/cog/ - Traditional & Video Gaming

Offer Ends Thursday at 10am Pacific Time. Grab a copy while you can!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/63380/

It's Gaben-Xmas already?

>>187633
Not until July 4-ish. Kind of odd that there was no Spring Sale.

The First Newell

>>187653
Well, the main ones are summer and winter, so I guess any other one is merely like something extra.

Gabe is Love

Steam is down

How Microsoft's E3 should have ended [SFM]

>"My Girlfriend is an Alpaca," officially named PacaPlus, follows the "unforgettable summer" of Saeki Kazuma, who visits Alpaca Kingdom with his friends, only to return home on the bus, look over and discover that his girlfriend, Izumi Yukari, has been replaced by a fluffy white animal. Sekai Project has announced that not only is this visual novel coming to digital distribution service Steam, physical copies will be on sale at Anime Expo.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2014/06/12/video-my-girlfriend-is-an-alpaca-visual-novel-coming-to-steam

Thank you. Gabe-Senpai.

PacaPlus Intro Video

>>187719

Tomodachi Life is the greatest Valve simulator I have ever seen.

Anyone have any idea about what the gimmick for the Steam summer sale is going to be like?

Obviously it will have something to do with the new set of "mysterious cards" that have shown up under badges.

Maybe connected with that bread crap

What bread crap?

>>187948
Yesterday's TF2 update included a new feature where a bread-related item has a random chance of spawning every time someone uses a teleporter.

>>187948
Nine types of bread may spawn when using the tele, also this item tf_throwable_projectile_breadmonster

>>187949
>>187951
They've actually be hinting at whatever this is way longer:

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/27xb98/regarding_the_importance_of_bread_and_what_lies/

>>187957
>http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/27xb98/regarding_the_importance_of_bread_and_what_lies/
I somehow completely missed the Lecture Valley teaser. Also, that's a lot more bread-related stuff than I even thought existed already. I guess I only pay attention to the fringes of the TF2 world.

SUMMER DEALS WHEN?

SOON WHEN

MY WALLET NEEDS PUNISIHMENT GABEN

I NEED TO PUT EVEN MORE GAMES ON MY LIBRARY THAT I KNOW WONT EVER HAVE TIME TO TOUCH

Typically around the 4th of July.

FUCK. WHY NOW. I DON'T HAVE REGULAR INTERNET ACCESS. Q_Q

thinking of just cashing out my stash in the warehouse to keys and just getting a few games. from some Trade servers. Cause I'm not really into the whole status thing anymore I just want to play for fun in Tf2

Who the fuck is on Purple? They won yesterday by a decent amount, but today Red (my team) had a sizeable lead earlier and Purple just passed us and isn't losing stride.

>>188262
Purple and Red teams = Fucking hackers

You will all be purged in the glorious uprising!

So, do we have any idea of the amount of people involved in this? Because, I reckon that the odds of being among the daily 30 that get free games, are most likely pretty minuscule.

Guys, how's Payday 2? is it worth buying the four pack for the bros?

>>188289
I remember hearing its better than the first one more refined in some ways and the safe house adds a bit

>>188288
Yeah... but it doesn't cost you anything to get on a team. So gamble with free/no money.

Dang I was hoping the Fighter bundle would win after watching Fisticuffs

>>188307
Well technically you need to have at least 1 point per day for a chance to get any free games?

So that means assembling a badge, which means acquiring cards.

So you only get points for crafting cards. Does that mean people are crafting several million badges a day? That seems fucking insane!

Maybe people want one of those tf2 cosmetic items

>>188324
You also get rare tokens when you craft (holiday?) badges sometimes that allow you to either add or subtract from the points total of a team.

But still alot of badges are being crafted.

BETTER RED THAN DEAD

So, buy MGR (50% off) tonight or wait till the end of the sale?

>>188344
NOW NOW NOW!

>>188344
Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but the daily sales = the lowest price you will be seeing the game during the event

>>188350
flash sales can go lower sometimes, but daily is good to grab too ifthere's a game you want on one

So the 30 people who gets free games on the Team... that would be the 30 people who have the highest points? That seems like it would make the most sense.

Also does anyone else think the game has become rigged after they reset the points? Its changed from teams going back and forth over the #1 slot to one team dominating by an impossible margin and everyone else being almost neck and neck.
Pink team will win this round then Blue team will win the next one.

Borderlands 2 GOTY worth it? Still seems to be a ton of content not included in that pack

I haven't used Steam in a while, what's this card stuff I've read about?

Steam Sale - Gaben Beauty

>>188359
Buy games get cards, craft cards to get cosmetic items for certain games. Also badges for your profile.

>>188337
What's hilarious is that by the third day it settled into an equilibrium where the big spenders all buy the next cheapest team-change tokens and move on to the next team so that, as it appears now, all the teams will win at least once.

It looks like blue team is up for tomorrow.

>>188354
>that would be the 30 people who have the highest points?

I am pretty sure the 30 winners are chosen at random. Otherwise it would be an incredibly stupid move for Valve.

> lets take the biggest spenders, people that can buy whatever game they like
> and now free games for them

No, that doesn't make much sense.

>>188372
Rewarding people who give the most, makes perfect sense. Don't be hatin on people just for being more successful than you.

>>188379
Good thing Valve does not think the same, because again, the winners are picked at random.

>>188382

The winners are not picked at random. Only the people who contributed points that day enter, and those who contributed more points get a better chance of winning. It's in the details.

>>188383
> Each day the team with the most points wins. 30 members of that team who contributed points that day will win 3 games off their Wishlist.

That's all I can find, if there other specifics about the contests, pleas do post them. As it reads, there is no mention of the people spending more having better odds at winning.

>>188385
You can increase your own odds by increasing your team's likelyhood of winning, and that can be done by spending money to buy up cards and craft badges. It's not fullproof, though.

>>188370
Fuck, I didn't even know about those tokens.

>>188350
Sometimes a Flash Sale or Community Choice will have the same or lower price. Also, don't forget they do a "best of" at the very end that will bring back some deals. But otherwise, yeah, so if you like a deal you should probably grab it.

Oooh, the Market item listings do live updates now. Pretty.

>>188388
I do know that, but according to than anon, the more you spend the better odds you have to be one of the 30 winners at the end of the day, and I can't find anything about that.

>>188391
Oh. Yeah, I've not seen evidence of that.

Any good place to trade keys for games?

Valve has changed the game: Now the top three teams will win games:
>1st place team
>30 team members who scored points will win 3 games
>2nd place team
>20 team members who scored points will win 2 games
>3rd place team
>10 team members who scored points will win 1 game

How exactly do you craft badges and get onto a team? My gameplay experience is entirely solo player only because none of my friends play computer games, so I can only get a maximum of 4 cards per game.

>>188410
You can buy cards, or trade cards for other cards; if you have a high-enough level, you could randomly get card packs, but don't count on it.

You can get onto a team by going to the faq (http://store.steampowered.com/promotion/summer2014faq/) and clicking the "Get on a team" button that's a below team stats. But it only matters if you earn points, and points are only earned by crafting (crafting will put you on a team if you aren't already). Once you have a complete set for a badge you can craft it, earn your team points, and then if they win the day you have a chance of winning games.

So I was looking at Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition; I have vanilla New Vegas, so I wondered if there was an upgrade pack, but when I go to the Ultimate Edition page it says I already own it. Hovering over the "play now" button gives the game ID for vanilla New Vegas. Did New Vegas purchasers get a free upgrade I'm unaware of, or is this Steam being stupid?

>>188412
Steam being stupid. That said, you should be able to get all the dlc at a discount.

>>188413
Indeed. But, for some reason, being faced with having to purchase them separately (even if cheaper in total than buying Ultimate Edition) makes me lose all interest. Not that I would play them anytime soon anyway, so I can wait for the Winter Sale.

The whole thing's fucking ingenious. The majority of Steam users were probably sitting on several dozen trading cards, because they never gave a shit, like me. But now they gave them so much attention that stupid idiots, like me, suddenly discovered the "Sell" button in their inventory and introduced all those precious cards to the market, where Steam now gets a cut of off players who just now discovered that they could earn money for their Steam wallet by just playing their games.

Everyones jumped to team red and is sticking there now, this is pretty bullshit.

>>188423
As an original Red, I have no problem with this.

At least Red isn't outpacing the others by 4-5x like Blue did two days ago. In fact, everyone else but blue are still neck and neck, so they can still vie for at least second (and still have a possibility of catching up to Red).

>>188426
You re so completely full of shit, look at that fucking scoreboard.

Red winning two days in a row by a cleansweep both times is pretty clearly broken.
It could very well continue throughout the remaining competition.
They shouldn't have added those tokens that let you switch teams.

>>188436
>They shouldn't have added those tokens that let you switch teams.
Agreed, though I'm sure Valve has no bad feelings: tokens are still going at $2, except for Red, which is currently ELEVEN FUCKING FIFTY WHAT THE FUCK. Even if no more Red tokens sell (seriously, holy shit), Valve gets 20 cents per token, so just from those sales they're probably raking in a few hundred, if not a thousand, per day.

The new rewards does mean that those stuck on other teams (either because they can't afford the token or don't feel it's worth it) don't just give up and might try for second place. But this also just means more money for Valve.

But this is the first time they've done this sort of thing, to my knowledge, so hopefully they learn and next time you're stuck on a team.

I just bought Metal Slug 3 from the bit of money I got from selling all my trading cards. Can't complain.

Whoever is on Red that is pumping out those points, FSM bless you.

Also, another way they could balance this out so late in the game is to make the point-stealing tokens preferential towards a team or teams that have a severe lead. So right now all other teams would be quite likely to steal from Red, allowing places to change more often. Of course, looking at the point break down Red already has more points stolen in rough relation to its standing, so maybe this is in place already.

>>188450
Yah. I bought it during last year's Summer Sale and am happy with it, though I don't use it like I should. They might still have a less-good sale on it normally.

Oh look Red is pulling ahead AGAIN, this "contest" is a sham.

Should have just randomly assigned everyone a new team every day with no option to change.

It's like Valve forgot to playtest something for the first time in their lives.

This whole sales event have been a disappointment for me, the past three days can be summed as WOW IT'S FUCKING NOTHING, barely have got any new games so far.

>>188456
Every one of my votes was for nothing, didn't get one right. No Double Dragon Neon for 2.50

>>188456
I got way more games off of GOG than Steam this year.

>>188456
For me, there have been games that I want, but I have no games that I want want, so with an already-massive backlog of games I haven't really bothered.

I wonder if Valve gains more cash from the transactions in the marketplace than actually selling the games.

Has anyone here actually won any of the free games from this promotion?

>>188468
The odds of winning are pretty small, the better estimates give a 0,05% (with the worse ones being like 0,0002%) of being one of the winners, and that's if your team wins the day.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/24/how-the-internet-tried-to-rig-the-steam-summer-sale-and-how-valve-is-trying-to-stop-them/

>>188474
That article gives Reddit far too much credit, I think. They might have tipped one team to get a larger lead, but the article completely fails to mention the team-swapping tokens, even after it mentions the point-stealing tokens, and I think that's a major part of what caused the huge lead.

Also Red Team is gonna win Day 8.

Well, something changed: Pink has a decent lead and Red is in 3rd right behind green.

PINK TEAM WHAT DID YOU DO

Dammit, I forgot to screencap that table flip art.

Crud missed the sale for Revengeance

Its way too artificial with how close the points total are in the final run.

All I know is red had better not win again.

>>188529
I don't think it's artificial; surprisingly close, perhaps, but this is the final hurrah so everyone who has been saving up their Summer Cards are now crafting like fucking mad men to try to get *some* use out of them before the prices turn to crap and they expire tomorrow.

Speaking of prices, I think this is the first time I've seen the price of a card go UP. Not much, and certainly not to the 45 cents that was commanded on the first day, but still a moderate increase. Tomorrow they'll drop like a rock, I expect, and that's when I'll swoop in and try to buy up a bunch for crafting.

>>188536
Which makes it rather depressing how they basically didn't get anywhere in the competition.

Worst of the Steam sales so far, mechanic and sales themselves.

Looking to trade keys for Revengence since its back on sale if anyone is interested say 6 keys and six scrap.

Fuck. I checked it about 20 minutes before the end and had to head out. At that time, it was neck-and-neck, less than 4000 points or so between first and last. Come back and Pink has won by a ginormous margin.

Anyway, hopefully prices on summer cards crash later tonight and I can buy them for $.10/card for some easy XP and maybe a rare item.

By the way, anybody have a green team emoticon they'd like too trade for a purple one?

Holy crap, Divine Divinity an Beyond Divinity are on sale for $1.19 each right now.

Just in time for me to get to use the $1.48 I still have thanks to selling excess cards.

>tens of thousands of people still listing cards for $.20+
>cards disappear in two hours
I guess these are "go big or go home" kind of people.

Time to tally up the score.

Let's see I loaded up $20.00 at the start of the Summer Sale and sold a few of the extra cards I had...

Got the following:
1. Call of Juarez Gunslinger - $3.74
2. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - $1.99
3. The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition - $3.99
4. Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death - $0.99
5. The Final Hours of Portal 2 - $0.49
6. Bastion - $2.24 (Gift)
7. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - $2.99
8. Mirror's Edge - $4.99
9. Divine Divinity - $1.19

I was gifted:
Metro: Last Light Complete Edition

I also bought 15 trading cards to craft badges and a couple green team wallpapers and an emoticon for a total of $2.36.

Total spent: $24.97
Remaining balance: $0.20

Which means I managed to get $5.17 from selling excess cards. All in all, not bad.

(Also bought nine games from GOG during their summer sale and got two games for free. Spent $32.91 on that.)

Bought Van Helsing and Saint's Row IV with my own money.
Bought Metal Slug 3 and a cosmetic item for Path of Exile with money made from cards.
This is the most I bought on a Steam sale in a while.

Did Almost keys only run about 6 bucks odd out for the extra Borderlands 2 DLC that wasn't in GOTY but main game and Killer is Dead were key trades. Missed out on a Trade for Revengance early on but I'll wait for the next Holiday sale. Which point I'll sell off the more TF2 Cosmetics and do more trading.

Arkham Origins plus DLCs
Arkham City plus DLCs
Payday 2 plus most of the DLCs
Metal Gear Rising
Farcry Blood Dragon
The Witcher (already had Witcher 2)
Hotline Miami
Trine 2
Castle Crashers
Sanic Racing (blessed be the anon on /v/ who recommended it to me)
A DLC for Serious Sam 3

Transistor Sountrack
Dust: An Elysian Tale

That's it. I did about as much in the last sale; I may well be Sale'd out, between a huge gaming backlog and relative lack of funds.

>>188557
Indeed Sonic Racing is pretty dang good

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
BattleBlock Theater
Skyrim: Legendary Edition
Stanley Parable
Sleeping Dogs Collection
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Deus Ex: HR DC
Dishonored GOTY Edition
PAYDAY Wolfpack DLC
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
Ass Creed 1

Overall a decent whipping of my wallet.

I though about Skyrim, but the amount of modding I'd have to have done to make it fun, didn't balance for me. Maybe next sale. Also a few of those I would have had a not watched a LP. But two I will once they go down enough BECAUSE I want to experience it after watching the LP. Killer is Dead being one of those.

-Risk of Rain
-Pac-Man Championship edition
-Marlow Briggs

I spent less than 10 buck on this games, and I'm more than fine with that.

>>188561
>Sleeping Dogs Collection

Man, Sleeping Dogs is a fine game, but some of the DLCs give you SUCH a ridiculous headstarrt, I really disliked that.

>>188567
Its a single player game. And if you personally don't want to use the bonus costumes that have perks then just don't.

Guacamelee and Rouge Legacy are Canadian? Well I'll just uninstall them immediately, we all make mistakes.

>>188568
The bonus costumes were fine, no idea why woudl you think I have anything about that. Thing is, among the DLC were stuff that automatically give you a ton of experience and money without doing crap, and AFAIK there is no way to avoid it. Again, it is a fine game and I don't regret buying it during the winter sales, but the experience for me was somewhat lessened by *some* of the DLC, that's really my only complain.

>>188576
And it has Mark of the Ninja on it. FUCKING BUY IT!
Genuinely one of the best games I've ever played.

New Humble Bundle, this time from 2K. Pretty decent selection: Bioshock (1,2,I), X-Com (Enemy Unknown, The Bureau), Darkness II, Mafia II, Spec Ops: The Line.

I have pretty much every game there that I would want, though; not worth it just to add Spec Ops to my backlog.

https://www.humblebundle.com

Dang I got most of those, is The Bureau interesting enough to get.

>>188727
It's okay-ish. Bear in mind that the game is a shooter.

>>188855
A sale so good it will make you surrender your wallet

hyukk hyuk hyuk

>>189448

Did anyone get a good load of this?
Pretty good deal, except I have yet to know someone who doesn't have most, if not all, of these game already. They are a must have, unless you hate fps.

>>189542
>>I have yet to know someone who doesn't have most, if not all, of these game already.
Yeah its one of my most played steam games.
I'm not buying it again.

I would have loved it if instead of a board game we had gotten another expansion.
Even crazier than mechs and genetic engineering.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/218620/announcements/detail/220996972064636082
>Payday 2: Hotline Miami DLC
Good, another excuse for getting Payday 2.

>>190180
Sup "Richard" who has time for a heist when there are Russians about.

Head's up, Shadowrun Returns and the Dragonfall expansion are both on sale for 75% off.

>>190249
I picked up the Deluxe Edition, but sadly Dragonfall doesn't has a discount.

It doesn't?

Huh, I could swear I saw it was discounted when I first checked, but apparently not.

The director's cut of the expansion is coming out, though.

Woah, I am seeing FFIV available on Steam, and apparently is a port of the DS remake.

I love FFIV, but I don't care for portable gaming so I didn't plat with the remake. Is it good? The fact that it has voice acting kinda worries me.

>>190300
It's pretty good. It's also obscenely hard. However I don't know how good the port is. I only played it on DS.

>>190300
The voice acting is pretty good actually. This is actually a port of the PSP version, which is a port of the DS version anyway. It's widely considered to be the definitive version since it puts in missing scenes from the original script, and the gameplay is overall much better than the original.

The only drawbacks are the difficulty being stupidly hard, twice as hard as the original, and the new music is ok but you can tell Uematsu had no hand in the rearrangements, so often it sounds inferior to the original.

>Steam recommends game to me
>has some generic nondescript name
>gorgeous illustrations
>hey, this looks neat, now where's the in-game screensh-
>it's some fucking Minecraft clone with garbage graphics
I hate this so much.

Steam is doing a huge Free Weekend, covering a multitude of games including PayDay 2, Injustice, and Trine 2. 10 games in all, you can see the list on Steam. However, unlike most these run out Sunday afternoon, so give them a try now.

Only 10 hours or so left. Anyone have any recommendations for the Halloween sale?
Spooky scary or horror/ monster themed preferred.

>>191146
Me, I'm getting Darkstalkers I & II, Painkiller: Black Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl & Call of Pripyat (finally), Overlord I & II and Betrayer.

>>191153
...or rather I would have. Had I not kept getting error messages on checkout.

I don't know whether to blame Steam or my bank.

Finally beat the first Torchlight. Played it off and on every few months for the past year or so burning a good full nights worth of time on it each time I touched it and giving me my fill.

Looking back, man that shit is repetitive and easy, but it's somehow addicting as hell. this is also the first game I've beaten in the past three years

>>191411
Now go for Torchlight II. It's so much better than the first, you don't even know.

>>191412
I would and I have it, but they still haven't released the promised port for Mac yet and I'm almost out of space on my Windows partition.

>>191416
Installed Witcher 2 after seeing it was available on my mac and I only just finished the tutorial and I've got a feeling I'm in for Porto-dark souls

Steam is having an "Exploration Sale", which doesn't seem like an event sale, just a "hey we have Black Friday too" thing.

>>191818
It's the normal Fall sale, just with another name.

Maybe I haven't noticed it before, but I do like that they have the "In Library" notice on games I already own. Many times in past Steam Sales, I'd go "Oh, I've been interested in that game... wait, do I already own it?" and have to go check.

Hey, did anyone else notice some games aren't giftable outside a certain area?
I tried buying one for a friend, me being in Mexico, but it told me they wouldnt be able to add it to their library unless they were in Central or South America.

Sega Racing Transformed, The Dreamcast Collection and Nights into Dreams are all on sale for a dollar. There's also some DLC for some games I don't own.

https://www.humblebundle.com/

How often are these humblebundle deals this good? I've never really paid attention to them before, but it's usually just small indie stuff on sale right?

Sega Racing Transformed, The Dreamcast Collection and Nights into Dreams are all on sale for a dollar. There's also some DLC for some games I don't own.

https://www.humblebundle.com/

How often are these humblebundle deals this good? I've never really paid attention to them before, but it's usually just small indie stuff on sale right?

>it's usually just small indie stuff on sale right?

It started that way, but relatively big names have been included for the past couple years.

>>191844
Even with the massive discount in some cases they can see a good tripled sale margin which makes it a good idea for bigger names to participate.

>>191844
>>191845
The problem with big names being on sale is there's usually a lot of relatively recent titles that, since they're on disc as well are only going to go down to about $30. Steam sales got their rep for beating people's wallets in, for so many games under $10. Now with all these AAA titles that cost more than that, I don't feel like spending that kind of money.

I've always been more of a console player and I need help deciding what to get now that I'm branching out into PC games.

Should I get
Half-Life Complete
Morrowind GOTY Edition
Oblivion GOTY Edition
or Skyrim Legendary?

I only want to buy one of these and I'm not sure which one I want. Which would you guys suggest? Please explain why.

>>191871
Do you like sandboxes, FPSes, RPGs, or character customization? That should help narrow things down a bit.

>>191872
I've been advised to just wait for the next Valve/Bethesda bundle sale, so I'm just going to do that. I got plenty of new games over the black friday weekend anyway so I'm good for a while.

>>191871
Morrowind is GOAT RPG with delicious lore, a fantastic setting, and an interesting plot. The graphics are dated, which can be fixed with mods to a good degree, the combat is often criticized for it's dice roll mechanics (you can be trying to hit a mudcrab right in front of you and miss every time if your stats suck), but that can be modded as well, and it's incredibly easy to break the game with magic.

Oblivion is... I honestly don't remember a lot of Oblivion. The story was forgettable, the character models are fugly as hell in a way that managed to age worse than Morrowind, and the setting is just boring. Really, outside of the Shivering Isles expansion, the game is just kind of meh. That said, the Shivering Isles campaign pretty much makes up for the how mediocre the rest of the game was.

Skyrim is those two games dumbed down quite a bit. The combat mechanics are simplified in almost every way, even the magic. The story is better than the one in Oblivion (IMHO), but not by that much. It's obviously the most aesthetically pleasing of the three games when unmodded due to its age. Dawngaurd was an OK expansion, Dragonborn was better, and Hearthfire is stupid shit that modders had already done.

All three games have/had a large modding community, and it serves as one of the major draws of those games. As far as I've heard, the mods for Skyrim are starting to ramp up in quality, but I haven't bothered to sift through them to see if that's true. If you were to ask me point blank which one I would recommend without taking personal tastes into consideration, I'd say get Morrowind. It's worth experiencing.

Half-Life is fucking Half-Life. I wouldn't say it's a necessary game to experience, but it may be worth it, I don't know.

>>191896
Yknow, I wonder if i could stream art on there.

>>191896
>bottom left corner
FUCK YES REDLINE

Steam has started some sort of "auction" thing, where you use Community items to create gems, then big the gems on a wide variety of games, each of which has a number of copies to auction off. The first auction isn't actually over until Monday morning, and then every 45 minutes. I guess something done fucked up, because they took the current auction down; not surprising, the top auction item was for 7,800,000 gems. For reference, a single trading card will get you between 20-80 gems (at least, in my inventory). The backgrounds I had lying around from past events were worth 100 gems each, but even at 3,200 gems I didn't come close to winning anything of worth.

The auction stuff ends when the Steam Winter Sale starts, which is Thursday Dec 18th 10 AM PST. Gems can still be used after that to craft booster packs.

http://steamcommunity.com/auction

>Sorry, but there have been some issues with Gems and the Steam Holiday Auction has been temporarily closed. The elves are working frantically to get the issues sorted out, and the auction will start again as soon as they're done.

Even games that cost less than $10 on sale are going for over 10,000 gems when cards are worth about 20 gems each--I've routinely seen Bulletstorm on sale for $5, but the highest bid right now is 15,600 gems.

Even selling these cards for a nickel on the market gets you vastly more in terms of buying power.

>>192108
Yea this is a special kind of stupid going on here. Kinda waiting for the cards to go up a little as people clear out the market to make gems.

It all seems remarkably silly. But I guess it's an excuse to clear out an inventory.

>>192137
I put down a couple at a few cents higher than average to see which way things blow.

I never really thought about it before Hatred was removed, but Valves massive control over PC games is a huge problem. If you want to make money on PC, you go to Steam, that's just how it is. It has millions of users who refuse to use any other service and many have no clue about games that aren't released on Steam. If you don't release on their service you will make peanuts, you will be lucky to make back your investment. So Valve now has authority over the morality of games on PC. If Gabe doesn't like the politics of your game it won't get released; what he says goes and a Steam release can make or break an indie dev. The removal of Hatred sets a precedent and an example to other developers. Nobody will attempt to do something shocking or controversial, nobody will dare to rock the boat with something new. Valve has took a huge step forward in killing games as an art form. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else?

>>192161
It has been like that forever. Alongside the fact that you will be unable to play the games you purchased ever again, if Steam decides to ban your account, there's plenty of things that are problematic about a monopoly like that. If you want to make a difference, don't buy games from Steam whenever possible. There are other competitors. Both GOG and Amazon offer plenty of games without any sort of DRM. There's also Gamersgate, which has been around forever, but I hardly check anymore, because they tend to be kinda overpriced. You're not gonna convince several million people to stop using Steam, but you can start with yourself. All that said, I'm not even saying people should stop using Steam forever. As far as online matchmaking and intrusive DRM go, they're still vastly preferable to anything else.

Oh no, where will I market my video game adaptation of Triumph of the Will?

>>192163
>>192164
Setting aside that Hatred is most likely going to be asinine garbage, let's not act like it completely invalidates that anon's point. Steam's monopoly is a big problem.

No, it has the POTENTIAL to be a problem. There's a difference.

>>192164
Why is Postal ok, but Hatred not?
They're both pretty edgy and garbage, but still. I won't even get into the whole SJW drone backlash the game got.

>>192165
I'd say Origin maybe?

>>192167
Maybe because postal is actually dark humour while hatred is trying to play tryhard edgy nonsense completely straight.

Postal 2 is great, big improvement on the original, with the open world and it gives the choice to the player in just how violent you wanna be, can even play a pacifist if you really want to.

>>192161
>It has millions of users who refuse to use any other service
because no other service is nearly as mature as Steam. Origin, Uplay, etc. are far more buggy/problematic with far fewer features. Plus they don't have the massive sales that Steam has (two days until the Winter sale!) and their libraries are almost entirely their own games. This could be because no one wants to bother integrating with both Steam and another store, but I doubt it's that hard unless Origin, Uplay, etc. have onerous requirements.

If they want to be used as much as Steam, they need to do a few things:
1) Make the main program sleek as hell; I barely notice Steam is running unless I'm playing a game or interacting with it, the footprint is fairly small
2) Encourage indie devs to release on their platform, without barring them from releasing on Steam as well
3) Hook into Steam; Valve offers an API, so a way to entice users would be to let them log in with their Steam ID
4) As an extension of 3: if the user has a game on Steam, and that game is available on the alternative, let the user connect the game (or download it, if you can't hook into the Steam copy) for free so they can use the social features of the platform of choice.

>>192165
>Steam's monopoly is a big problem.
I agree, it is a pot that could potentially boil over at any moment. Thankfully they've acted more-or-less altruistically despite their sheer dominance thus far. If EA or Ubisoft were in the same position they would take their customers for as much as they possibly could. If I lost access to all of my Steam stuff, I would go to GoG and Humble Bundle with Raptr as my social manager, not Origin or Uplay.

The problem I have is with Steam's lack of transparency more than anything else. It could go down the slippery slope and eventually go the way of Apple where games get banned just because they have something political in it like the Syrian Civil War, regardless of whether they're impartial about it or not, and we'd never be able to know to do something about it.

>>192168
Yeah, Postal 2. Postal 1 is doesn't play the satire card like 2 does and it's still there too.

>>192166
I feel the situation has been misreported somewhat - Hatred was voted onto Steam Greenlight for Valve to consider whether to publish it or not. Valve took one look at Fascist The Edgehog and went "lol no". Ultimately, it's Valve's decision whether to publish games highlighted by users on Steam Greenlight, it's not obligated to publish any old voter-bombed schlock that grabs their attention. If Hatred were picked up by a third-party publisher (god forbid) then I'm pretty sure Steam would have to stock it, it hasn't been "banned forever" or anything like that.

A failure to obtain a Steam release can drastically cut the chances of an obscure indie release gaining exposure, but you'd have to be living in a cave to have never heard of Hatred. I agree that Steam's near-monopoly on digital PC releases is setting the market up for problems down the road, but there are games out there worth raising a stink over and Hatred is emphatically not one of them.

>>192169
Also Steam has promised that if they ever have to shutdown the network they'll load everyone's libraries on to portable media and make sure they have them. While on the flip of that we've seen that EA and likely UBI won't give a shit.

>>192176
While I enjoy Steam/Valve, I've never put any stock into that promise. First, it's a promise and not a contractual obligation (AFAIK), and I could easily see that not happening depending on why they have to shut down.

>>192178
Well I give them the benefit at the moment since that is leagues more than EA who are more "tough shit" on the few games that have been killed by them closing the servers.

>>192175
>I agree that Steam's near-monopoly on digital PC releases is setting the market up for problems down the road
But it isn't. Not really. Its a service, and a free one at that.
Its literally up to the consumers. That's the reason they have the influence they have, and that can easily go away the moment the alternatives prove more consumer-friendly.

All other issues aside, I get really annoyed when people describe the Hatred issue as "censorship." A company deciding they don't want to publish your work is not censorship, even if it's for political reasons. You have the right to say what you want to say, but no one has an obligation to help you say it or to reward you for what you've said.

>>192181
Yea and that may prove to happen sooner or later. Steam works as well as it does because they've already worked out all the bugs in the system (those first few years where a pickle)

And apparently, now its back.

Valve caved and they're officially supporting Hatred.

Good. The pendulum swings both ways and SJW don't have everyone by the balls like they seem to think they do and want.

>>192186
Anyone know what this means?

>>192189
That he is a Polish Neo Nazi perhaps.

>>192186
Its comments like these that genuinely make me wonder if those supporting the game's release have any genuine conviction regarding it, or if they're doing so in the sake of contrarianism.

I find it hilarious that the people bitching about this game are giving the same reasons Jack Thompson did for games only a few years ago.

People spew "literally a nazi" these days a lot...
But in this case, I think its essential to point out Neo-Nazism is alive and well in Eastern Europe. Particularly in countries like Poland and Ukraine - and its GROWING in nations like Sweden. White Supremacy is a genuine political movement in those nations, and if this group is making this piece based off their political standing, its natural to assume this is actual political expression.
Especially considering how its "against the political correctness" of today.
There is such a thing as cultural context - and god damn there is such a thing as hate speech.

>>192192
Man, Jack Thompson was a nut, come on.

>>192194
Sounds like it's time for that person to download cracked exe's. Pirates win again.

>>192193
>Man, Jack Thompson was a nut, come on.

He was a nut because his points where nonsense. He claimed that videogames could somehow convince people to be violent in real life. Aren't many of the arguments against Hatred that it promotes dangerous and violent ideals too?

I do not support this game. I think it's trying way too hard to be edgy and shocking. It makes the mistake of being a polar contraction reaction to another extreme and I will not touch the game in any way shape or form. But I can't denounce it out of fear that it will create real murderers or white supremacists.

>>192185
Sad thing is, Hatred is probably more mechanically sound and playable as a pure game than a huge percentage of Steam's catalogue which is comprised of literal scams. If that's the case then even it has more reason to be on Steam's catalogue than shit like Air Control.

The important thing is that Valve be transparent with what is or isn't worth of being sold on their site, or else it continues along the arbitrary path and for all we know we could start seeing games like Sakura Spirit pulled for encouraging pedophilia because some guy on Steam's staff thinks like Cooper Lawrence, or Spec Ops getting pulled because whoever had the power to make the call was dumb enough to take it at face value.

>>192197
Yeah, honestly it's pretty ridiculous to think that the game would actually make people more violent or racist than they are, anymore than Mortal Kombat or, more saliently, Ethnic Cleansing, did. Anyone who is capable of enjoying it or drawing from unironically is already fucked in the head to begin with. All Valve is doing is giving it unnecessary publicity in the same way that Australia gave GTA5 a big boost by pulling it off Target's shelves. No such thing as bad publicity in their eyes.

>>192197
>But I can't denounce it out of fear that it will create real murderers or white supremacists.
Maybe that's no reason to denounce it.
But I do it because its supporting a group openly affiliated with white supremacy and neo nazi groups and have expressed said ideals.
Not only is it supporting them financially, its supporting the idea itself. And it giving a pat on the head to all the people who really believe what they fuckin posted on the game's page comments. Guh.

Valve can freely choose not to support the game and give it a platform - in doing so, they're directly affiliating themselves with the developers. They wouldn't be censoring the game, they wouldn't be infringing anyone's right to develop or purchase whatever they wish. Steam is just a platform. Its a store.

If anyone at Valve took it down because they were personally offended by the themes, company or ideas its spreading, then I'm real god damn disappointed they put it back up because of pressure from the uneducated "freedom of speech" martyrs.

>>192192
Criticism=/=censorship. When I call Hatred an asinine tryhard outrage-manufacturer developed by literal stormfronters, I don't mean "therefore it should be banned", I mean "therefore anyone buying this solely to get back at them-SJWs-taking-mah-games is a massive tool falling for a nakedly obvious marketing ploy."

All these comparisons to Jack Thomson are moot because Jack never really gave a shit about violence in video games, as evidenced by his current support for the GamerGate stupidity. Video games for him were no more than a proxy battlefield for retarded Culture Wars bullshit. That's ultimately what Hatred is too, a vehicle for noxious reactionary politics, and I'm disappointed that a segment of gamers are falling for it hook line and sinker.

>>192201
DISCLAIMER: From what I have seen, Hatred is garbage aimed at angry teenagers and contrarian /v/ermin. I do not consider it a good game.

>arbitrary decisions and intransparency are acceptable behavior for a company as long as they're in line with my political opinions

Are you trying to make #GG look legitimate?

>its supporting the idea itself
>they're directly affiliating themselves with the developers

"If you aren't fighting on our side, you're an enemy agent."

>If anyone at Valve took it down because they were personally offended by the themes, company or ideas its spreading, then I'm real god damn disappointed they put it back up because of pressure from the uneducated "freedom of speech" martyrs.

You can look forward to gaming's yellow press declaring Gabe Newell Gaming's Anti-Christ. After all, only a soulless moneygrubbing shitbeard would cater to reactionary basement dwellers like 100% of the people who didn't want the game wiped off the face of the earth, right?

>censorship semantics
>"I don't want the government to ban it, I only want any non-negative reaction to it to be social suicide"

One doesn't have to be a #GG drone to recognize that all-too-common attitude as two-faced bullshit.

>>192203
Wait, Jack Thompson IS supporting GamerGate?
What the fuck?!

>>192202
It's to prevent people from lower priced regions to sell their games to higher priced ones.

>>192206

There's nothing bullshit about that attitude. Censorship is preventing something from coming to market. Criticizing that product and treating it as the social marker it's obviously intended to be does not in any way prevent it from reaching the market.

These guys have a right to make their repugnant game. What they don't have a right to is an accepting public reaction. That, they have to earn.

(Also generally speaking only the government CAN censor, although if a private agent holds a monopoly over production and distribution they become the de facto government as far as that specific product is concerned. Steam, although far and away the largest and most popular digital distribution platform, does not actually occupy a monopoly position. Hatred could be sold through any number of other platforms, and if all of them turn them away they can sell directly to the public. They are not being censored in any way)

>>192207
As far as I know some guys even GG considers sorta fringe went to Thompson looking for an interview to get him to talk shit about Sarkeesian. But even if he does actually support GG outright I don't see why that matters considering Tipper Gore, Hillary Clinton, and other figures associated with the liberal side of things also came out against video games for the exact same reasons. This is going into "If you are not with me, then you're my enemy" territory. Jim Sterling is against this game getting taken off Steam for fucks sake, are you going to call him a turncoat to GG too?

>>192210
I should have been more specific. The last part was a more general statement about the often-repeated "no one is going to take your games away"* mantra, which was used in the context of far less polarizing games. Self-appointed moral guardians always try to turn their views into the mainstream with the intended goal of creating economic pressure on artists and social pressure on consumers in order to eradicate anything they consider offensive (the definition of which is arbitrarily expandable).

And once a social ban has been around for long enough, it will turn into a legal one. Enjoy the future. Thanks to #GG shitters there will be no meaningful opposition to it. Better hope nothing you enjoy will eventually be added to the list of "problematic" games.

*Of course not. They just won't get made anymore because devs don't want to be doxxed by crazies (acknowledging their existence is derailment btw) or blackballed by half of the industry. [You] also won't be able to talk about them anymore outside of dedicated nutjob circles because playing the wrong games (and by extension, not playing the right games) will be like admitting that you're a KKK member. That's the end goal. No censorship needed.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/12/17/gabe-newell-apologises-for-pulling-hatred-from-steam-greenlight/
Apparently Gabe intervened to put the game back on anyway. Which is only more troubling because it validates the point made in >>192198 that it was probably all on one guy, meaning that in the (unlikely, but still) situation that were he replaced by someone with more "traditional" views, we could've seen games like Gone Home taken off for promoting immoral relationships without being any the wiser. It only puts a further spotlight on the need for Valve to be more transparent about its policies.

GG has become such a clusterfuck of unrelated ideals and blame that I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be honestly representative of anymore.

>>192212
It's making me think of how theaters are refusing to show "The Interview" because of fear of backlash. Technically it's not censorship because you could go elsewhere to see it or wait for it on DVD, but it's still the result of corporates bowing to pressure from supposed moral guardians due to the potentially offensive political content contained within, and sadly there are actually some nutjobs wacky enough to think that North Korea are poor victims of American imperlailism or racism who would happily see this as a victory for "sensible" values and become emboldened by it.

>>192212

I don't think my eyes could roll any harder than they are right now.

>>192215
Theatre chains aren't pulling The Interview because of fears of a "backlash", they're pulling it for fear of a hypothetical terrorist attack by state-sponsored nutters. I haven't heard of any pressure from "moral guardians" and a lot of pressure from a crypto-fascist feudal hell-hole with a severe sense-of-humour shortage.

Remember the university talk Sarkeesian pulled out of because of a specific threat to machine-gun the lecture hall? That's the proper analogy for The Interview's problems, just on a far grander scale.

>>192212
So then, again, you seem to think that it is my duty to help and reward people who say things that I disagree with. That by not giving people who say horrible things the money and the venue in which to say these things, I am "taking games away" from people who want to play them, and by not giving my money to people who say things I disagree with, I am hampering their ability to continue saying those things.

Using your logic, if I am in favor of free speech, I am obligated to buy every piece of media that comes out, otherwise publishers might decide that there's not a market for those pieces of media. And I am obligated to never criticize any piece of media, for fear that people will agree with me en masse enough that the thing will stop selling, and therefore the publishers will decide to stop producing more copies.

I imagine that you do not personally buy every piece of media that comes out. And I imagine you criticize things when you disagree with them. So I'm forced to ask: where do you draw the line? When does it stop being censorious to criticize and to refrain from purchase? When does it stop being censorious to complain about business decisions? At what point does my right to free speech, in the form of objecting to the things you've said, get taken away so that you can continue to enjoy your right to say horrible things without any social fallout?

You have a right to an opinion, not to be respected for that opinion.

>>192220
It's not about YOU voting with your wallet, it's about demonizing others who didn't vote the same way. Don't pretend you missed the context, there's been enough yelling about it from both sides.

No, Valve isn't obligated to sell the game. What they'd be obligated to (from an ethical standpoint) is transparency (why are certain games not allowed on Steam) and consistency (applying the rule to all games). In this specific case, clarifications would have been necessary if they hadn't reverted the decision.

>where do you draw the line?

"If you buy this game, you are an oppressor" is the mindset I oppose because it is thought-terminating. "If [company] sells this game, they are oppressors" is the same concept (especially since it easily extends into "If you buy anything from [company], you are an oppressor too").

>At what point does my right to free speech, in the form of objecting to the things you've said, get taken away so that you can continue to enjoy your right to say horrible things without any social fallout?

Look at the deep ends of both sides in the #GG shitstorm for the answer to that one.

>>192221
There's a difference between "not being respected" and "treated like a criminal".

A little attention-whoreish, I admit, but I’mma just post a link to a thing I wrote about the Hatred/Greenlight stuff ratjer than repost it here:

http://stephentstone.tumblr.com/post/105460369983/on-hatred-greenlight-and-censorship

>>192223
Yeah guess what, if you are a neo-nazi you are going to be treated as a social outcast.

>>192225
Here's the thing though: applying labels like that is quick and easy and once it's happened the target has no chance to come back.

>>192226
Are you Sorkin?

>>192227
I am not some named user from this place. I've seen what I described happening often enough in enough places. One wrong word and you're a "SJW" or "feminazi" or "JIDF" or "stormfag" or "MRA".

>>192228
Aaron Sorkin is the hack writer of the Newsroom.

You know what, I'll just stop posting. I've been voted to be the insane one. Report me if you must, it's up to the staff to decide whether my post history marks me as a problem.

>>192230
Ah, yes, melodrama. That's going to make the difference in having your opinion taken seriously.

>>192225
Is he a Neo-Nazi?

>>192222
Most logical person here.

>>192235
If you consider attempting to keep other people from saying things because you're anti-censorship to be logical, I guess.

>>192236
Eh, I'm not really seeing how they're doing that, regardless of however shitty their message may be. I think while Steam entirely has the right to not distribute the game if they want and is not committing censorship by doing so, and were they explicit about their policies I would agree with them in keeping it out of their library, the fact that they singled this game out is a sign of, well, poor corporate ethics. Yes, I know, but hear me out, numerous other progressive gaming pundits have been saying the same thing. Namely it's Valve's lack of consistency, transparency, and truly bizarre priorities considering they're perfectly fine with leaving alone hundreds of games which flagrantly violate false marketing laws. This game is not OK, but apparently being able to rip customers off is perfectly fine? I don't think so. And if anything, this negative publicity will only encourage sales due to the controversy, which is playing entirely into the developers' hands.

>>192233
Don't think so, some of their members are fans of far-right Polish groups but there's nothing conclusive since after all Falangists aren't considered literal Nazis either. And even if they were, I'm pretty sure the game explicitly is going with "we hate everyone equally" so they can't reject the game on the basis of it specifically promoting Nazism anymore than they can reject Earthworm Jim or Armikrog due to Doug TenNapel rampant homophobia. Whatever their reasoning is, they would have to be open about it.

>>192237
tl;dr basically my point in the first paragraph is I don't care if they take this game down or not but I do care about Valve repeatedly profiting off of scam "games" over and over with the exception of a very small handful of them.

>>192193
>Man, Jack Thompson was a nut, come on.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=357693142
No, it really is the same shit on loop.
But hey between Hatred and The Interview getting all this media attention, it's been ensured that mediocre films and movies will be making bank and that press and media really do control the world and influence the gullible masses.

>>192237
How are they ripping customers off? What was it they told customers they would give them that they are not giving them?

Nothing I really care about. That's a pretty hefty discount on Dark Souls 2 already, though. Did it sell poorly or something?