Steam Message Board older than one year ago

2013-01-14: v1.09
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MAJOR:
- Merchant Republic gameplay (Duke or higher tier Republics with a coastal capital)
- Added a 'Grant Independence' diplomatic interaction
- Titles can now automatically change name depending on the culture of their top liege
- The Reign length opinion modifiers are now dependent on how long a character has been the liege of someone, not how long the primary title has been held
- Added 1241 Bookmark - "The Mongols"
- Save file transfer now works on Mac
- Reduced max demesne size from ruler tier, especially for Dukes
- Reduced the effect of Stewardship on max demesne size (now 15%, down from 25%.)
- Added a max demesne size bonus (+1) for dukes with more than one duchy
- Increased the Prestige effects of a rank difference in marriages by a factor of 5
- All merc regiments now grow in max size over time
- Added more mercenary bands: Finns, Lapps, Abyssinians, Nubians, Lithuanians, Scots, Irish and Alans
- Added Ultimogeniture succession law
- Added Tanistry succession law

MINOR:
- Fixed a bug with religions that have become or stopped being heresies not being correctly reset on reload
- Sunset Invasion: Slightly increased the arrival strength of the Aztecs
- Increased the strength of the Timurids
- Added a hidden event that clears diplomatic immunity from faction members if the faction leader dies while waiting for the liege response to an ultimatum
- When forming the Roman Empire, de jure assimilation into the Byzantine Empire is now carried over
- Fixed a bug allowing you to declare excommunication wars on lieges above your immediate liege (the war would then invalidate)
- AI: Will not attach units to allied units unless they are in the war target area
- Fixed a bug where a king who was also emperor lost the empire title in a civil war, but retained all dukes as vassals under the kingdom
- Fixed a crash in the province view
- Retinues no longer cost maintenance when you are out of money ( since they do not reinforce when you are out of money )
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when a character was exiled from the last existing republic
- Fixed a bug with de jure withdrawal out of empires where the counter would reset and nothing would happen
- AI: Infinitesimal chance that the AI will fold to faction demands from tiny factions
- Fixed some bugs with the outcomes of the Imperial Reconquest CB
- Fixed a bug with characters not always returning correctly from foreign courts
- Fixed a CTD with the GamersGate in-game store API if there was a network error
- Forbidding councillors from leading armies is now saved
- Forbidding councillors from leading armies will no longer lead to an out of sync in multiplayer
- Fixed issue where a settlement could be awarded to an enemy after a siege was won
- Character screen no longer moves to front when it updates its data
- When creating a new unit one subunit will automatically transfer over if the selected unit has at least two
- Added a message for when someone takes over as a faction leader
- Prerequisite building missing text in building tooltip is now localized
- Fixed issue where character browser was showing some rulers when set to "all characters" and "no rulers"
- AI: Fixed a somewhat borked odds calculation vs attached units
- Army AI: Fixed an indecision issue - will be more determined to hunt down certain armies
- Army AI: Fixed a bug with splinter armies putting the whole agent into retreat mode
- Army AI: Fixed a rare collection livelock issue if a splinter army was besieging a holding
- Army AI: Fixed a glitch with the potential target province calculation due to moving enemy units
- Claimant Factions are no longer valid for non-elective titles if the claimant has no claim
- Fixed a confusing "any demesne title" trigger tooltip
- Removed the kingdom of Pommerania from the de jure HRE
- Liege levy maintenance cost is now shared with sub vassals
- The old liege now only gets weak claims on members of successful independence factions
- Fixed a rare crash in AI flank leader unit assignment
- Fixed an issue that could allow vassals of vassals to launch independence faction wars
- Independence faction wars are now invalidated if the pre-war liege becomes vassalized himself
- Fixed a bug where the successor of an Ecumenical Patriarch (or a vassal Pope) could change religion to the liege's.
- Vassals of vassals can no longer start claimant factions for claimants in another realm
- You now correctly gain Piety for granting bishoprics to courtiers
- Muslim rulers no longer get Piety for creating a random mosque holder
- Hamburg and Celle now have ports
- Province of Alexandria adjusted to include the site of the actual city
- Gender corrections to certain characters
- Added missing parents for Roupen I of Armenia Minor
- Fixed broken House Oitir dynasty
- Fixed several Mongol characters having the wrong religion
- Constantine de Hauteville is no longer female
- Gytha Thorkelsdottir now has the correct deathdate
- Louis d'Evreux now has the correct mother
- Fixes to Václav II and descendants
- William 'Adelin' now has the correct deathdate
- Miscellaneous database corrections to the de Luxembourg dynasty
- Miscellaneous database corrections for the Normans and the 1st Earl of Chester
- Fixed the birthdate of Saint Louis IX of France and his brother Robert of Artois
- Switched culture for two characters from Irish to Scottish
- Fixes to Danish and Norwegian bastards
- Added the Hvide Bishops of Roskilde
- The culture of Khwarizm now changes to Turkish at the correct date
- Updated the Jarls of Västergötland
- Fixed various issues with wrong or missing mothers for Frankish characters
- Fixed the lineage of Erik III of Denmark
- Added new Maghreb Wikipedia links
- Tweaked deathdate of Mubashir, Duke of Mallorca, and made him eunuch
- Fixed the spelling of the de Cuiseaux dynasty
- Corrections to the Af Sverker family
- Fixes to the ruler history of the Perigord and La Marche counties
- The Pirate King Kyrillos is now correctly imprisoned when captured through event
- Added dynasty and descendants to Umar ibn Khattab
- Fleshed out the the Rassid dynasty of Yemen
- Additions to the Banu 'Amir dynasty and its descendants
- Various changes and additions to the Hammudid dynasty
- Added the Mayzadids of Hillah
- Updated the Scottish name list
- Minor changes and additions to the Italian name list
- The Umayyad and Hashimid now have Muslim-style Coats of Arms
- Added some missing Dukes of Brittany
- Namechanges for several Scottish characters
- Constantinople is now protected by the Theodosian Walls
- Some corrections to Swedish kings and their families
- Links for Hungarian names added
- Changes to the Baltic pagan setup
- Corrections to Birger Jarl's family line
- All Armenian characters are now Miaphysite
- Added descriptive texts of all buildings
- Fixed issue with certain buildings referring to an obsolete Seljuk title
- Updated the credits
- Basra and Tigris now have the correct ruler in 1152
- Blocked claimant factions for vassals of vassals under Medium or higher crown authority
- Blocked most factions for vassals of vassals under Medium crown authority in addition to High and Absolute
- Fixed a problem with the limit of children for heirs
- AI: Fixed a bug with it not dismissing liege levies when done with them
- The pre-spawned 1066 conquest armies in England now suffer normal attrition
- Event spawned civil war armies now suffer normal attrition
- Made the bastard birth event (450) more common
- If married, women now fool their husbands about the parentage of children born from the bastard birth event (450)
- Fixed a bug with kingdom adjudication and barony tier titles under lieges with split allegiances
- Lowered the inheritance chance a bit for most congenital traits
- Fixed some glitches with the Mongol conversion events
- There is now a chance that the Ilkhanate will convert to Nestorianism
- There is now a small chance that the Golden Horde will convert to Nestorianism
- AI: Tweaked the effect of the Content trait on the creation and joining of Claimant factions
- AI: A bit smarter about launching claimant ultimatums
- Diplomacy View: Fixed a minor prestige tooltip issue when marrying lowborn characters
- AI: Vassals of a conqueror's title should not support claimants of another culture
- DoW AI: Now more aware of the possibility of mercs and the military value of Gold
- AI: More keen on using mercs if even slightly outnumbered
- AI: Very rich states are now more likely to use multiple merc regiments if needed
- Renamed the merc fleets after sea zones
- Added a hidden event to disband William's special invasion fleet
- AI: Lords and their heirs always answer each other's call to wars
- AI: Fixed a bug that could prevent the passing of laws
- AI: Smarter about trying to institute Agnatic-Cognatic law
- Retinues are now correctly passed on to the _player_ successor, not the primary title successor
- Fixed a crash bug in the Diplo and Province views with character with a null list of enemies
- Fixed a bug where characters inherited debts
- Fixed a minor bug in the effect 'vassalize_or_take_under_title' that would allow vassalization of unvassalizable titles like the Hashashin
- The religious CB now vassalizes lords of your own religion in the target Duchy
- AI: Fixed an issue where lords would marry off their councillors matrilineally to lowborn courtiers
- Fixed a bug with succession law opinions of children not of their parent's dynasty
- Optimized the line of succession calculation code
- AI: Fixed some bugs with elective successor choices
- Fixed (hopefully) a gross bankruptcy bug with the 'transfer_scaled_wealth' effect
- AI: External powers now more aggressive against civil war revolters
- Various code speed optimizations
- Fixed another bug with dead character in the Allies list
- AI: Husband and Wife always answer each other's calls to war
- Reversed the order of rulers in the Title History View (latest now on top)
- Invasion AI: Fixed a bug where fleets were afraid of loaded armies on enemy fleets
- Army AI: Fixed a brain death issue when under invasion by a Mercenary company whose unit was destroyed
- Army AI: Fixed an issue where it would not raise its own demesne ships
- AI: Will tend to hand out the latest acquired baronies rather than the oldest
- The Traitor opinion is now inherited by ruler successors
- Calling someone to war now makes them dislike you by the same amount you will like them for answering
- Conquerors (rulers of conquered titles) can now call on rulers from back home (Cultural Bonds) while defending against other cultures
- Fixed a rare crash in the Diplomacy View
- The 'vassalize_or_take_under_title' effect now correctly restores the taker liege afterward
- Fixed a bug where certain event effects in CBs could take Patrician titles
- Fixed a bug with the backend poster not having a HTTP POST timeout
- Fixed a bug with the random seed in event effect descriptions not matching the actual effect
- Fixed a bug where rampaging mercs would make an invalid DoW
- Fixed a bug preventing you from nominating bishop successors
- Muslim pulse events are now triggered correctly
- Fixed misplaced IF in decadence_invasion
- Added additional rulers to Chalkidike in the history database
- Chancellor event while improving relations is now properly triggered
- Fixed error in polygamy event
- Fixed issue with event where a character tries to free his/her spouse
- Added missing parents to several Arabic characters
- Added additional Alan dynasties
- Fixes to several Welsh dynasty names
- Some Armenian dynasty names are now Greek as intended
- Fixed the dynasty of Udalard de Besalu
- Characters older than 50 will no longer fight in tournaments
- Fixed pronoun error in Guardian event
- Removed superfluous church opinion effect from several Muslim-only event modifiers
- Fixed issue where the wife of a courtier could suggest a new Lord Spiritual
- Fixed option effect in event 1009
- Added additional Irish and Welsh dynasties and characters
- Added missing parents for the Riyahdids
- Added Muslim Hafsids of Crete and the Anemas dynasty
- Tatikios now has Greek culture and is employed by Alexios Komnenos
- Various additions to Norwegian and Irish family trees

FOR MODDERS:
- The event trigger and effect 'any_faction_backer' without a 'faction' field now work for the backers of all factions
- The 'copy_title_history' effect now also copies de jure assimilation
- Fixed some bugs with the 'de_jure_liege_or_above' and 'de_jure_vassal_or_below' triggers
- Character event flags are now shown in the portrait debug tooltip
- The modifier 'assassinate_chance_modifier' on the acting ruler now has an effect
- Added trigger 'is_at_sea'
- Added trigger 'is_patrician'
- Added trigger 'is_merchant_republic'
- Removed unused on actions 'on_siege_won' and 'on_siege_list'.
- Added on action 'on_siege_over' which triggers for all characters in the province
- Exported PATRICIAN_CAMPAIGN_FUND_FACTOR to defines
- Exported DOGE_SUCC_RANDOM_FACTOR to defines
- Added effects 'embargo' and 'lift_embargo'
- Added trigger 'has_trade_post'
- Added event target 'trade_post_owner'
- Added event effect 'seize_trade_post'
- Added 'attrition' field to the 'spawn_unit' effect. This is an attrition multiplier.
- Added 'cuckoo' (impregnation) console command
- Added 'culture = random' to 'create_character' and related event effects
- Added 'rep_trade_posts' Plot type
- Added define 'ENFORCE_ONE_OF_EACH_HOLDING' (Require players to build at least one City, Temple and Castle in each province)
- Added event target 'plot_target_province'
- Added a 'capital_holding' event target
- Added trigger 'num_of_trade_posts'
- Added trigger 'num_of_trade_post_diff'
- Added event trigger 'any_trade_post'
- Added event effect 'any_trade_post'
- Added event effect 'random_trade_post'
- Added 'same_religion = yes' field to the effect 'vassalize_or_take_under_title'. It will only vassalize rulers of the taker's religion
- Added 'is_patrician' filter to events
- Increased max demesne size limit for Patricians by 1 (define DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_PATRICIAN)
- Added trigger 'any_attacker' (war scope)
- Added trigger 'any_defender' (war scope)
- Added 'inherit' field to opinion modifiers

Today's Deal: Save 66% on Lunar Flight!

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Gratuitous Space Battles: The Outcasts, all new content for Gratuitous Space Battles is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off!

It had all started so simply, eleven thousand years ago. The odd replacement leg here, the odd augmented eye there, and for a while everyone on the Vla-hurk home-world was quite happy with the trend towards cybernetic augmentation. Then along came the New World Religion, and the obsession with 'biological purity', and before you know it, half the Vla-hurk population is being shunned for having so much as a hip replacement operation...

...and so it went on, until after a thousand years of this, the augmented half the Vla-hurk finally said 'screw this for a game of soldiers', climbed aboard their freshly built fleet of battleships and nuked the whole planet from orbit, never to return, or set foot on a planetary surface again. And ever since, the Vla-hurk 2.0, known commonly as 'the outcasts' have roamed the galaxy, still angered at the discrimination that lives on in their now heavily-augmented memories, and determined to dish out their own form of punishment, this time against so called 'pure-biologicials', with their much feared war cry of 'how do you like them apples?'. They may be murderous cybernetic psychopaths, but they still have a sense of humor.

*Offer ends January 18th at 10AM Pacific Time

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion Soundtrack is Now Available on Steam!


Purchase the soundtrack for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion containing over 2 hours of high-fidelity music across 55 individual tracks! This soundtrack DLC contains both FLAC and MP3 formats converted from the original production .wav files.

Today's Deal: Save 66% on Viking: Battle for Asgard!

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Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed patiently sits at the PC starting line, waiting for the green light on January 31, 2013. And rather than cough up the full $30 for the PC port, if you pre-order through Steam, you'll receive a 10% discount - that's $3 off, for all you math types out there.

The console version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed launched on just about every gaming device out there back in November, a game our review says "should not be missed by anyone who truly values a fun, exceptionally well crafted racing game." Also, a working knowledge of Sega mascots doesn't hurt.Pre-order Sonic & All-Stars Racing on Steam, get 10% off

Added Medusa!

GAMEPLAY
- Witch Doctor: Fixed Aghanim's Death Ward attacking Familiars and other psuedo heroes.
- Doom: Scorched Earth now only applies damage from Doom himself, not all the units affected by his aura.
- Pudge: Fixed being able to get units stuck using Refresher.
- Keeper of the Light: Fixed Recall interaction with non-hero units.
- Fixed Armlet and Power Treads interaction.

UI
- Added a Haste button to the courier HUD element.
- Added Mid Only game mode for private lobbies (disables other lanes and allows the same hero to be selected).
- The Announcer Share dialog has been replaced with a Shared Content dialog.
- Added a badge to the top bar to count the available shared items.
- If shared content is available in a game, a message is now printed pregame.
- Added Balanced Shuffle button to non-tournament private lobbies.
- Added All Chat private lobby option for enabling voice chat among all players.
- Fixed "Equip" appearing in the right click menu for some chests.

AUDIO
- Fixed hearing the wrong announcer after equipping a new item in the loadout.
- Fixed bugs with muting cobroadcasters causing other sounds to be muted.

BOTS
- The bots are now less likely to push with more heroes than what they deem necessary (less 5-man Dota). Probably needs some tuning.
- Made bots slightly less self-concerned when considering defending an ally. Also made them more likely to jump in if they have a slow or stun.
- Bots that are capable of jungling during the laning phase may now do so.
- If purchasing an item from the secret shop would complete an item, desire for going there is now increased.
- When their next item is purchasable, their desire to farm is signficiantly reduced.
- Fixed bad tuning that was causing bots to almost never farm lanes.
- Improved bot responsiveness to pings on Roshan.
- Bots are now less likely to assume that humans will purchase wards.

Since its emergence on the App store in June, Fieldrunners 2 has been quite the success for developer Subatomic Studios, surpassing $1 million in sales back in September. Today, the lauded tower-defense game jogs onto Steam.

For the big Steam debut today, Subatomic Studios has knocked a buck off the asking price for Fieldrunners 2, bringing it down to $9. The original Fieldrunners launched back in 2008 and quickly established itself atop the iOS App store, eventually being ported to a whole bunch of other platforms. It would seem Fieldrunners 2 is destined to repeat that walk on the road to success.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam and is 10% off!

Pick up the 4-pack and play with friends!

Compete across land, water and air in incredible transforming vehicles that change from cars to boats to planes mid-race. Master your driving skills as you drift, barrel role and boost to overtake your rivals, or use your weapons tactically and unleash your All-Star move to gain the winning advantage.

*10% off does not apply to the 4-pack.

Save 50% on FTL: Faster Than Light as part of this week's Weekend Deal*!

In FTL you experience the atmosphere of running a spaceship trying to save the galaxy. It's a dangerous mission, with every encounter presenting a unique challenge with multiple solutions.
This "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" allows you to take your ship and crew on an adventure through a randomly generated galaxy filled with glory and bitter defeat.

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time.

Fieldrunners 2 is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off*


The biggest sequel in tower defense history is finally here! Defend your world from the invasion by building winding paths out of imaginative, new weapons. Call in airstrikes and set explosive traps to hit the enemies where it hurts. Over 20 new levels span the grassiest fields, driest deserts, sparkling cities, and even an infernal volcano lair! Challenge your mind with the exciting new gameplay styles in Puzzle, Sudden Death, and Time Trial levels. Are you ready to stop the fieldrunners once and for all? Join the defense, now!


*Offer ends January 17th at 10AM Pacific Time

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Retro City Rampage!

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Play Ravaged for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. Plus, save 66% until Monday at 10AM Pacific Time during the Weekend Deal!

The Scavengers are an overpowering band of murderous savages hell-bent on taking every last inch of land and every critical resource for themselves. They will stop at nothing. Their success seems certain unless someone can rise up against them. The Resistance is the worlds last best hope and humankinds only chance to restore civilization. Days before the Apocalypse, these freedom fighters were able to seek shelter deep below the Earth, gathering just enough to survive. Finally, they are ready to emerge and rebuild the planet. But its a new world, overrun by the miscreants and madmen, warlords and hapless refugees. Only the most savage can survive.

If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Ravaged. If you don't have Steam, you can download it here.

The Cave is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam!

Pre-Purchase and receive 3 items to use in Team Fortress 2!

Assemble your team of three from seven unlikely adventurers, each with their own unique personalities and stories, then descend into the mysterious depths to explore locations including a subterranean amusement park and a medieval castle, not to mention a fully armed and ready-to-launch nuclear tipped ICBM. The Cave awaits!

The Cave is a new adventure game from Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert, and Double Fine Productions, the award-winning studio behind Psychonauts and Brütal Legend.

Engadget had a photo shoot with Valve's lineup of Steam Box and living room PC prototypes today at CES. A few of the designs were straight out of Valve's hivemind, while a few existing products, such as the Alienware X51 and Bolt from Digital Storm were examples of the "Steam in your living room" initiative. Valve's display was meant to demonstrate a variety of form factors for living room-friendly designs, hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer said.

Check out the complete gallery over on Engadget, especially that one design that looks like the baby of an original Xbox and a Gamecube. Keep in mind that all of the controllers are stand-in Logitechs, not prototypes.

The Journey Down: Chapter One is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off for the first week!

In a shady corner of Kingsport Bay, at the outskirts of St Armando, Bwana and his trusted sidekick Kito struggle to make ends meet at their run-down gas station. Little do they know that they are about to be thrown into a spine-tingling adventure that will take them far from home and right into a twisting plot of corruption and danger.

Valve's top bossman Gabe Newell hasn't forgotten about the software side of his empire, even though he just dropped confirmation of a living room, Linux-powered Steam Box. Steam will continue to evolve, he tells The Verge at CES, and in the future it may resemble a user-generated profile hub, where users can create their own stores and aggregate games within those markets.

"Our view has always been that we should build tools for customers and tools for partners," Newell says. "An editorial filter is fine, but there should be a bunch of editorial filters. The backend services should be network APIs that anybody can use. On the consumer side, anybody should be able to put up a store that hooks into those services.

"Some people will create team stores, some people will create Sony stores, some people will create stores with only games that they think meet their quality bar. Somebody is going to create a store that says 'these are the worst games on Steam.' So that's an example of where our thinking is leading us right now."

Newell's love affair with user generated content can be seen in its infancy with Greenlight, which allows users to choose the games that make it to Steam. The idea, however, stems from a more established aspect of Steam - the Workshop.

"So now we're in this strange world where we have people who are using the Steam Workshop who are making $500,000 per year building items for other customers," Newell says. "In other words, there's this notion that user-generated content has to be an important part of our thinking. We know of other game developers making more money building content for the workshop than what they get in their day job.

"One of the things we found is that this notion of a workshop needs to span multiple games. If we're connecting Skyrim and other games... it's like this notion that there's just a game seems to be going away; games are starting to look like an instance of some larger experience."

Today's Deal: Save 50% off Puddle!

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are.

Droid Assault, from the creators of Revenge of the Titans, is now available on Steam and 20% off*!

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The Steam Box drama is now reaching soap-opera-esque levels. First, Xi3 announced that it’s partnered with Valve to birth a bouncing baby space grapefruit, then Valve noted that plenty of other prototypes are waiting in the wings, and now Gabe Newell’s emerged from the shadows to chat up Valve’s own Linux-powered, biometrically-controlled Steam Box. What’s next, I ask you? Will we discover that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 never died, but instead got shipwrecked on an island/overwrought metaphor/the moon, conveniently acquired amnesia, and came to believe that it, too, was a Steam Box? Or is some contrived, out-of-left-field twist going to reveal that our closest friends were Steam Boxes all along? It’s just too much, everyone. I’m not sure if I can deal with it.

(more…)

#steambox The future of home gaming. The next generation. For years now, the anticipation and excitement over what's to come has been dominated by speculation over what would come next from Microsoft and Sony. More »

Valve is in attendance at this year's CES festivities in Las Vegas, and while its primary mission is to meet with hardware partners like Xi3, founder Gabe Newell is still able to find the time to leak details about Valve's own illusive, as-of-yet still unannounced gaming hardware solution.

First and foremost is the fact that Valve's Steam Box will run Linux, regardless of what the company's various hardware partners install on their own machines. "We'll come out with our own and we'll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That'll be a Linux box," Newell told The Verge. "If you want to install Windows you can. We're not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination."

Newell also revealed that Valve's Steam Box will be a networked gaming solution for an entire home, not just the living room. "The Steam Box will also be a server," Newell said. "Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that's serving up eight simulateneous [sic] game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We're used to having one monitor, or two monitors - now we're saying lets expand that a little bit."

This all sounds very exciting, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we learned from Valve electrical engineer Ben Krasnow earlier today, Valve has "no current plans to announce anything in 2013."

Dungeonland is now available for pre-purchase on Steam! Purchase before January 28th and receive the Dungeon Maestro Grimoire Pack for free!

Dungeonland is a co-operative hack and slash game that takes players on a deadly tour through a medieval theme park. Playing as The Rogue, The Warrior or The Mage, the heroes will need to work together as a team to get past the evil overseer of this Tragic Kingdom The Dungeon Maestro.

NEW FEATURES:
-Ground can now be dug up using the Shovel to reveal the bare dirt underneath and creating a Turf item.
-Turf items can be placed down on bare dirt tiles to change the biome (purely cosmetic for now).

FIXES:
-Minor bug fixes and tuning.
-New art for the Rocky biome.

Ben Krasnow, Valve electrical engineer and mad genius, has told Engadget that Valve will not be announcing plans for a consumer-friendly "Steam Box" PC this year. The news comes after German site Golem.de reported that Klasnow himself claimed Valve would make such an announcement. The alleged comments would have been made during a talk at the EHSM conference in Berlin last month, which Klasnow attended.

"With regards to the Steam Box news - there has been a lot of things stated in the media which I didn't say," Krasnow tells Engadget, "For example, it's true that we are working on getting Steam into the living room, and are planning for a hardware box, but we have no current plans to announce anything in 2013." Yesterday's report also stated that the device would run on Linux, though Krasnow says may or may not happen in the end. Still, even if Valve's official Steam Box won't be revealed this year, he says the company has many other hardware projects in the works that likely will be.

Valve itself, meanwhile, tells Engadget that "Many PCs optimized for Steam and Big Picture will be shipping later this year," and that the company will brings some of these to its CES meetings, along with its own in-house prototypes. Indeed, smaller PCs designed for Steam and Big Picture mode are already being announced, specifically Xi3's diminutive "Piston" models revealed earlier this week. As if to drive the point home, Xi3's new PC was partially funded by Valve and will be featured in the company's booth at CES.

#steambox With the first of many "Steam Box" computers making its debut at CES, Valve boss Gabe Newell has really opened up to The Verge about his company's hardware plans, revealing that the range of gaming PCs might be even more ambitious than we would have imagined. More »

#valve Project Piston isn't the only one: Valve is showing off a number of hardware prototypes behind closed doors at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, according to a new report. More »

"Oye Como Va", "Black Magic Woman", and "Smooth" by Santanaare Now Available for Rocksmith!

Plus, pick up these song bundles before they go away on January 22nd!:

• Metal and Hard Rock Bundle
  
• Rock Collectors Bundle
  
• Alternative Collectors Bundle
  
• Classic Guitar Collectors Bundle
  
• Classic Hits Collectors Bundle
  

Save 75% on Solar 2 during this week's Midweek Madness*!


Solar 2 is an open-world, sandbox game set in an infinite abstract universe. Play constructively: grow your system, nurture life on your planets and attack enemy life in huge space battles. Play destructively: crash into other objects and cause chaos, use your orbiting objects like wrecking balls, steal planets from other systems.


*Offer ends Thursday at 4PM Pacific Time