This could be just a way to track pirated copies. First achievement comes from Steam statistics where the second one is from the game itself. This way you can track how many copies of the game are being pirated.
Not Steam, but interestingly some Microsoft published games will unlock Xbox achievements when pirated, presumably because they built the version sold on Steam to unlock achievements on both platforms. Pirated Psychonauts 2 and got the little under half you get on a casual non achievement hunting playthrough on my Xbox account
With the aggressively anti-user and poorly thought out moves tech companies have been making lately, I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to start using little discrepancies like that to go after people
It would be dumb, way more effort than it’s worth, and likely extremely invasiv… Probably not likely, but I would’ve said the same about a lot that’s happened in the last couple years.
But all the same, in your shoes I’d look into blocking that on the off chance it puts a target on your back
Was years ago when the game first came out, plus am a Gamepass subscriber now anyway so "officially" have a license (yadda yadda, subject to subscription running out or them deciding to drop a game they own from their catalog). But there's always a chance I suppose
As long as you’re not doing it now I wouldn’t worry, you’d need very detailed information to tell you apart from steam. Privileged information I’d never have considered Microsoft yanking a year ago, but a year from now? Unlikely, but not unbelievable anymore
Shooting yourself in the foot trying to punish users seems to be the new SOP for tech giants these days…I no longer would put anything past them
Strictly talking about statistics, it depends on the context. From everyone who bought the game, 39% started it. From everyone one who played the game (so started it) 79% completed the first level.
I’m glad that it seems like he’s extended the longevity of his life by losing a lot of weight. Have you seen him now? Looks amazing for his age. I think if he continued where he was, he might’ve passed away at some point or be in a worse condition.
He needs as much time as possible to decide what he’s going to do after he’s gone.
But it’s more likely that if Gabe doesn’t have someone or something in mind that keeps Steam on track, there’s few companies that can buy it. Microsoft could acquire it. Sony could acquire it. Epic games could acquire it.
Companies that would have no care or clue in how to keep Steam as is.
Safest option would be to turn Valve into a foundation, similar to Zeiss: The company owns itself thus can’t be bought out, statutory stipulations go along the lines of “Make sure we don’t go bankrupt, do great optics, funnel some money to the University of Jena as well as less well off workers in the city”. No grand charitable aspirations besides being a good citizen as per 1846 bourgeois values (though that’d be Gabe’s choice), otherwise just continue as they’ve been doing. Make sure all stakeholders (incl. gamers, or at least Valve customers) have standing to enforce those statutes.
That would be nice. Just keep in mind that they already have an arbitration clause, so that seems to piss on (but not all over and certainly not shit on) gamers who have standing to enforce those values.
And this boys is why we choose to give money to valve, and as a bonus steam sales are amazing. Valve really knows how to keep a steady income of profit and just dont fck with what works
I was just curious considering the praise angle of the story. Everyone complains about Apple’s 30% cut from their store, but for some reason it’s ok or “praised as a democratic platform” when everyone else does it.
I don’t know what democratic platform means since the two closest democracies to me geographically are total bullshit.Edit: after reading the article I get it. Its visibility of your game that they are praising. They detail how they have to really work to get the game to show up anywhere but on steam if its good, people will buy it and it will show up more.
Maybe if apple allowed 3rd party stores, yet was objectively better than the others then things would be different in regards to them.
Steam has had so many competitors over the years and the only one with any merit is gog. The rest have been so garbage that even if they had better rates, comparatively few people would use them. With the rise of discord pretty much nobody uses steam’s socials any more apart from as an easy way to join a friend’s game. Before that none of the others compared there either.
And nobody is forced to use steam in the first place. Most games on steam are available on other platforms, although I can’t think of a good reason to use any other than got.
The remaining downside to steam is that you are still only buying into a license agreement and not owning anything, though even pulled games are accessible if you bought them. I would know, I have like 2-5 iiirc. For now anyway. Dog only knows if valve’s fucked or faulty future mitigation plans to prevent fucking over friendly customers will actually pan out if gabe dies.
I have like 400 free to own games on my EGS account and the only thing I’ve ever played on it is Fortnite occasionally. I’ll just buy a game on Steam if I want it, rather than checking if I already own in in EGS–it’s that bad.
Hah yeah mine is probably half as many but I’ve only played three, two of them recently. Its tolerable with heroic launcher, but in the case of outer worlds and guardians of the galaxy EGS version on steam deck I still wasted about a day tinkering each to get cut scenes to work on one and something else on the other but Christmas or whenever it was that they were free was like 100 years ago now and I forgot the specifics.
Difference: what does apple do? It has a store that they check the content on. And provide the small app infrastructure. Also they ask for money for you to upload anything.
What does steam do? They provide a huge infrastructure for games with hundreds of gigabytes and then a workshop for mods and multiplayer and controller support and remote play and a general good service.
The epic games launcher sucks and they don’t even provide half of that and they ask for 25% I think because otherwise developers wouldn’t even consider their shop.
I only recently realized how amazing the controller customization is on the deck. Being able to edit your entire control scheme completely on the fly without even closing the game is a real gamechanger.
I remember fighting with third party tools just to get simple shit like macros or mouse control mapped to a controller. Now I can set up complex doodads like button chords and mode shifts, it feels like the future.
Epic’s at a 25% cut now? I thought they still were at 12.
I remember Sweeney trying to convince users games would be cheaper because of the lower cut. Of course every publisher just pockets the difference and gamers are stuck with the garbage launcher.
Not to mention them paying for exclusivity to indie studios, only for the indie studio to make way more money once the game released on steam, despite the cut.
Apple and Google’s 30% not only hits the base price, but every single transaction that happens inside apps as well. Imagine a toll bridge in front of your nearest supermarket where the people working the toll booth inspect every bag of grocery you bought and then charged you toll based on what you bought there.
Apps arent entirely like video games. If you wanted to open a non-subscription based music store or book store or whatever, you’d find it economically impossible to pay the publishers their cut, apple their cut, your server host their cut, and have anything left over for yourself without charging your customers their arms and legs. This is why all those kinds of apps are subscription based. You can cleverly batch and bundle stuff in a monthly subscription fee which gives you room to dance around google and apples high fees and have enough money to keep your lights on.
The app store is the only way to get apps on ios, whereas steam is not the only way to get games on PC.
It’s the biggest one, yes, but no one HAS to use it. It does hold some power by virtue of having the majority of the gaming population as its user base, but no other storefront has even tried. The only one that has any value over steam is GOG, the rest are objectively worse.
I’m still not 100% trusting that. Any time a dev comes up with a new feature like this one, they might forget to implement a check if the game is privated (or do the check and mess up properly hiding it).
Exactly. This is like someone I knew who was a CSR blowing off steam at difficult customers by hitting mute and cussing them out. Like you realize that mechanisms fail all the time, right? This dude wouldn’t entertain the idea that a mute button could fail. I tried.
I did that when I worked customer support. The only way I could retain the little bit of sanity I had left. But to be honest, we were so understaffed that even if I slipped, they wouldn’t have fired me. There was one guy who was so angry with a customer that he wrote their number down, and then over his break called the customer with his private phone to argue with them. Still didn’t get fired, lol.
Lol holy shit. I’m sure it’s a very frustrating job at times. This guy was a parent and needed his job. I don’t think they would’ve had all that much trouble replacing him
I worked briefly as a CSR and during training they made a point of telling us that people had been fired because of doing exactly that when the mute button failed. That was over a decade ago, but I wouldn’t expect increased reliability today.
More recently, a friend who is a CSR told me that their software mute buttons only prevent the audio from going to the customer, but it’s still recorded and can be grounds for termination if the call was audited. I introduced her to a microphone with a physical mute button but made sure she knew that it could also fail (or most likely, that she might be using a different connected mic, in case the hardware mute would do nothing).
Office conferencing software also has a really bad record with their software mutes. I’ve had experiences with Teams, Zoom, and Webex where I’ve clicked mute, but wasn’t muted.
The mute button should be thought of as a feature for the person on the other line / the other people on the call - you’re reducing the noise so the focus can be on the conversation - not as a feature for your privacy. You can treat Private Games similarly - it’s so you don’t subject your friends to the thought of you playing sexually themed games, not so you’re guaranteed to be saved the embarrassment of people knowing that you’re playing them.
I keep seeing people talking about sexual games on steam. I’ve yet to see one. I’m sure they exist … but how common are they? Do people actually play those? Even if I wanted to do so, I would instantly assume because it’s on steam there’s a chance my friends could see me playing it no matter my settings, and that would be a no-go. It’s just awkward.
It’d be like jerking off with the shades open because “well no one is supposed to be in my backyard”. Okay but what if some kids are there to get their ball or something? You have to assume unexpected things will happen in life.
steam
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.