooses kind of sh*t video hardware, and then their graphic drivers are focused on correctness, not speed. Source games kind of suck on the Mac.

I'm going to disagree with you here - Source games don't "kind of suck" on the Mac, they absolutely stink : /

Same hardware, rebooting on windows gives you like 50 more fps, it's ridiculous. And way less crashes, although the Source engine seems to crash a lot anyway.

Steam is not as good on the Mac as in Windows either. Sometimes I get messages from online friends and the message window doesn't appear anywhere, and other weird behavior. Also crashes.

edit: Don't get me wrong, I really like my Mac, and I'm glad it's getting more games, but damn, polish that OSX client some more, Valve

Today they've added a "Game Subscription" service which sounds like a move to attract more MMO games to the service. This probably means that the transaction will go through Valve so I wonder if we're going to see another round of publishers pulling their games from the service (a la EA) if this means all MMOs need to support this new service.

Not content with taking a bite out of DLC sales, Steam prepares to get game subscriptions. :p

Edit: pfffft

So long as they've got decent controls on the subscription, for starting, stopping, restarting, changing duration, etc, it seems decent to me. I can't really see a problem with steam doing it seeing as a whole bunch of other places take their slice on selling time codes and in-game currency cards.

More games have been converted to SteamPipe: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...

Go run TF2, CS:S, HL2:DM and DOD:S if you want to get ahead on the required conversion/update process instead of facing a big wait the next time you want to play them.

- Added rate-limiting of Steam game downloads, via Settings -> Downloads

VALVE HAS RISEN. IT IS A BRAND NEW DAY. WE CAN FINALLY WATCH NETFLIX WHILE RUNNING STEAM.

REJOICE, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! REJOICE!

Seriously, I've been looking for this freaking feature since... forever.

Or yeah, while I'm playing LoL and TF2 decides to update...

Man, I wish they'd also set it so that you could play a Steam game and still download. The workaround to make that happen is such a pain.

Malor wrote:

Man, I wish they'd also set it so that you could play a Steam game and still download. The workaround to make that happen is such a pain.

Or allow the user to mark which games they don't care about background downloads running. Or have an internal flag for each game which says whether or not it has multiplayer/online capabilities.

I think it's not just whether multiplayer is using the network, but also background disc/network work that could drop performance on some computers. I could see a load of weird support complaints going on "why did my game suddenly start chugging?" that would be traced to another random unrelated game getting an update, possibly the kind of unpredictability they just don't want to deal with.

I'm sure I've seen a few (source?) games download in the background while playing a game and then just complete their updates when I quit.

Malor wrote:

Man, I wish they'd also set it so that you could play a Steam game and still download. The workaround to make that happen is such a pain.

Alt-tab, click on "resume"?

cube wrote:
Malor wrote:

Man, I wish they'd also set it so that you could play a Steam game and still download. The workaround to make that happen is such a pain.

Alt-tab, click on "resume"?

Ha! I didn't even know you could do that. Good to know for those rare situations where I want to play something while a game is downloading.

To be fair, some games do not handle alt-tab well at all.

Stengah wrote:

To be fair, some games do not handle alt-tab well at all.

WHen you click on a game to start and steam puts up the initial "starting up" progress bar, it is at that point that it will pause your downloads. You can wait for it to do so, and right away unpause them. Before the game you're starting actually loads up a new window.

Scratched wrote:

Mysterious: Steam trading cards beta
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ImnTYdL.jpg)

I'll trade you a Jay Pinkerton for a Chet Falsziek!

Found this via Reddit:
Steam profiles get a redesign and add "levels" (not the same as "rating" from 2 week playtime)
Click link for the whole thing.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/hFEutos.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/CjszklH.png)

Curious to see how this all will work out

I guess they've got another thing for people to do in the next big sale.

Scratched wrote:

I guess they've got another thing for people to do in the next big sale.

"Complete a set of trading cards". You know, I think in 2012 I predicted something like a meta-game happening with Steam. I'm scared.

I'm more scared about the inevitable drama and "I've got to play this level on shatter that I'm crap at until I hit the achievement" in any sale than any steamscore®™ achievement hunting.

Scratched wrote:

I'm more scared about the inevitable drama and "I've got to play this level on shatter that I'm crap at until I hit the achievement" in any sale than any steamscore®™ achievement hunting.

Oh you mean the Potato Hunt shenanigans a couple years ago? Or the coal or gift stuff during that one winter holiday sale? I'm really glad they've stopped with that for the last few sales.

shoptroll wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm more scared about the inevitable drama and "I've got to play this level on shatter that I'm crap at until I hit the achievement" in any sale than any steamscore®™ achievement hunting.

Oh you mean the Potato Hunt shenanigans a couple years ago? Or the coal or gift stuff during that one winter holiday sale? I'm really glad they've stopped with that for the last few sales.

Agreed that I'm glad it's not part of the sales. But if that kind of metagame was just an ever present part of Steam and wasn't directly tied to monetary discounts? Hm...

shoptroll wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm more scared about the inevitable drama and "I've got to play this level on shatter that I'm crap at until I hit the achievement" in any sale than any steamscore®™ achievement hunting.

Oh you mean the Potato Hunt shenanigans a couple years ago? Or the coal or gift stuff during that one winter holiday sale? I'm really glad they've stopped with that for the last few sales.

My octopus hat tells you to go to hell. It also thinks that Shatter is stupid because that achievement took for f*cking ever.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm more scared about the inevitable drama and "I've got to play this level on shatter that I'm crap at until I hit the achievement" in any sale than any steamscore®™ achievement hunting.

Oh you mean the Potato Hunt shenanigans a couple years ago? Or the coal or gift stuff during that one winter holiday sale? I'm really glad they've stopped with that for the last few sales.

My octopus hat tells you to go to hell.

Shatter is fun if you're not going for achievements, and the soundtrack is great.

EDIT: Looks like the profile update was pulled. I'm guessing that was probably meant for the Community Beta branch instead.

It's not even the stuff 'internal' to steam, I'm remembering when humble bundle got exploited for steam keys (pay $0.01) because everyone wanted to make accounts with a game to farm coal/tokens. Sure that won't happen twice, especially now they've put a minimum on for steam keys, but it's what the inventive buggers do next time just to work the system. It's like rocket jumping in quake, give people something and they'll find a way to abuse it in a way you never imagined.

It begins

shoptroll 2012 wrote:

During the 2012 Summer Sale, Valve debuts a permanent meta-game for Steam based on your game library, achievements, inventory and time spent on the service. Think Pokemon or something like Kongregate's CCG.

It's currently based on time spent in a game (also primarily Valve games) since achievements are problematic for this idea. But still, I was thiiiissss *holds fingers out* close!

shoptroll wrote:

It begins

IMAGE(http://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/chansub-global-emoticon-c8a77ec0c49976d3-22x30.png)

shoptroll wrote:

It begins

There's a Witcher joke to be made here, I think.

MeatMan wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

It begins

IMAGE(http://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/chansub-global-emoticon-c8a77ec0c49976d3-22x30.png)

This is just karma for all those binges during the holiday sales. It's like Valve wants us to play the games we buy or something.

I understand that Valve wants to implement things into Steam to try to keep people using it, as competition in the digital distribution market inevitably increases, but yeah, TCG/CCG doesn't interest me at all.

For those that are interested in that kind of thing, more power to you.