Tag Archives: Steam

Valve Bans Blockchain Games and NFTs on Steam

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Valve has made an update to its “What You Shouldn’t Publish on Steam” list. That list includes things that one would hope game creators would know better than to publish in a game. It makes sense for Valve to spell things out very clearly, in order to avoid problems.

A new addition to the list disallows “Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs”. I expect that some people will not be happy about this, especially those who built games involving one of both of those things.

For example, The Verge reported that this change was pointed out by SpacePirate_io, on Twitter, who appears to be the developer of a game called Age of Rust.

One of the tweets in SpacePirate_io’s thread says: “Steam’s point of view is that items have value and they don’t allow items that can have real-world value on their platform. While I respect their choice, I fundamentally believe that NFTs and blockchain games are the future. It’s why I started this journey with all of you”.

According to The Verge, there have been some situations involving NFTs that have been sketchy. One example is the CS:GO skins and Team Fortress 2 hats. The Verge also notes the Evolved Apes saga, “where a developer sold NFTs with the promise that they’d be included in a fighting game but then seemingly took the money and ran.”

Where can developers of games that include blockchain or NFTs go? The answer appears to be Epic Games.

Epic Games CEO & Founder Tim Sweeney tweeted: “Epic Games Store will welcome games that make use of blockchain tech provided they follow the relevant laws, disclose their terms, and are age-rated by an appropriate group. Though Epic’s not using crypto in our games, we welcome innovation in the areas of technology and finance.”

In my opinion, welcoming games that use blockchain technology and NFTs could be a big gamble for Epic Games. That decision may cause people who play video games, and who dislike blockchain based games, to select games that don’t have that stuff in them. I’ve seen some tweets in which people encourage others to avoid buying games from companies that welcome the types of games that Valve has removed from Steam.

Steam Released a New Steam Chat

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Steam announced that they have released the new Steam chat features available to all users. Those features have been in beta since June 12, 2018. The new features include an all-new friends list, chat, and voice chat.

The friends list has become more organized and flexible. It includes the following:

Favorites: Keep your favorite friends, groups, and chats right at the top of your Friends List, making it easy to check in on what you care about most.

Grouped by Game: You can see which friends are playing a specific game. You can also see if the friends who are playing the same game are grouped in a party.

Rich Presence: Games can now show details in the Friends list. It can show where friends are at in a game, if they are involved in a match or just starting out, whether they’re available for matchmaking, what party they’re playing with, or whatever the game developer chooses.

Group Chats: The new Steam Chat has a section called Group Chats. You can read the name of the chat to get an idea about what is likely being discussed, and join in.

Multi-Media Friendly: Every chat on Steam is now multi-media friendly. Getting your point across is easier than ever, now that everyone can see your GIFs inline rather than a list of links. Paste a picture from the clipboard and upload it directly to the chat.

Add Friends to a Chat: You can bring a friend into a conversation. Drag and Drop your friends from the Friend’s List to send them an invite.

Save Your Group: You can save your group chat with a title and avatar so you can chat or play together later. This makes it easy to pick up where you left off.

Add Channels: Within any group, create a new persistent channel any time, either for text or voice. It’s just one click to create a channel, one click to join, and one click to leave.

Invite with a Link: You can create and send links that will invite people directly into your group chat.

The new Steam Chat also includes improved voice capabilities. At a glance, you can see if your friends are talking in a voice channel and join them.

The voice chat was rewritten with a new WebRTC-based backend. It uses high quality Opus encoding, voice traffic is encrypted, and all traffic is sent through Steam servers rather than directly to your peers. Steam says this keeps your IP address private, which masks your physical location and also prevents network attacks.

Steam Store will Contain “Something That You Hate”

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Valve posted a blog titled “Who Gets To Be On The Steam Store?” The short answer appears to be: everyone. Steam has decided to opt-out of making decisions about whether or not a specific game should be removed from the Steam Store – except for things they “decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.”

In the blog post, Valve says: “The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content.” Instead, Valve says it’s about “whether or not the Store contains games with an entire range of controversial topics.” Those topics include: politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on.”

So what does this mean? It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist. Unless you don’t have any opinions, that’s guaranteed to happen. But you’re also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.

Valve has provided reasons why they made this decision. They point out that Valve is not a small company, and that it isn’t homogeneous. The people at Valve don’t all agree on what deserves to be in the Store. Valve says that what is considered acceptable varies around the world, both socially and legally.

In short, Valve has decided that the way to solve this dilemma is to …do almost nothing at all. Valve feels it should not be deciding what belongs on the Steam Store. They feel they shouldn’t be choosing for players what content they can or cannot buy. Valve also doesn’t feel it should be choosing what kind of content a game developer is allowed to create.

Valve has concluded that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, “except for things we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.” At the same time, they want players to understand that the games Valve allows on the Steam Store “will not be a reflection of Valve’s values”.

In addition, Valve is going to provide players with tools that will allow them to override Valve’s game recommendation algorithms and hide games containing topics that the player is not interested in. The options will also allow parents to control what kinds of games their kids see.

Steam Spy is Shutting Down

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Steam Spy announced that it will be shutting down. This decision comes as a result of Steam’s new Profile Privacy Settings. The result is that Steam Spy will no longer be able to obtain the information it needs to keep going.

Ars Techinca reported that Steam Spy was a sales-estimate service, born from an Ars data project. The service launched in 2015, nearly a year to the day that Ars senior gaming editor Kyle Orland published his extensive, data-sampling “Steam Gauge” feature. That feature measured game ownership and playtime estimates based on the huge sampling size afforded by Steam’s default privacy settings.

Valve recently updated Steam’s Profile Privacy Settings. The update expanded upon user’s Profile Privacy Settings page, and is intended to give user’s more control over the privacy of their Steam account.

You can now select who can view your profile’s “game details”, which includes the list of games you have purchased or whitelisted, along with achievements and playtime. This setting also controls whether you’re seen as “in-game” and the title of the game you are playing.

Additionally, regardless of which setting you choose for your profile’s game details, you now have the option to keep your total game playtime private.

The Steam Spy Twitter account (which is run by Sergey Galyonkin) posted a tweet in response to Steam’s Profile Privacy Settings update. The tweet said “Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default. Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default and won’t be able to operate anymore.”

A follow up tweet provide some clarification. “To reiterate – it’s not because of the new privacy settings. It’s because Steam just made everyone’s gaming library hidden by default (this wasn’t in their blog post).”

Steam is No Longer Supporting Bitcoin

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Steam announced that it will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method. This news is going to affect players who were purchasing Steam games with Bitcoin, but doesn’t appear to change things for those using other methods of payment.

Steam says it will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method on their platform due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin. In the announcement, Steam points out: “Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.”

This creates a problem for customers trying to purchase games with Bitcoin. When checking out on Steam, a customer will transfer x amount of Bitcoin for the cost of the game, plus y amount of Bitcoin to cover the transaction fee charged by the Bitcoin network. The value of Bitcoin is only guaranteed for a certain period of time, so if the transaction doesn’t complete within that window of time, then the amount of Bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change. The amount it can change has been increasing recently to a point where it can be significantly different.

Steam points out that when that situation happens, they either have to refund original payment to the user to or ask the user to transfer more funds to cover the remaining balance. The user gets hit with a Bitcoin transaction fee either way. As a result, Steam says it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option.

Valve will Replace Greenlight with Steam Direct

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Valve announced that they will replace Steam Greenlight with Steam Direct. The reason for the change is to better serve their goal of making customers happy. Steam decided it needed to move away from a small group of people at Valve trying to predict which games would appeal to different groups of customers.

Steam Greenlight was launched because Valve felt it was a useful stepping stone for moving to a more direct distribution system. Greenlight is a community-focused program that uses a voting system to determine which games are published on Steam. Games that got enough community support are “greenlit”.

Valve is replacing Greenlight with a new direct sign-up system for developers to put their games on Steam. It is called Steam Direct.

This new path, which we’re calling “Steam Direct”, is targeted for Spring 2017 and will replace Steam Greenlight. We will ask new developers to complete a set of digital paperwork, personal or company verification, and tax documents similar to the process of applying for a bank account. Once set up, developers will pay a recoupable application fee for each new title they wish to distribute, which is intended to decrease the noise in the submission pipeline.”

At the moment, Valve is still debating what that application fee should be. They talked to several developers and studios about an appropriate fee, and they got a range of responses from $100 to $5,000. Valve wants more feedback before it settles on what the fee will be.

The existence of a fee might dissuade people from trying to get low-quality games onto Steam. That being said, if the fee is too high, it might make it difficult or impossible for small companies, or independent game creators, from being able to afford to get their game on Steam.

LEGO Worlds Now Available on Steam

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LEGO Worlds logoIt has been said that Minecraft is similar to LEGO. People use small bricks (either physical or the pixilated kind) to build structures and landscapes. That comparison just got a bit more apt with the release of LEGO Worlds. It’s now available on Steam as an Early Access Game.

Steam is offering Early Access right now to the LEGO Worlds game. In some ways, this feels like a beta test. Players can access some of the game now, but it is not complete. The developers plan to add more features as time goes on. They will evaluate a “release candidate” sometime in early 2016 and are seeking feedback from the community about different aspects of the game.

The current Early Access version of the game includes the following features: procedurally generated worlds, terraforming and building tools, discoveries and unlocks, ridable creatures and vehicles, and a day/night cycle.

Players will be able to freely manipulate and dynamically populate LEGO models. There is a brick-by-brick editor tool that players can use as well as some prefabricated LEGO structures. Players can modify the terrain by using a multi-tool. It will be possible to get into the game and play with virtual LEGO sets that match the real-life versions. These sets will be taken from both Classic and current LEGO themes.

The LEGO website has some further information. They note that LEGO Worlds is safe for children to play, but that some of the other content on Steam might not be. As such, they encourage parents to view the parental controls on Steam before granting their children Early Access to LEGO Worlds.