steam

The new Riven remake is even better than Myst

cyan worlds, gaming, myst, PC Gaming, puzzle games, riven, steam, vr / Ryan Harris / June 30, 2024

A bridge to a mysterious island — Enlarge / The same gorgeous vistas return in the *Riven* remake.

Samuel Axon

A remake of Riven: The Sequel to Myst launched this week, made by the original game’s developers. It strikes a fascinating balance between re-creation and reinvention, and based on a couple of hours of playing it, it’s a resounding success.

Myst was the classic most people remembered fondly from the early CD-ROM era, but for me, its sequel, Riven, was the highlight. After that, the sequels declined in quality. The sophomore effort was the apex.

It was certainly more ambitious than Myst. Instead of a handful of tightly packed theme park worlds, it offered a singular, cohesive one that felt lived in and steeped in history in a way that Myst couldn’t quite match.

A worthy presentation

That was thanks to outstanding art direction but also to its iconic musical score.

For the most part, the remake nails both of those things. While the original game resembled the first Myst in that you had to click to scroll between static images to explore the game’s world, the new one follows the 2020 Myst remake (and 2000’s oft-forgotten realMyst) in giving the player full movement, akin to contemporary first-person puzzle games like Portal, The Witness, or The Talos Principle. Since it’s easy to re-create a lot of the original camera angles this way, it might have been cool if there had been an option to control the game as you did originally, but I can see why that wasn’t a priority.

Enlarge / The environments are just as atmospheric and detailed as they used to be.

Samuel Axon

It just so happens that today’s graphics hardware does an outstanding job of replicating previously static visuals in full 3D. (There’s even VR support, though I haven’t tried it yet.) And the music is just as good as it used to be.

There are only two downsides on the presentation front. First, I’ve heard that folks running on older machines may struggle to achieve satisfactory fidelity and performance. I played it on both an M1 Max MacBook Pro and a Windows 11 desktop with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. The MacBook Pro ran the game at maxed-out settings at the laptop’s native resolution at around 30 frames per second. The desktop did the same at 4K at 120 fps. But those are both high-end, recent-ish machines, so your mileage may vary.

Second, the full-motion video performances in the original game have been replaced with full 3D, video game-looking characters. It’s a necessary concession, but I feel some of the character was lost. They did a pretty good job matching the motions of the original videos, though.

The original’s FMV performances have been replaced by respectable but still video game-ish 3D models.

Samuel Axon
The fictional animals fare a bit better visually.

Samuel Axon

The new Riven remake is even better than Myst Read More »

$the-math-on-unplayed-steam-“shame”-is-way-off—and-no-cause-for-guilt$

The math on unplayed Steam “shame” is way off—and no cause for guilt

gaming, PC Gaming, steam, steam backlog, steam gauge, steam sale, Unplayed games / Ryan Harris / June 25, 2024

Steam Backlog Simulator 2024 —

It’s fun to speculate, but sales and library quirks make it impossible to know.

Kevin Purdy – Jun 25, 2024 6: 06 pm UTC

Person holding a Steam Deck and playing PowerWash Simulator — Enlarge / Blast away all the guilt you want in *PowerWash Simulator*, but there’s no need to feel dirty in the real world about your backlog.

Getty Images

Gaming news site PCGamesN has a web tool, SteamIDFinder, that can do a neat trick. If you buy PC games on Steam and have your user profile set to make your gaming details public, you can enter your numeric user ID into it and see a bunch of stats. One set of stats is dedicated to the total value of the games listed as unplayed; you can share this page as an image linking to your “Pile of Shame,” which includes the total “Value” of your Steam collection and unplayed games.

Example findings from SteamIDFinder, from someone who likely has hundreds of games from Humble Bundles and other deals in their library.

SteamIDFinder

Using data from what it claims are the roughly 10 percent of 73 million Steam accounts in its database set to Public, PCGamesN extrapolates $1.9 billion in unplayed games, multiplies it by 10, and casually suggests that there are $19 billion in unplayed games hanging around. That is “more than the gross national product of Nicaragua, Niger, Chad, or Mauritius,” the site notes.

That is a very loose “$19 billion”

“Multiply by 10” is already a pretty soft science, but the numbers are worth digging into further. For starters, SteamIDFinder is using the current sale price of every game in your unplayed library, as confirmed by looking at a half-dozen “Pile of Shame” profiles. An informal poll of Ars Technica co-workers and friends with notable Steam libraries suggests that games purchased at full price make up a tiny fraction of the games in our backlogs. Games acquired through package deals, like the Humble Bundle, or during one of Steam’s annual or one-time sales, are a big part of most people’s Steam catalogs, I’d reckon.

Step 1 to seeing your unplayed collection: Click the three-vertical-bar icon next to your Steam library to filter, choose “Games,” then “Group by Collection” …

Andrew Cunningham
… And pick “Unplayed” as a Play State filter.

Andrew Cunningham

Then there’s what counts as “Unplayed.” Clicking on the filtering tool next to my Steam library and choosing “Unplayed” suggests that I have 54 titles out of 173 total that I have never cracked open. My own manual count of my library is closer to 45. Steam and I disagree on whether I’ve launched and played Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (I definitely did and was definitely overwhelmed), Mountain, and SteamWorld Dig. And Steam is definitely not counting games that you buy through Steam, mod in some way, and then launch directly through a Windows executable. I’m certain I’ve played some TIE Fighter: Total Conversion, just not through Valve’s channels. One Ars editor played Half-Life 2 multiple times from 2004–2007, but Steam says they’ve never played it, because it didn’t start counting gameplay hours until March 2009.

Even if they’re not dedicated tools, Steam libraries sometimes end up with little bits of game that you didn’t ask for and might never play, like Half-Life Deathmatch: Source. I have quite a few Star Wars games that I never intend to launch, because they were part of a bundle that got me Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast for cheaper than either game cost on its own.

What “shame” really looks like

Curious as to what people’s backlogs look like, I asked friends and co-workers to run their own numbers after checking them for errors and oddities. Here’s the Ars list:

Kevin Purdy: 173 games, 45 unplayed (26 percent)
Lee Hutchinson: 361 games, 109 unplayed (30 percent)
Benj Edwards: 404 games, 148 unplayed (36.6 percent)
Andrew Cunningham: 172 games, 79 unplayed (46 percent)

Friends who did a check ended up at 25 percent, 40 percent, and 52 percent. So nobody I could easily poll had fewer than 25 percent of their games unplayed, and those with higher numbers tended to have bought into bundles, sales, add-ons, and other entry generators. And nobody thought their dollar value total made any sense at all, given the full-price math.

Back in 2014, Kyle Orland went deep on Steam statistics. Among games released since Steam started tracking hour counts in March 2009, 26 percent had never been played at that point, while another 19 percent had only been played for an hour or less. That’s roughly 45 percent of games having been played for an essentially token amount of time.

There is a much larger point to argue here, too: You do not have to feel “shame” about giving too much money to people making games, especially smaller games, if you do not want to. This applies to even broader understandings of “Unplayed,” like checking out an intro level or two. Sometimes playing a game for a little bit and deciding it’s not something you want to put dozens more hours into is worth it, whether or not you go for the refund.

If you’ve looked up your own stats and feel surprised, you can keep your unplayed games as a dedicated collection in Steam, and it might inspire you to check out the most intriguing left-behinds. Or, like me, filter that list further by the games that are Steam Deck Verified and bring them on your next trip.

You can usually make additional money more easily than additional life. Nobody is going to inherit your Steam library (probably), so it’s not really worth anything anyway. Play what interests you when you have the time, and if your unplayed count helps you stave off your worst sale impulse buys or rediscover lost gems, so be it. There are neat tricks, but there is no real math—and no real shame.

The math on unplayed Steam “shame” is way off—and no cause for guilt Read More »

After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo

death, estate, gaming, inheritance, steam, vaslve, will / Blake Jones / May 24, 2024

Pushing digital daisies —

So much for your descendants posthumously clearing out that massive backlog…

Kyle Orland – May 24, 2024 4: 15 pm UTC

But... but I was just about to check out <em>Tacoma</em>.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GettyImages-485865905-800×533.jpg”></img><figcaption>
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With Valve’s Steam gaming platform approaching the US drinking age this year, more and more aging PC gamers may be considering what will happen to their vast digital game libraries after they die. Unfortunately, legally, your collection of hundreds of backlogged games will likely pass into the ether along with you someday.

The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament. “Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable” the response reads. “Steam Support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.”

This isn’t the first time someone has asked this basic estate planning question, of course. Last year, a Steam forum user quoted a similar response from Steam support as saying, “Your account is yours and yours alone. Now you can share it with family members, but you cannot give it away.”

Potential loopholes

As a practical matter, Steam would have little way of knowing if you wrote down your Steam username and password and left instructions for your estate to give that information to your descendants. When it comes to legal ownership of that account, though, the Steam Subscriber Agreement seems relatively clear.

“You may not reveal, share, or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve,” the agreement reads, in part. “You may… not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement… or as otherwise specifically permitted by Valve.”

Eagle-eyed readers might notice a potential loophole, though, in the clauses regarding account transfers that are “specifically permitted by Valve.” Steam forum users have suggested in the past that Valve “wouldn’t block this change of ownership” via a will if a user or their estate specifically requests it (Valve has not responded to a request for comment).

Donating all those 3DS and Wii U games to someone else might be difficult for Jirard “The Completionist” Khalil.

There also might be a partial, physical workaround for Steam users who bequeath an actual computer with downloaded titles installed. In a 2013 Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal article, author Claudine Wong writes that “digital content is transferable to a deceased user’s survivors if legal copies of that content are located on physical devices, such as iPods or Kindle e-readers.” But if that descendant wanted to download those games to a different device or reinstall them in the case of a hard drive failure, they’d legally be out of luck.

Beyond personal estate planning, the inability to transfer digital game licenses has some implications for video game preservation work as well. Last year, Jirard “The Completionist” Khalil spent nearly $20,000 to purchase and download every digital 3DS and Wii U game while they were still available. And while Khalil said he intends to donate the physical machines (and their downloads) to the Video Game History Foundation, subscriber agreements mean the charity may have trouble taking legal ownership of those digital games and accounts.

“There is no reasonable, legal path for the preservation of digital-born video games,” VGHF’s then co-director Kelsey Lewin told Ars last year. “Limiting library access only to physical games might have worked 20 years ago, but we no longer live in a world where all games are sold on physical media, and we haven’t for a long time.”

After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo Read More »

Sony backs down, won’t enforce PSN accounts for Helldivers 2 PC players on Steam

co-op shooters, gaming, helldivers 2, PlayStation Network, PSN, Sony, sony playstation network, squad shooters, steam / Ari B / May 6, 2024

Purge the stain of this failure with the peroxide of victory —

What will Sony do next for an audience that likes its games but not its network?

Kevin Purdy – Updated May 6, 2024 1: 33 pm UTC

Helldivers 2 player aiming a laser reticule into a massive explosion. — Enlarge / Aiming a single rifle sight into an earth-moving explosion feels like some kind of metaphor for the *Helldivers 2* delayed PSN requirement saga.

PlayStation/Arrowhead

Helldivers 2 PC players can continue doing their part for Super Earth, sans Sony logins.

Sony’s plan for its surprise hit co-op squad shooter—now the most successful launch in Sony’s nascent PC catalog—Helldivers 2, was to make its players sign in with PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts before it launched in early February, even if they purchased the game through the Steam store.

Sony and developer Arrowhead didn’t enforce PSN logins during its frenetic launch and then announced late last week that PSN accounts would soon be mandatory. Many players did not like that at all, seeing in it a sudden desire by Sony to capitalize on its unexpected smash hit. Some were not eager to engage with a network that had a notable hack in its history, others were concerned about countries where PSN was not offered, and many didn’t take Sony at its word that this was about griefing, banning, and other moderation. Because of the uneven availability of Steam and PSN, Helldivers 2 was delisted in 177 countries on Steam over the weekend as Steam worked through refund requests.

The pushback made an impression, and now Sony has announced that account linking “will not be moving forward.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night addressed to Helldivers fans, the official PlayStation account wrote that the publisher had “heard your feedback” and was “still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable.”

“Feedback,” in this case, likely included a long weekend of both PlayStation and Arrowhead hearing from a Helldivers fanbase that had previously been relatively sanguine and cohesive, at least for an online multiplayer shooter. Steam reviews of Helldivers 2 took a sad but predictable plummet downward, the game’s subreddit pivoted from cosigned enthusiasm to protest, and lots of people tied to the game spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to address the surge of negative social media.

Johan Pilestedt, CEO of Arrowhead Games Studio, after facetiously asking if now was the moment “to tweet ‘What? You guys don’t have phones?'”, posted on X early Sunday that his firm was “talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries.” Responding to a reply that asked why he or his firm were “acting all blameless,” Pilestedt was candid. “I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this – it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn’t talk about it enough,” Pilestedt wrote.

He added, ‘We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.” Asked why, if known for 6 months, the game was sold to countries without PSN available, he responded, “We do not handle selling the game.”

It will certainly be interesting to see what Sony does next with its success beyond consoles. Helldivers 2 is by far its most successful PC launch to date, and its seventh highest-grossing game overall. There’s a market there for the right kinds of games, but how Sony cultivates that market, and whether they’ll welcome Sony as anything beyond a publisher on Steam, remains to be seen.

The developer of Ghost of Tsushima, arriving soon on PC, made sure to note Friday on X/Twitter that a PSN account was only required for the multiplayer mode of the game, not the single-player adventure.

This post was update at 10: 41 a.m. to note prior international delistings, and Sony’s clarification about PSN requirements for an upcoming game.

Sony backs down, won’t enforce PSN accounts for Helldivers 2 PC players on Steam Read More »

Sony demands PSN accounts for Helldivers 2 PC players, and it’s not going well

gaming, helldivers 2, PlayStation, PlayStation Network, psn hack, Sony, sony playstation, sony playstation network, steam / Blake Jones / May 4, 2024

What fresh Helldivers is this —

A surprise hit, a network with brutal baggage, and the Steam profit paradox.

Kevin Purdy – May 3, 2024 10: 17 pm UTC

Helldivers 2 player posing in winter armor — Enlarge / This gear is from the upcoming “Polar Patriots” Premium Warbond in *Helldivers 2*. It’s an upcoming change the developer and publisher likely wish was getting more attention of late.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

There’s a lot of stories about the modern PC gaming industry balled up inside one recent “update” to Helldivers 2.

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Thursday night that current players of the runaway hit co-op shooter will have to connect their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account starting on May 30, with a hard deadline of June 4. New players will be required to connect the two starting Monday, May 6.

Officially, this is happening because of the “safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games.” Account linking allows Sony to ban abusive players, and also gives banned players the right to appeal. Sony writes that it would have done this at launch, but “Due to technical issues … we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire.”

“We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of,” Sony writes in the update. The Helldivers community on Reddit is flush with dissenting posts today, and Steam reviews of the game have taken a marked turn since the announcement.

Oh, right, that PlayStation Network

It’s the combination of “safety and security” and “Sony” that make this more than just the typical grousing about game launchers, cross-play, or other user/password demands. The PlayStation Network was fully and famously hacked in April 2011, with 77 million users’ names, addresses, emails, birthdays, passwords, and logins compromised. Sony Online Entertainment also suffered a separate attack while PSN was down, exposing millions more accounts and thousands of credit card numbers. PSN came partially back online 26 days later, then fully online two weeks later, with a complimentary year of identity protection and Welcome Back packages for subscribers. Less than a month later, other aspects of Sony were hacked by LulzSec.

Sony was fined nearly $400,000 in the UK for the hack in 2013, which regulators said could have been prevented by updating software and taking precautions. Sony agreed to pay up to $17.5 million in a US class-action settlement in 2014, along with some providing free games and other benefits in 2015.

Those with a long enough memory of computers, security, and Sony might also recall the Sony rootkit debacle, which, while nearly 20 years old now, was such a notably bad and bizarre thing that it stuck around.

An online game people want less online

Helldivers 2 was not supposed to be this big a game. Sony was still cautiously trodding into PC games after years of treating its exclusive and first-party games as console leverage. Helldivers 2 was a sequel to a game that, while well-regarded, didn’t land as a smash hit.

Within one day of its launch, Helldivers 2 was Sony’s most successful PC launch, and it wasn’t even close. Within two weeks, it passed the all-time concurrent player counts of Starfield, Destiny 2, landing at 18 on the SteamDB charts. It helped that it launched on the same day as the PS5 version, was cheaper than most AAA titles, and arrived with no (uncommonly) egregious performance or crash issues. There were, as noted by Sony, early server issues, largely due to demand. Whatever the case, it was Sony’s seventh highest-grossing game as of May 1.

That success hurts the optics of Sony’s demand, months after it had an unexpected hit, that players must now register with its far-from-trusted network to keep playing. A non-mega-budgeted game, a trial-balloon sequel, hits big, and Sony, finding its footing in this new realm, doesn’t want to leave said opportunity as a one-time Steam purchase.

Two blimps jousting overhead

Helldivers 2 is explicitly multiplayer, and the action takes place on Sony’s servers. But Steam is the means by which Helldivers 2 reaches its players, fosters engagement, and, of course, tries to entice them into DLC, further sequels, and perhaps other Sony PC games—so long as they’re on also on Steam.

There are no rock-solid numbers on Steam’s PC gaming market share, but we know that the biggest competitor, Epic Games, is losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year giving away games just to get some kind of foothold. Steam’s market position, recommendation whims, and broad 30 percent revenue cut have left many companies searching for ways to disentangle their futures from a single platform. Sony just happens to be the one making the hard ask, for reasons that don’t entirely sound obvious months later, and with a network that has some tough Google search results.

It’s worth noting that PSN is not necessarily available in all countries where Steam sells games. We’ve reached out to Sony to ask about this and for further comment on their PSN requirement, and will update this post if we hear back.

Sony demands PSN accounts for Helldivers 2 PC players, and it’s not going well Read More »

No more refunds after 100 hours: Steam closes Early Access playtime loophole

advanced access, early access, gaming, PC Gaming, refunds, steam, steam advanced access, steam early access, steam refunds / Ryan Harris / April 25, 2024

Steam refund policy —

It’s largely a win against scammers, but a simple policy doesn’t fit all games.

Kevin Purdy – Apr 24, 2024 5: 38 pm UTC

Getty Images

“Early Access” was once a novel, quirky thing, giving a select set of Steam PC games a way to involve enthusiastic fans in pre-alpha-level play-testing and feedback. Now loads of games launch in various forms of Early Access, in a wide variety of readiness. It’s been a boon for games like Baldur’s Gate 3, which came a long way across years of Early Access.

Early Access, and the “Advanced Access” provided for complete games by major publishers for “Deluxe Editions” and the like, has also been a boon to freeloaders. Craven types could play a game for hours and hours, then demand a refund within the standard two hours of play, 14 days after the purchase window of the game’s “official” release. Steam-maker Valve has noticed and, as of Tuesday night, updated its refund policy.

“Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period,” reads the update. In other words: Playtime is playtime now, so if you’ve played more than two hours of a game in any state, you don’t get a refund. That closes at least one way that people could, with time-crunched effort, play and enjoy games for free in either Early or Advanced access.

Not that it’s a complete win for either developers or cautious buyers. Steam refunds are a tricky matter for developers, especially those smaller in size. The two-hour playtime window can give people a decent idea of how a game runs, what it’s like, and whether it’s clicking with a certain player. But some games enter Early Access in very rough shape or have features that later get dropped. Some games pack their most appealing elements into the early game. And some indie games are intended to provide an experience that’s much closer to two hours than 40 or 80, still giving players a faceless way to grab back some cash.

Steam’s approach to refunds remains an imperfect science, full of quirky stories and examples of why it exists. But it has moved toward a more unified and at least understandable policy now.

No more refunds after 100 hours: Steam closes Early Access playtime loophole Read More »

Slay the Spire 2, Vampire Survivors meets Contra, and other “Triple-i” games

darkest dungeon, dinolords, early access, gaming, Indie games, palworld, Prince of Persia, slay the spire, steam, steam early access, the rogue prince of persia, triple-i, triple-i initiative, vampire survivors / Ryan Harris / April 10, 2024

Triple-i Initiative —

More than 30 games in 45 minutes, and a lot of them look wishlist-able.

Kevin Purdy – Apr 10, 2024 11: 12 pm UTC

Bloody battle scene from the game Norland — Enlarge / *Norland* is a game that communicates its intent well through screenshots.

Hooded Horse

The Triple-i initiative is a gaming showcase that gets it, and is also in on the joke.

The thing Triple-i gets is that most gaming “showcases” are full of corporate fluff, go on way too long, and are often anchored around a couple huge titles. Triple-i’s first event on Wednesday delivered 30-plus game trailers and teases within 45 minutes, and there was a consistent intrigue to all of them. There were some big names with some bigger studios loosely attached, and the definition of what is “triple-i” is quite vague, maybe intentionally. But there were a lot of games worth noting, especially on PC.

What kind of games? Triple-i’s website notes the announcement “may contain traces of rogue-lites.” At a breakpoint in the showcase, the omniscient text narrator notes there are “Only a few more rogue-lites (promise).” Triple-i was stuffed full of rogue-lites, roguelikes, survival, city-builders, deckbuilders, Hades-likes, 16-bit-esque platformers, Vampire Survivors and its progeny, turn-based tacticals, and then a car that sometimes has legs. There are strong trends in indie and indie-adjacent gaming, but also some real surprises.

The inaugural Triple-I Initiative showcase.

If you want a whole bunch of Steam wishlist ideas, go ahead and watch the whole thing. But here is a cheat sheet of the newest titles and notable updates I found most intriguing.

<em>Slay the Spire 2</em> has the same looks and card-based play of the original, but new mechanics are in store.” height=”1080″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/sts2_2.jpg” width=”1920″></img><figcaption>
<p><em>Slay the Spire 2</em> has the same looks and card-based play of the original, but new mechanics are in store.</p>
<p>MegaCrit</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p><a href= — *Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns DLC* trailer.

<em>Dinolords</em>.” height=”1080″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/dinolords2.jpg” width=”1920″></img><figcaption>
<p><em>Dinolords</em>.</p>
<p>Ghost Ship Publishing</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p><a href= — *Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns DLC* trailer.

Slay the Spire 2, Vampire Survivors meets Contra, and other “Triple-i” games Read More »

Devs left with tough choices as Warner Bros. ends all Adult Swim Games downloads

adult swim games, gaming, steam, warner bros. discovery, Warner Brothers, wb discovery / Ryan Harris / March 10, 2024

Game preservation is important —

Some can relist games on Steam or consoles—but without reviews or fan content.

Kevin Purdy – Mar 8, 2024 6: 23 pm UTC

A plucky, likable creature under the looming threat of consumption by an interconnected menacing force of nature in one of Adult Swim Games' titles. — Enlarge / A plucky, likable creature under the looming threat of consumption by an interconnected menacing force of nature in one of Adult Swim Games’ titles.

Adult Swim Games

Warner Bros. Discovery seems set to remove at least 16 games from its Adult Swim Games subsidiary from games markets and has told the affected developers that it will not transfer the games back to them nor offer other means of selling them in the future.

Ars reported Wednesday on the plight of Small Radios Big Televisions, a Steam and PlayStation game made by a solo developer who received a notice from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that it was “retiring” his game within 60 days.

In a comment on that Ars post, Matt Kain, developer of Adult Swim Games’ Fist Puncher, noted that they had received the same “retired” notice from WBD. “When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators,” Kain wrote.

Kain noted that his game’s players “have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost.” In addition, Kickstarter backers of the game will lose access to a game in which they have a cameo, and his firm, Team2Bit, would likely face backlash if they re-released the game under their own account, forcing a second purchase from some customers.

“It seems like more and more the videogame industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about videogames. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form,” Kain wrote on Ars early Thursday. Kain also posted about the predicament on the Fist Puncher discussion page on Steam.

Adult Swim Games has not published a game since 2020. Its parent company has said it was due for a “tough” quarter, and perhaps year, as its tentpole game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to find a sustaining audience. On a broader level, WBD has been conspicuously culling titles and removing access to its content, sometimes in pursuit of tax advantages. The firm has killed and hidden away films including Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, removed canceled shows and well-regarded animation and kids’ content, and, just this week, closed down gaming and anime studio Rooster Teeth.

Ars has reached out to Warner Bros. Discovery for comment and has yet to hear back.

“It takes literally three clicks”

Polygon received confirmation from the developer of the rhythm/bullet-hell game Soundodger+ that they received a delisting notice. Michael Molinari told Polygon that he, too, requested his game be transferred—and “explained clearly that it takes literally three clicks to transfer ownership to me”—but a WBD representative rejected his request.

Molinari said the rep cited “logistical and resource constraints” and “the limited capacity of our team,” referring to Adult Swim Games. Molinari said he was told he could republish his game—but without any of its community content, reviews, patch notes, or other accrued content. Molinari also said he was required to remove all mention of Adult Swim Games from any future release, which struck him as erasing due credit.

Steam lists 16 games (and individual soundtrack purchases) in an Adult Swim Games bundle on Steam. The Delisted Games site lists 18 Steam games still published by Adult Swim Games, six games now under different publishers, and two mobile games.

From 2011, it feels important to mention.

Adult Swim Games

Devs left with tough choices as Warner Bros. ends all Adult Swim Games downloads Read More »

palworld’s-pokemon-pastiche-is-xbox-game-pass’-biggest-ever-3rd-party-game-launch

Palworld’s Pokémon pastiche is Xbox Game Pass’ biggest-ever 3rd-party game launch

Game Pass, gaming, palworld, steam, xbox / Ari B / February 1, 2024

everyone’s pal —

To compare, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have sold over 23 million copies each.

Andrew Cunningham – Feb 1, 2024 5: 43 pm UTC

Palworld’s Pokémon pastiche is Xbox Game Pass’ biggest-ever 3rd-party game launch — Pocketpair

The unexpected success of Palworld continues to be one of the biggest gaming stories of 2024 so far, as developer Pocketpair says the game’s sales and Xbox downloads have exceeded 19 million, with 12 million in sales on Steam and 7 million players on Xbox. Microsoft has also announced that the game has been the biggest third-party launch in the Game Pass service’s history, as well as the most-played third-party title on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.

These numbers continue a remarkable run for the indie-developed Pokémon-survival-crafting-game pastiche, which sold 5 million copies in its first weekend as a Steam Early Access title and had sold 8 million Steam copies as of a week ago. There are signs that the game’s sales are slowing down—it’s currently Steam’s #2 top-selling game after over a week in the #1 spot. But its active player count on Steam remains several hundred thousand players higher than Counter-Strike 2, the next most-played game on the platform.

Sometimes described (both admiringly and disparagingly) as “Pokémon with guns,” Palworld‘s unexpected success has driven some Internet outrage cycles about the possibility that it may have used AI-generated monster designs and allegations that its designers copied or modified some of the 3D character models from the actual Pokémon series to create some of the game’s more familiar-looking monsters.

The latter allegations circulated widely enough that The Pokémon Company issued a statement last week, saying it would “investigate” an unnamed game that matches Palworld‘s description; as of this writing, no actual legal action has been taken against Palworld or Pocketpair. Third-party modders who have tried to put actual Pokémon creatures into Palworld have apparently gotten some cease-and-desist letters, though.

Regardless, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. Aside from the Pals that look like Pokémon, the game’s progression and crafting mechanics owe a lot to games like ARK: Survival Evolved, and the actual monster-catching mechanics have a more-than-passing resemblance to Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

If you count the Xbox Game Pass numbers as “sales,” Palworld‘s combined numbers are on track to overtake those of the two main-series Pokémon titles on the Nintendo Switch, Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet. Nintendo says these games have sold 26.02 and 23.23 million copies, respectively, making them the sixth and seventh bestselling titles in the entire Switch library.

Nintendo doesn’t break out sales figures for each title individually, counting each sale of Sword or Shield toward the same total—this makes sense because they’re the same basic game with slightly different Pokémon, though it does mean there’s some double-dipping going on for fans who buy both versions of a given game for themselves. You have to look at proxies like Amazon reviews to get a sense of which individual version has sold better—Violet currently has more reviews than Scarlet, while Sword has more reviews than Shield.

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Valve now allows the “vast majority” of AI-powered games on Steam

AI, gaming, steam, vale / Ryan Harris / January 10, 2024

Open the flood gates —

New reporting system will enforce “guardrails” for “live-generated” AI content.

Kyle Orland – Jan 10, 2024 4: 44 pm UTC

Can you tell which of these seemingly identical bits of Steam iconography were generated using AI (trick question, it's none of them). — Can you tell which of these seemingly identical bits of Steam iconography were generated using AI (trick question, it’s none of them).

Aurich Lawson

Last summer, Valve told Ars Technica that it was worried about potential legal issues surrounding games made with the assistance of AI models trained on copyrighted works and that it was “working through how to integrate [AI] into our already-existing review policies.” Today, the company is rolling out the results of that months-long review, announcing a new set of developer policies that it says “will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use [AI tools].”

Developers that use AI-powered tools “in the development [or] execution of your game” will now be allowed to put their games on Steam so long as they disclose that usage in the standard Content Survey when submitting to Steam. Such AI integration will be separated into categories of “pre-generated” content that is “created with the help of AI tools during development” (e.g., using DALL-E for in-game images) and “live-generated” content that is “created with the help of AI tools while the game is running” (e.g., using Nvidia’s AI-powered NPC technology).

Those disclosures will be shared on the Steam store pages for these games, which should help players who want to avoid certain types of AI content. But disclosure will not be sufficient for games that use live-generated AI for “Adult Only Sexual Content,” which Valve says it is “unable to release… right now.”

Put up the guardrails

For pre-generated AI content, Valve warns that developers still have to ensure that their games “will not include illegal or infringing content.” But that promise only extends to the “output of AI-generated content” and doesn’t address the copyright status of content used by the training models themselves. The status of those training models was a primary concern for Valve last summer when the company cited the “legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models,” but such concerns don’t even merit a mention in today’s new policies.

For live-generated content, on the other hand, Valve is requiring developers “to tell us what kind of guardrails you’re putting on your AI to ensure it’s not generating illegal content.” Such guardrails should hopefully prevent situations like that faced by AI Dungeon, which in 2021 drew controversy for using an OpenAI model that could be used to generate sexual content featuring children in the game. Valve says a new “in-game overlay” will allow players to submit reports if they run into that kind of inappropriate AI-generated content in Steam games.

Over the last year or so, many game developers have started to embrace a variety of AI tools in the creation of everything from background art and NPC dialogue to motion capture and voice generation. But some developers have taken a hardline stance against anything that could supplant the role of humans in game making. “We are extremely against the idea that anything creative could or should take [the] place of skilled specialists, to which we mean ourselves,” Digital Extremes Creative Director Rebecca Ford told the CBC last year.

In September, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney responded to reports of a ChatGPT-powered game being banned from Steam by explicitly welcoming such games on the Epic Games Store. “We don’t ban games for using new technologies,” Sweeney wrote on social media.

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Cobalt Core is a tight, funny roguelike deck-builder deserving of many runs

cobalt core, deck-builder, gaming, Nintendo Switch, PC games, roguelike deck-builder, roguelikes, steam / Ryan Harris / January 4, 2024

Gravitational pull —

It’s got style, dialogue, and even a plot on top of procedural card battling.

Kevin Purdy – Jan 3, 2024 10: 45 pm UTC

Scene from Cobalt Core game — Enlarge / These symbols might not mean anything to you now. But give it a few runs, and you might lose a few minutes strategizing this ship’s ideal next turn, based on this image alone.

Brace Yourself Games

Games come and go through my Steam and Nintendo Switch libraries: a twitchy, grim action epic, then a metaphysical puzzle-platformer, and maybe a boomer shooter or turn-based tactical along the way. I try hard not to get stuck in one style or mindset—both for my enjoyment and my writing.

But there is always one type of game that is installed and ready to go for the next trip or idle couch moment: a roguelite deck-builder. Cobalt Core is the latest game in that slot, and it’s on Steam for Windows (and definitely Steam Deck) and Switch. It’s the most fun I’ve had in this particular obsession since Monster Train. Cobalt Core stretches into other genres, like perfect-knowledge turn-based tactics and space battle, but it’s cards and randomness down to its electric-blue center.

Launch trailer for Cobalt Core.

A few years ago, I didn’t know what a “roguelike deck-builder” was or what either of those compound phrases meant. Then, one day, there was a sale on Slay the Spire. That 2019 game refined the fusion of two game mechanics: constant failure against randomized encounters (a la Rogue, but with a “lite” gradual progression) and the refining of a deck of combat-minded cards (as in Magic: The Gathering, Dominion, and Netrunner). You attack and defend against increasingly tough enemies with your cards, you gain and upgrade and ditch cards as you go, you lose, and then you get slightly better tools on your next do-over.

Done well, roguelike deck-builders are a potent mix of luck, immediate and long-term strategy, and the slow dopamine drip of chained-together victories. I’ve lost entire work months to them, cumulatively. They should come with a warning label.

Cobalt Core has all those addictive elements plus a few more things to do with your cards. For one, there is space jockey positioning. You move your ship left and right against your opponents, lining up beam emitters and missiles, targeting weak points, and dodging. You do this with perfect Into the Breach-like knowledge of the opposing ship’s actions: it’s going to fire from this bay for 2 damage, use this bit to upgrade shields, and so on. This leaves you with the decisions of when to take hits versus dodging, where to launch drone cannons, whether to attack now or wait for better cards next hand.

A mid-battle scene, with your ship (on bottom) in the midst of delivering a hull-smashing attack, just before the enemy’s multiple red beams rain down.

Brace Yourself Games
You pick your battles in Cobalt Core, and also choose repair shops, random happenings, and mid-level bosses.

Brace Yourself Games
The cards you’re offered depend on which cremates you picked for this run, and each has a distinct discipline.

Brace Yourself Games
The cover art for Cobalt Core, which makes you really not want to get your new friends blown up.

Brace Yourself Games

On top of working those elements into fine shape, Cobalt Core cleverly embraces them in its plot and theming. Your ship is made up of quirky characters, each of whom adds their cards with unique play styles to your deck. You fight ship after ship, encounter celestial oddities, warp from sector to sector, then fight the titular object. When you beat it, you … do something, in space and time, it seems, then start over with imperfect memories of prior loops. Each win or notable loss unlocks new crew, cards, and memories, enough of which might explain what exactly is going on in this heady quantum plot.

What’s largely drawn me in is how neatly the game’s battles and runs fit into a casual gaming schedule. A single battle is usually less than five minutes, a sector of fights maybe 15–20, and a couple sectors plus a boss fight 30–40 minutes, though the decisions and early sections get faster as you learn them. You can save and exit anytime, even mid-battle, and it’s a fast-loading game. On the Switch or Steam Deck—for which this game is Verified and a real battery-saver—it makes for a generous couch, waiting room, or travel experience.

I’ve still got a lot to unlock in Cobalt Core after 10 hours of play, and could easily see myself hitting the 100-plus I put into Slay the Spire and Monster Train (or at least the 50 I threw into Inkbound or SteamWorld Quest). It helps that there’s much more singular personality and style in Cobalt Core than other procedural card battlers. And humor, too, lots of it, accompanied by appealing 16-bit-esque graphics, making the grind for new cards and esoteric achievements feel far less grinding.

It’s also impressive how much character-building the game pulls off in service of pixel portraits that never move but frequently react, quip, and express their quantum confusion. I typically feel nothing for different characters in these games. But I’ve got a soft spot for the gunner Riggs, and feel bad when I skip him for, say, movement or hacking options.

My major complaint about Cobalt Core, this deep into its clutches, is that its soundtrack is catchy. This is normally a positive, but given how regularly I’m dropping in for a round or two or 10, I find my mental synth deck replaying the melody lines from a few different tracks. I can’t hum a single note from any of the orchestral-minded backings of my prior deck-builder obsessions, but these tunes are burrowing deep inside.

Cobalt Core is currently on sale (on both platforms), and its base price is $20–$25. If you know you like picking cards, beating bosses, and a long, meticulous triumph, I have to imagine it’s a great value. Maybe too much of one.

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Update to SteamVR Suggests Valve is Still Working on a Standalone Headset

News, standalone vr, Standalone VR Headset, steam, steam vr, valve, valve deckard, valve standalone vr, Valve SteamVR, valve vr / Blake Jones / September 22, 2023

Valve is a notorious black box when it comes to basically everything. A recent update to Steam client for VR though suggests the company is still working behind the scenes on what appears to be its long-awaited standalone VR headset.

As revealed by tech analyst and consummate Steam data miner Brad Lynch, a recent update to Steam’s client included a number of VR-specific strings related to batteries, which seems to support the idea that Valve is currently readying the platform for some sort of standalone VR headset.

The update also included mention of new UI elements, icons, and animations added to the Steam Client for VR—something it probably wouldn’t do for a competitor’s headset, like Meta’s soon-to-release Quest 3 standalone.

Meanwhile, South Korean’s National Radio Research Agency (RAA) recently certified a “low-power wireless device” from Valve, also spotted by Lynch. It’s still too early to say whether the device in question is actually a standalone VR headset—the radio certification only mentions it uses 5 GHz wireless—however headsets like Meta Quest 2 are equally as vague when it comes to RAA listings.

Granted, Valve hasn’t come out and said it’s developing a standalone VR headset yet, although with mounting competition from Apple and Meta, 2024 may be the year we finally see the ‘Index of standalone VR’ come to the forefront. Valve Index has widely been regarded as the ‘best fit’ PC VR headset, owing to its excellent quality, performance, and comfort—something we called “the enthusiast’s choice” in our full review of the headset back when it launched in 2019.

But it hasn’t been entirely mum either. In early 2022, Valve chief Gabe Newell called its handheld gaming PC platform Steam Deck “a steppingstone” to standalone VR hardware, nothing that Steam Deck represented “battery-capable, high-performance horsepower that eventually you could use in VR applications as well.”

– – — – –

While a capable, high-end standalone VR headset from Valve is certainly something to salivate over, a few big questions remain: What will happen when Valve opens Steam up to standalone VR content? How would the largely Meta-heavy ecosystem react as Steam becomes a new outlet for VR games? And what if Valve’s headset is instead capable of playing some subsection of standard PC VR content? We don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but with Valve’s continued interest in VR, we’re still pretty hopeful to find out.

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