Steam Message Board older than one year ago

#steamsale My, my. The lack of the traditional end-of-June Steam summer sale certainly has some people riled up, if this video is any indication. While gamers wait out as the early days of July pass on with no sale announcement, some want to take matters into their own hands. More »

Buying and reselling any form of digital software is perfectly legal, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. Software authors - or in the gaming world, publishers - can not stop customers from reselling their games, even if the publisher attaches an End User License Agreement prohibiting resale.

"The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a licence is exhausted on its first sale," the court has found.

This ruling covers customers in European Union member states, and games bought through services such as Steam or Origin. The initial purchaser is now entitled to sell the license of a game and allow someone else to download it directly from the publisher's website. The tricky part now is selling the actual license, since there is no system in place for any such transaction. The initial buyer would need a code for a game's license and upon selling it, he would no longer be able to access that game on his account.

The ruling applies to the broader scope of software, covering items such as Windows and Adobe downloads. There is no word yet on whether game distributors will change policies or services to enable a license-selling process, but that would make Steam sales much more interesting in the EU.

Saints Row: The Third - Genki Girl Pack is Now Available!

Drive in Genki Girl style with this assortment of vehicles. Sad Panda sports a dune buggy, Angry Tiger has her motorcycle, and Sexy Kitten drives a special sports car. Each of these rides is themed after the girls themselves, and pack a deadly surprise!

Save 66% on Rock of Ages during this week's Midweek Madness!

A rock-solid combination of rock-rolling action, deep strategy, and captivating art and music from different ages of history, this is a game of crush or be crushed! Two castles stand opposed; one is yours, the other is your enemys. They're a jerk and their castle sucks, so youre going to try to smash it using an enormous boulder. Even as they build up their defenses, you're ready to roll over them in order to raze that unsightly tower. But beware! Theres a giant boulder headed your way, too.

Blacklight Retribution is a free-to-play shooter that arrived on the PC earlier this year, and it's now easier than ever to download and play it. The game's been added to Steam, so jump over to the game's page, click Play Game (as long as you have Steam installed first), and you're good to go.

To celebrate, Steam is providing a starter pack for the game for half off. Usually, the items in the pack would cost you $20, but for a limited time you can get two guns, two gun mods, two armor pieces, two equipment gear, a seven-day XP boost, and 3000 GP to spend for $9.99. We'd suggest playing first, of course, before you start spending money on a free-to-play game all willy-nilly.

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, the boys from Threaks talk about the early indie success of music-mixing, action-adventure title Beatbuddy. What's your game called and what's it about?

Beatbuddy is an action-adventure that takes you into the world of a song. You take control of our main character Beatbuddy and navigate him through levels where everything you see, the enemies and challenges you encounter, are synched to the music and rhythm of the individual tracks that make up a particular song, which you can manipulate and basically re-mix through your interactions.

The game will feature licensed music that you will be able to move freely through, assembling and disassembling the track. We're planning to feature a great line-up of popular artists and songs and have developed a proprietary sound-filtering technology, which allows us to create levels matching each song with animations that are right on beat.

What was the IGF experience like - entering, waiting for finalist announcements, and getting an honorable mention?

Well, we here love to compete, so it was extremely cool especially to get the honorable mention. Getting the version ready to be entered was of course a bit of a crunch, as we tried to put as much into a short demo level as we could. Ahead of the announcement, we all got pretty nervous - I think none of us could sleep. Getting the honorable mention felt like a real milestone, especially considering the calibre of talent that was in the competition this year.

To be in the company of games like Fez, Tiny and Big and all the others, is a special thrill. We're looking to maybe do that extra step to a nomination with the game next year, when it's finished.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:


Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed a problem that allowed spoofed IP addresses to make connections to the game server
  

Team Fortress 2

• Teddy Roosebelt can now get assists in Pyrovision
  
• Fixed Pyrovision sometimes activating in killcams for more than just weapons and cosmetics
  
• Fixed exploit where the Scorch Shot could fire its short range kill pellet at the very beginning of the taunt
  
• Fixed blood getting sprayed on the world in some cases in Low Violence and Pyrovision
  
• Fixed decapitations creating head gibs in Low Violence and Pyrovision
  
• Fixed Hitmans Heatmaker headshot not properly getting counted on the scoreboard
  
• Fixed tracers being fired for other weapons (SMGs) while in focus
  
• Fixed Sydney Sleepers bonus not properly protecting against Decapitating Headshots
  
• Added team color to rainbow-showered players in Pyrovision
  
• Updated localization files
  

Notes for CSS

• Fixed a problem that allowed spoofed IP addresses to make connections to the game server
  
• Added ConVars sv_rcon_maxpacketsize and sv_rcon_maxpacketbans to allow server admins to control the maximum RCON packet size and whether or not users get banned for exceeding that limit. The defaults reflect the existing behavior.
  
• Fixed not being able to import custom spray images on Macs
  
• Fixed Macs cancelling http map downloads that take longer than 30 seconds
  
• Updated the HTML renderer for displaying server MOTD
  

Source Filmmaker version 0.9.5.3 has been released. This update will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

• now only exposing movie render resolutions that are available
  
• fixed poster rendering black when ambient occlusion and progressive refinement were both off
  
• fixed crash browsing files from the poster export dialog
  
• fixed problem where having an old installation of Qt would case the SFM to fail to load
  
• added Report a Bug help menu item that leads to sfmbugs@valvesoftware.com
  
• fixed missing timeline gap context menu
  
• fixed recording gameplay into new clip to update the timeline with the new clip
  
• fixed a few crashes
  
• added missing particle systems
  

The Game of Thrones - Weapon Pack is Now Available on Steam!

Access 14 exclusive weapons (swords, axes, hammers, shields, crossbows…) with unique characteristics and styles. These rare weapons of prestigious origin are offered by a traveling merchant found in Castleblack, Kings Landing, and Riverspring. These weapons were included for free to everyone that Pre-Purchased Game of Thrones and are now available for use.

Updates to Garry's Mod have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- Fixed freezing when loading materials

Dungeonbowl is Now Available on Steam!

Play the fantasy American Football inspired team sport from Blood Bowl, now in challenging dungeons! The new dungeon setting includes exploding chests, teleporters, rivers of boiling lava and various other traps all serve to spice-up the matches, making them even more dangerous!

Blacklight: Retribution is now available and free to play on Steam!

Wage war with advanced weapons and technology in this free-to-play, futuristic first-person shooter. Deploy devastating armored exoskeletons and utilize lethal hand-held weapons in vicious competitive modes.

For a limited time*, pick up the Blacklight: Retribution Starter pack for 50% off. Perfect for new players, it includes:
- 1 Premade SMG
- 1 Premade Burst Pistol
- 2 Gun Modifications
- 1 Helmet Armor
- 1 Chest Armor
- 2 Equipment Gear
- 3000 Game Points (GP)
- 7 Day XP Boost

*Offer ends July 10th at 10AM Pacific Time.

Adam's Venture Episode 2: Solomon's Secret and Adam's Venture Episode 3: Revelations are Now Available on Steam and 20% off!*

Adam Venture is an action explorer hero; adventurous but using his wits rather than resorting to violence. Brought to life from a third person perspective with the Unreal 3™ engine, adventure gamers are in for a real visual treat in combination with family values storytelling.

*Offer end Monday, July 9th at 10AM PST.

Phil Fish, the man behind the mutton-chops and this awesome indie game you probably haven't heard of called Fez (it's really underground), is far from done developing new games, and is working on two new titles right now.

Fish is currently developing two new games with some friends, he said at Gamelab 2012, as reported by Eurogamer Spain. Fish began working on one of these titles during the development of Fez, but he was forced to stop in order to finish his own game in a semi-timely manner. Fish has been involved with Super Hypercube, a title in development for Kinect from Kokoromi and Polytron, Fish's own studio. The last we heard from Super Hypercube was December, when Fish said it was "a bit early" to talk details.

Fish spent five years of his life developing Fez, and now that it has been released into the wild of Xbox Live Arcade, sold 100,000 copies and suffered its first patch malfunction, Fish is "learning to live again," without the constant strain of high-profile indie development. Fish said Fez's development has left him "exhausted and traumatised," but he will continue making games.

Launching a game on Xbox Live Arcade added to Fish's stress; he began development at a time of rapid change in the indie community and what worked four years ago on Xbox Live now makes more sense on Steam, he said. Fish hasn't announced details about the two titles he's involved in, but he will choose his focus wisely since "it can be something that consumes many years of your life," he said.

Alaskan Wilderness, the first expansion for Microsoft Flight is Now Available on Steam.

Continue the Microsoft Flight experience in the Alaskan Wilderness Pack, with over 586,000 square miles of aviation playground to test your piloting skills against the brutal weather and majestic terrain of Alaska. The Cub Crafters Carbon Cub is also included as a Basic Aircraft (no cockpit included), an iconic bush plane capable of getting into and out of the most demanding locations.

Today's Deal: Save 75% off Space Ark!

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!

Today's Deal: Save 80% off Zombie Driver!

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!

Cold Stream, the massive, much-anticipated and acceptably murderous DLC pack for Left 4 Dead 2, is set to launch on PC, Mac and Xbox 360 on July 24. Cold Stream includes a fan-made campaign, and ports of Left 4 Dead's Death Toll, Dead Air, Blood Harvest and Crash Course levels.

Cold Stream first entered beta in March 2011 and is still open for PC and Mac on Steam, making this launch more of an official, polishing update for those platforms. Valve initially said Cold Stream would launch "some time after Portal 2," and really, it's not as if they were wrong about that one. Clever, Valve. Clever.

Today's Deal: Save 50% off Governor of Poker 2!

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!

r22173c
------

Critical fixes:
+ Fixed new population growth issues.
+ Fixed a crash related to dragging fleets in the relocate mission screen.


Other fixes:
+ Favourite invoices no longer revert to Cruisers after submitting an order.
+ Spectre attacks now have a range limit in combat.
+ Trade sliders no longer override settings for other colonies.
+ Trade sliders no longer get stuck on last notch.
+ C3 and Psi research bonuses now displayed.
+ AI now includes psionic abilities in ship designs.
+ Fixed a case where drones belonging to NPC factions would not fire weapons.
+ Adjusted implosion mine health.

Other changes and additions:
+ Queued station modules are now highlighted in orange.
+ Added auto-upgrade button to the station manager. This automatically
queues a minimal number of modules to enable upgrading.
+ Station level is now displayed on the icon in lists.
+ Systems in lists now display station icons where applicable.
+ Planet manager items are now alphabetized.
+ Various racial attributes tuned.

Updates to Garry's Mod have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- Fixed startup crashes on OSX
- Fixed linux dedicated server

A new patch for Roller Coaster Rampage is available for download. This build includes 3D Stereo support, new options, and fixes. We are happy to announce Roller Coaster Rampage received a 2x platinum grade for its 3D Vision Stereo support and a Gold grade for side by side stereo support, for use with most 3D TV's. The latest build also includes the following new features:

An 'Options' page from the 'Main Menu' which includes the following:

Windowed/Fullscreen Toggle
Resolution and Refresh Settings
3D Stereo Enable
Side by Side or 3D Vision Mode
Convergence Settings
Eye Separation Settings
Music Enable/Disable
Scenery Detail
Tree Detail
Turn Sensitivity
NOTE: There are in game hot keys for adjusting the stereo effect while playing. '9' and '0' for Eye separation, '-' and '=' for Convergence.

Additional updates include:
Per customer requests, the timer in Freeride has been removed.
Freeride height limit has been capped at 500 feet.
Freeride high altitude graphic glitch fixed
Freeride collision error for completed tracks fixed
Main menu input is now mouse only. Campaign and Freeride will use the controller during gameplay if it is detected.
Freeride now saves options data.

NOTE: Fullscreen mode is now selectable from the Main Menu Options page. If you added -fullscreen to your launch options as a temporary fix, please remove it before running the new build.

Updates to Splice, Splice Demo, and Splice Soundtrack have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted.

Major changes include the following:
• Fixed all issues related to unlocking achievements. With this update, any achievement that was previously earned but not unlocked will automatically unlock upon entering the game. This includes any achievement earned while playing the Splice Demo. Achievements are not supported in the demo, but will unlock automatically upon running the full version of Splice.

• Added support for Steam Cloud. All progress is now saved to the cloud, including any progress made prior to this update. This feature is supported in both the demo and the full version of Splice.

• Added FLAC (in addition to MP3) format audio files to the Splice Soundtrack DLC.

To acces the Splice Soundtrack DLC audio files, navigate to the Splice install directory.

For Windows users:
C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\splice\soundtrack\

For Mac users:
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/splice/soundtrack/

Atlantica Online is now available on Steam in the US and Canada and Free to Play!

In this MMORPG, take on the quest to destroy the Oriharukon, a powerful energy source from the lost civilization of Atlantis that survived and is now endangering humanity. This journey will take players around the globe to locations like the Great Wall of China and the pyramids of Egypt where they will come face-to-face with monsters ripped from history and lore, such as the ruthless Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu and Dracula.

Today's Deal: Save 66% off Midnight Mysteries Collection!

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!

Added: A Shovsoft splash intro plays when the game is first launched
- Game no longer hangs with a white screen at the start while caching data

Added: A comprehensive replay flight recorder system.
- Replay System supports Free Flight, Missions & Time Trials
- Update includes demo replays
- Replays are saved to \Documents\Saved Games\LunarFlight\Replays\'

Added: quit option from Start screen if Escape is pressed

- Fixed: UI Textures are no longer effected by lower detail settings and remain clear
- Fixed: Sun not showing when cockpit is visible
- Fixed: Thrustlock state when input column 2 is cleared
- Fixed: Follow camera not looking forward when flying vertically

r22173b
------

Critical fixes:
+ Addressed networked game stalls and crashes related to certain
router and firewall hardware. The default MTU affinity has been reduced to 500 bytes.


Other fixes:
+ Fixed lag in combat when encountering Swarm Queen.
+ Fixed cases where combat UI was displaying informtation for colonies
from other star systems.
+ Station Manager now only displays stations in the selected system.
+ AI difficulty settings tuned to the following levels; easy (research
-25%, production -25%, revenue -25%), medium (no changes), hard (research +25%, production +25%, revenue +25%, population growth +10%)
+ Swarm hives no longer display fleet icons.


Other changes and additions:
+ Empire security slider now automatically adjusts to minimize
corruption when left on notches.
+ Trade sliders set to notched values will now stick to those values,
even if the maximum potential increases.
+ Strategic AI uses relocation more effectively, which helps to
maintain advancing fronts.
+ Various AI optimizations.
+ Liir supply ratings have been adjusted.
+ Various ship and weapon arc tweaks.
+ Number of stations is now limited by population - one per 500M
(Imperial + Civilian).
+ UI changes have been made to the stamap system tags. Dots now
represent the number of colonies; rings are shown for each major station slot available, and filled in with icons for each type constructed; a numerical value is now displayed for support; and colony trap icons are displayed when appropriate.
+ Exposed additional variables for modders.
+ New Ship badges to celebrate the Canada Day / Independence Day weekend.

HIGHLIGHTS:
- Added Luna
- Added Guardian Wisp
- Dota 2 now uses the CELT codec for increased voice communication quality.
- Added a testing tool to the Workshop tab that allows contributors to see their models on a hero before submitting.
- Added Heropedia to the Learn tab.


GAMEPLAY
- Bloodseeker: Fixed a bug where he could get healed by friendly heroes dying in the area around him that he didn't deny.
- Pudge: Fixed a bug that was sometimes causing Pudge's Dismember to do an extra tick of damage
- Pudge: Fixed a bug that allowed Pudge to deal damage without hurting himself by quickly toggling Rot.
- Rubick: Fixed a rare case where Rubick could get permanently stuck with Telekinesis Land.
- Rubick: Fixed a bug where Rubick would gain permanent Spectral Dagger buffs until he died.
- Rubick: Fixed a bug with Poison Release that would cause you to steal the wrong ability from Shadow Demon.
- Tiny: Fixed Aghanim's Scepter siege damage vs backdoor armor
- Fixed being able to use a different player's items in your combine, if that item was in your stash at the time


VISUALS
- More Rubick spell animations
- Various Rubick visual effect improvements and fixes
- Haste animation added for Bloodseeker
- Adjusted Ogre Magi's sidearm attack animation
- Logos removed from waterfall and mid river areas to safeguard gameplay
- Tweaked dire banner position left of fountain shop
- Roshan timer appear only after 10 seconds have passed from death
- Reduced Gyro's model scale a little
- Removed ambient effects on Razor and Morphling when hexed


UI
- Fixed some cases where icons could get stuck on the screen
- Fixed new heroes not showing up in the hero picker if you had custom view set (They'll now appear in the top left of the grid view, for you to then place as you like)
- Tournament Panel: Fixed game list not refreshing unless you opened a different tournament and then back.
- Tournament Panel: Increased the size of the live games and recent games.
- Tournament Panel: Fixed details button not working properly for the last few games.
- Fixed Spectator label cutting off number of spectators.
- Fixed Live games not displaying correctly after opening a Tournament.
- Fixed a recent bug with the shop not closing when a unit is selected
- Fixed some bugs with losing commentator perspecting when pausing and unpausing
- Added backpack preview to couriers
- Back button in the loadout takes you back to the backpack if you arrived via a backpack right click
- Fixed some slots on the backpack not being right-clickable if they were not on page 1
- Fixed the first equip from the backpack sometimes not working properly
- Added inspect button near the hero panel for heroes that have custom items
- Updated the replay skill filter to have more usefull categories.
- Fixed dragging an item onto itself not turning its icon back on.
- Cheat commands are now echoed to chat
- Added a testing tool to the Workshop tab that allows contributors to see their models on a hero before submitting.
- Fixed Mute button on the scoreboard not working.


AUDIO:
- Dota 2 now uses the CELT codec for increased voice communication quality.

Updates to Garry's Mod have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- Fixes crash on startup

Dungeon Fighter Online is now available on Steam in the US and Canada and Free to Play!

Are you ready for the ultimate brawl? Dungeon Fighter Online serves up arcade-style action mixed with an epic storyline and RPG elements in a vibrant world under siege.
Join the adventure and battle beasts, demons, and more for the fate of Arad, an exotic world besieged by otherworldly threats. Choose from 8 diverse and customizable classes, fight with or against other heroes, and unravel ancient mysteries as you punch, slash, shoot, or summon your way to victory!