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Fans around the world to play Half-Life 2 this Saturday
This Saturday the 28,000 members of this Steam group are planning to play Half-Life 2 together.
The group hopes that the massive play session will shoot Half-Life 2 up the Steam most-played list and let Valve know how many people are still waiting for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Valve certainly know this already, and probably receive dozens of emails but the group hopes to deliver the message in a more appreciative way.
“Instead of focusing efforts in a negative and disrespectful way, we have decided to gain Valve’s attention by delivering a basic message: Your oldest and longest running fanbase would like better communication,” they say on the Steam group page.
Event is set to kick off at 7PM GMT / 11AM PST this Saturday.
Watch out for the current Steam Daily deals!
List of things to watch out for is here, thanks to Vogel again – Steam Daily deals on 27.12.2011.
Is Valve turning into EA in terms of banning?
Interesting info was posted on reddit today, according to one of the users he got banned by Mike Blaszczak (Valve employee) on the official Steam Forums for a suggestion he made towards his behavior on the forums, here’s the full story:
I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. Someone posted a thread in the Steam forums asking for help with an issue related to a game they had bought, asking for a response from Valve.
As it happens, and as everyone knows, Valve only responds to these problems in the form of support tickets.
Nevertheless, Valve employee MikeBlaszczak responded with absolutely no information, but moved the thread to the General Steam Forum.. without even mentioning that the proper way to handle the problem is a support ticket.
When the thread got moved, I mentioned that the only way it would get taken care of was through a support ticket. And, I did make a remark about how the Valve employee should have mentioned as much.
What I didn’t expect was that I would get my post deleted and an instant -2 point infraction from Mr. Ballsack for stating such a thing.
I admit, I was a bit annoyed after that, and I made another reply pretty much restating what I had said before.. that the only way they will find help is if they submit a ticket. And I did restate my surprise that the official valve employee response (which is quite a rare thing on those forums) failed to mention the actual helpful solution.
Bam.
Banned.
Am I right or wrong in wanting to stand up for this? I think this is the very definition of unfair treatment no matter how you look at it, but at this point it seems like I have no choice but to let it go.
What would you do?
Well if the story is real, that’s some bullshit behavior right there. Anyway, stay tuned for more giveaways today on our Steam group!
Watch out for the current Steam Daily deals!
List of things to watch out for is here, thanks to Vogel again – Steam Daily deals on 26.12.2011.
Steam gets support for tradable discount coupons
According to a new FAQ, Steam now supports coupons. These tickets will sit in your inventory, and can be traded. Each coupon can be used on one game, but it doesn’t look as though they’ll operate as general Steam gift vouchers. The FAQ mentions that each one can be tailored to offer discounts on a certain selection of games. When you buy a game with a relevant coupon in your inventory, Steam will automatically apply the coupon discount. From there, you can choose to remove the coupon and save it for later.
This will allow developers and publishers on Steam to offer discounts on specific chunks of their catalogue to specific customers. It’s easy to imagine coupons being offered as prizes, operating as rewards for loyal customers or high ranking community members. THQ, for example, could offer a bonus 20% off coupon to customers who have bought three games in their catalogue. The FAQ says that it’ll be possible to redeem coupons on already discounted games “unless specified otherwise,” which could lead to some spectacular savings when used in combination with one of Steam’s mega-sales.
Valve haven’t officially announced the coupon system yet. The FAQ is the only indication that they’ve been added, but the timing is good. It arrives ahead of the upcoming Steam Holiday Sale.
Source: PC Gamer
Gabe Newell: Piracy is a “Non-issue” to Valve; Providing better Services Will Result in More Sales
In a recent interview with TCS, Gabe Newell explained why Valve is so successful. Recently we posted how Ubisoft were abandoning the PC market due to piracy, and imposing heavy DRM on their customers, but according to Newell that’s not really the right way to go about it.
He said that there is a general misconception about piracy, and it’s not really the high cost that forces people to pirate. It’s about the delivery service and how convenient it is to people with purchasing power:
“In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said.
“For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
Ubisoft said that, “95% of people will pirate our game.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say without releasing any sort of data and they have also cancelled Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for the PC.
Newell explained a lot more as to how they were providing better services and creating a sense of brand loyalty. He mentioned that piracy is basically a “Non-issue” for Valve.
“Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company.”
“Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe,” he revealed.
If only Ubisoft and others could learn a thing or two from this man, the gaming industry would be in a much better position.
Source: Gamingbolt
Steam database compromised, what now?
Check this e-mail from Gabe:
Edit: It turns out it’s probably fake but we’ll see:
Steam got hacked pretty bad
Here’s the official statement in plain text:
Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.
Also I just cancelled my credit card associated with my Steam account and changed my password, Sony gave away free games after their hackings. Is Valve going to do this?
Valve’s official statement (just popped up on Steam):
Happy Birthday to Gabe Newell!
After having dropped out of Harvard University Newell spent thirteen years working for Microsoft Corporation, ultimately becoming a "Microsoft Millionaire". Newell has described himself as "producer on the first three releases of Windows". Inspired by Michael Abrash, who left Microsoft to work on the computer game Quake at id Software, Newell and another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to found Valve in 1996. He and Harrington used their money to fund Valve through the development of Half-Life.
During production on Half-Life 2, he spent several months focusing on the Steam project.
In 2007, Newell openly expressed his displeasure over developing his software for gaming consoles, particularly the PlayStation 3. In regard to the system, Newell was once quoted as claiming that developing processes for the console in general was "a waste of everybody’s time" and "a disaster on many levels … I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it’." Nevertheless, at E3 in 2010, Newell appeared on stage at Sony’s keynote; while acknowledging his past outspoken comments on console development, he discussed the open nature of Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform, and announced Portal 2 for the console, remarking that with Steamworks support it would be the best version for any console. Newell has also criticized the Xbox Live service, referring to it as "a train wreck".
In December 2010, Forbes named Newell as "A Name You Should Know" mainly for his work on Steam having partnerships with multiple major developers.
His favorite games are Super Mario 64, Doom, and Star Trek played on a Burroughs mainframe computer. Doom convinced him that video games were the future of entertainment, and Super Mario 64 convinced him video games were art.
Also today is Gabe’s 49 birthday and he decided to send out DOTA 2 keys. Cake is a lie…
Source: Wikipedia
Latest on Sat, 04:44 pm
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: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2521400
: http://login.ign.com/prime/promos/rochard/?display=notAuth
: new indie gala bundle later this week at www.indiegala.com/
: money money money
: can anyone explain what's the friggin' deal with Age of Empires III, a 5 years old game being sold as new @40$/€ on almost every DD platform?
: Facebook is archiving the old Facebook group of ours, here's new one https://www.facebook.com/pages/SteamUnpoweredeu/260963810615450?v=wall
: 
: Checkout Crytek's GFACE, a new social platform for gaming http://www.gface.com/closed-beta
: 
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jnk8n3WrXU
: new humble bundle live
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMWW92UhpZs&feature=player_embedded
: 
: http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/epic4chan/15893009078/1/tumblr_lxkmq8V94p1r9t8yb
: http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?tta
: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/oxzje/official_steam_app_for_android_and_ios/c3l34d2
: there's still hope, first ratification of ACTA in polish parliament and even if it passes european parliament has to vote on it then
: yep, another protest today in Warsaw, and next one during National Stadium opening on Sunday
: So PL actually did sign ACTA? :( Is it right that those guy said sth like "i'll not be extorted by those inhabitants"? o.O
: the next indie royale bundle is live (serious sam indie bundle)
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: 
: http://mygaming.co.za/news/news/31078-valve-developing-steam-for-linux.html
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