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10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
Long gone are the days of Steam Greenlight, where users could launch games into the highly lucrative Steam marketplace through sheer vote brigading. Gone too are the wild west days that followed in those glorious glasnost days of literally anyone being able to publish literally anything – as long as Gabe got his $100. It’s current year and Steam has embraced its mainstream status by doing what reputable platforms are supposed to do: adopting a Heckler’s veto editorial line guided by the illuminated coastal principles of NPR. So here it is, our memorial page to the most hilariously offensive games in Steam’s storied history. If you want to play any…
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The video games about nothing Seinfeld is famously a show about nothing, but indie developers continue to find plenty of something to work with.
Why you pay what you pay for video games We can often feel short-changed when it comes to buying video games, especially in the UK. So what exactly determines what you pay?
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The psychology behind your backlog of unplayed games As games become ever cheaper and ever longer, we must necessarily accrue ever bigger piles of unplayed titles. Feel bad about it? Psychology can explain.
The ‘gaming backlog’ is a concept almost every gamer will be familiar with – a huge pile (possibly digital) of games that you have amassed, but have no hope of ever playing your way through. 2015 saw a slew of releases that each required dozens if not hundreds of hours of play time, leading to the question of how on Earth we’re supposed to play all these bloody enormous games. At the same time, games are cheaper than they’ve ever been thanks to cutthroat competition among internet retailers, digital distribution, Steam sales and the enormous secondhand market. It’s no wonder that we are developing a bit of a backlog. But…
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The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
It’s time to admit that Ocarina of Time sucks Ocarina of Time is responsible for many awful trends that, like a bad cold, games have been unable to shake. Here's the case against Ocarina of Time.
The dank, sometimes hilarious, world of Steam shovelware Stolen asset valor!
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Gabe Newell reveals he was an undercover World of Warcraft gold farmer Just for research, you understand.
Gabe Newell got the idea for the Steam Workshop during his time working as a gold farmer in World of Warcraft. Speaking to Edge Magazine, Valve’s CEO said he managed to bring in a decent hourly wage – and worked out a concept that would help some people make significant amounts of money. “We were always used to thinking about games as entertainment experiences, but then we started thinking of them as productivity platforms,” says Newell. “As a sort of proof-of-concept, I decided to be a World of Warcraft gold farmer for a while. I was making $20 an hour farming gold. I was making what was a spectacular wage for…
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The sex is the saddest thing about GTA V (NSFW) Grand Theft Auto V is an incredible, incredible video game. So why is its sex so terrible?
Woke at the GDC The Game Developers Conference is now about how games are to blame for every social ill — real or imagined.
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Bored? These are the funniest indie games on Steam We have the video evidence.
It’s a rare treat when developers dare to enter the competitive video games market with something completely absurd – and their creations are actually entertaining. I would say it’s even the stuff of legends. Who on planet Earth hasn’t seen the endlessly hilarious Goat Simulator at this point? So buckle up and let’s get to it, and drop your own favorites in the comments (we might add it to our list). The Long Drive Watch this video on YouTube At first sight, this is just another indie driving simulator with a few exploring and crafting elements. But in practice, The Long Drive is a post-ironic ode to the tidal wave…
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The largest ever MMO battle—3000 players!—was an accident Someone forgot to pay rent, resulting in a space battle involving over 3000 players and $300k worth of the game's currency gone forever.
17 years ago today, a wild Pikachu virus appeared! W32.Pokey.Worm was not very effective...
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Train Simulator now costs almost $10,000 with all DLCs You can buy a brand new car for less.
Meet Dovetail Games’ Train Simulator – currently the most expensive video game on Steam. The asking price isn’t much: a mere $30 depending on the region you’re in. It’s what comes after, if you want to get a good set of trains to play with, that makes the game run up a whopping total. (This is not counting gambling programs or being a whale in a mobile game like Clash of Clans, of course, where you can throw away millions if you’d like) As calculated on Steam itself per November 3, 2019, you’re going to need a grand total of $9,765.47 to own every single piece of downloadable content (DLC)…
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Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
When nightmare mode isn’t enough: 5 ways to add difficulty to your game If you haven't sent a controller hurtling through the air straight into the middle of your flat screen TV, you aren't being challenged enough.
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Steam’s worst rated games of all time We decided to scrape the bottom of the Steam marketplace barrel and write about what we find.
Since Steam ended their Greenlight policy and opened the floodgates to anyone with a free copy of Unity and a bit of spare time, Steam’s mountains of crappy games have been the subject of some derision. It’s probably not a plot to send more traffic to curators and reviewers – … but it could be. Instead of shilling games you should buy right now, we decided to scrape the bottom of the barrel – some of the worst rated games around – and write about what we find. Most of these are not Tommy Wiseau tier games, entertainment so bad it actually becomes good again. So ask yourself why you…
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Leave me alone: speaking out against the rise of co-op The once separate worlds of singleplayer and multiplayer are merging – but there's nothing wrong with playing alone.
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How to make a good sports game Sports games are unique in that they have to accurately recreate real life. Here are the parts of a sports game that can make or break it.
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Steam game offers 41% discount and now people want the devs dead And the harassment campaign is backfiring big time, with Heartbeat shooting up the bestseller charts after support from prominent anti-bully activist.
The transvestite community’s campaign against indie RPG Heartbeat has reached a fever pitch after learning that Chumbosoft is discounting their game by 41% on Steam, with some now even calling for the developers to be executed. The number 41 is interpreted as a reference to the attempted suicide rate among men who suffer from a mental illness that causes delusions about turning into women. One sicko with pronouns in they’s bio tweeted, “the devs of this game should not have beating hearts.” (archive) Not really one to support violence but damn if someone doxxes the guy who made #HEARTBEATRPG and their body ends up in a ditch somewhere i wouldn’t…
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Why is hating games a prerequisite for video game criticism? Smug elitists take issue with the idea of video games as art.
10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
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Steam Link Anywhere offers new innovations to gaming Valve is introducing a new “game streaming everywhere” service with Steam.
Valve has long since dominated the PC gaming landscape with its online retail service, Steam, but its dominance has allowed the company to collect a bunch of money and get real lazy about innovating its own service. With Steam now facing steep competition against the likes of Discord, Epic Games, and Twitch, Valve is introducing a new “game streaming everywhere” service with Steam. Reported earlier this week on PC Gamer, Valve has revealed plans ahead of GDC to launch two potentially major new features for Steam that are now in “early beta.” Steam Link Anywhere enables streamed gaming to any compatible device, and Steam Networking Sockets APIs, which grant developers…
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A history of griefing: gamers who ruin your day for kicks Sometimes it’s purely for fun, sometimes it’s to make a point, and sometimes it’s even to make a profit.
Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
5 plot twists that would have made great games even better When done right, a twist can be truly spectacular. Here's what they should have done...
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‘Rape Day’ video game tests Steam content policy “A game where you can rape and murder during a zombie apocalypse.”
A new video game promises to allow players to fulfill their darkest rapist fantasies in a zombie apocalypse scenario. The game is called Rape Day, and it is set to launch on Valve’s Steam gaming platform. The description is plain and straightforward: “Rape Day is a game where you can rape and murder during a zombie apocalypse.” According to the listing’s “about” section, Rape Day puts players in the role of a “serial rapist during the zombie apocalypse,” and encourages the player to “verbally harass, kill, and rape women as you choose to progress the story.” “It’s a dangerous world with no laws. The zombies enjoy eating the flesh off…
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Man builds functional glowing IRL life bar A vertical tube filled with water that lights up different colors and changes its water level based on your in-game health and mana.
Youtuber banned after hilarious murder—of female video game character Viral RDR2 video of feminist pixels being fed to alligator pixels was too much for YouTube in latest fiasco.
5 most garbage Ghostbusters tie-in products (of garbage) And yes, you’re a misogynist if you don’t like the tie ins.
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The dank, sometimes hilarious, world of Steam shovelware Stolen asset valor!
In the olden days, if you wanted to buy a new computer game you had to haul your ass down to an Electronics Boutique or a Babbage’s or whatever and take a box home. That obviously was less than ideal, so we’re thankful that Gaben and the boys at Valve came up with Steam. Steam’s great! But it also has a few pretty big problems. Because the company doesn’t make any pretensions towards quality control, certainly less than salubrious publishers use Steam as a place to dump cheaply-made games to make a quick buck. The dark and grimy world of these games is our latest culvert in our explorations of…
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Teen secretly spent $20k of mom’s savings on Twitch celebs, and the streaming giant thinks that’s just fine Twitch ignored the distraught mother and then silently deleted the evidence—or so they thought.
Does ‘role-playing game’ mean what it did a decade ago? We interview veteran RPG designers Chris Avellone and George Ziets about where the RPG is and where it's going.
