Yes, that’s right. It’s that time of year again. If you’ve been a good girl or boy, then Santa Gabe will slip down your chimney and deposit some really rather decent prices for PC games. The Steam Holiday Sale has begun, with the usual shennanigans of voting for deals, daily offers, flash sales, and astonishingly cheap publisher packs.

Mirror’s Edge for £3.24, Arkham City for £4.99, every Valve game in one pack for an utterly mad £25… You know the deal.

And an odd Easter Egg in there – for utterly bemusing reasons we’ve still not been told, the entirely finished, already in multiple languages Scribblenauts Unlimited, is at 33% off with an EU release date of the 15th February next year. Bonkers.

The Valve shudders as gears lock into position, a thin jet of Steam erupts from the machine, scalding a penguin’s bum. My latest collection of poetry inspired by climate change, the guffaw-inducingly titled Global Warning>, is out in February. In other news, Valve have made the Steam For Linux beta available for everyone. Development news is found on the community site and the beta now supports 39 games, listed here. Even though I don’t use Linux myself, I have now decided that I’m giving it to everyone for Christmas.

(more…)

Crikey – Kotaku have just reported that The War Z has just been removed from Steam. There was word earlier today that Valve were looking into forum moderation issues regarding the game, but people were hopeful they’d dig somewhat deeper into the real issues that had been raised, regarding the apparent false advertising of features on its store page. Those have been changed since, but for whatever reason the game is now not available to purchase. It is listed instead as “Uninitialized”. If you already own it, however, your Steam copy will still run.

We’ve just received a statement from Valve about the game, explaining that it’s been removed because they consider it was issued prematurely, and they’re offering refunds to unhappy customers. You can read the statement below.

(more…)

Do you ever feel lost? As though each and every moment is just a blind struggle in some abyssal darkness? I know I do – especially when the power’s out or I forget how to open my eyes. But also, you know, metaphorically and stuff. And, as ever, in the game. Fortunately, Steam’s now offering a solution to one of those issues – and, given Valve’s unending quest to make its download/social network/movie-making/productivity software service do everything>, the others can’t be far behind. But yes, Steam Guides. They’re in beta, and – if you’re feeling so inclined – you can go make one of your very own right now.

(more…)

Do you fancy yourself a go-getter? Someone with big, earth-shaking ideas and the wide-eyed capacity to realize them? Well then, go save/destroy the world, you mad genius, you. But for everyone else, Valve’s now offering the opportunity to salvage your savaged entrepreneurial dreams. By selling hats, naturally. Yes, the real-money-based Steam Community Market‘s now open for business, and Team Fortress 2′s its all-too-willing test bed.

(more…)

Important post-weekend question. While speaking to Kotaku at the VGAs this weekend, did Gabe Newell:

A) Confirm that Half Life 3 will be a Wii U exclusive.

B) Reveal Valve’s plans to release a Steam Box that will replace desktop PCs entirely and force us all to sit on a couch for the rest of our lives.

C) Request ‘a little off the top’, mistakenly believing that he had walked into a particularly loud and very well-sponsored barber’s.

There’s only one way to find out – follow me down the Monday morning rabbit hole.

(more…)

It’s too late in the day for anything but an explanatory headline. I was going to go with ‘Steam Punk’ because ‘indie development = punk’ but then I realised that was utter nonsense so I decided not to. Here is the news, straight from the IGF organisers: “All IGF Main Competition finalists for this year’s event will receive the opportunity to accept a distribution agreement for Steam.” The IGF hasn’t made distribution agreements on behalf of developers though, with the final decision as to how the finalists reach the public still in the hands of the entrants. Instead, this route appears to be a means of avoiding arcane normal submission procedures or Greenlight.

(more…)

After a successful Greenlighting, Air Buccaneers (which apparently they’re spelling “AirBuccaneers”, but I’m not) arrives on Steam today. The game that has rather won Jim’s heart, and the attention of RPS’s readers, is officially there for even the likes of you to play. The multiplayer airship FPSing is a historically accurate recreation of the floating battles between the Bucanneers and the Vikings to dominate the Ancient North.

Should you play tonight, the developers will be about on the servers, and will be flinging Steam codes into the chat for people to grab, to get the full version of the game. And once Jim has escaped the mad hell of moving house, he’ll be organising some games for RPS readers in the near future.

That is according to the site that scrapes details of upcoming titles from the Steam Content Description Record Database. Open Steamworks allows you to view updates to the Steam appids, gathering the information of games yet to appear, and it’s just uncovered classic RPG Planescape: Torment within Steam’s digital maw. (more…)

I’d forgotten Steam’s Big Picture Mode wasn’t properly out already. Does anyone still run a non-beta version of Steam? Why would you? Madness in your head? But it was, and now it is no longer. The version of the software that runs comfortably on your TV, and operates nicely with a controller, is now there for all. And to celebrate, a lot of actually really very good games are very, very cheap until the 10th. Games that are appropriate for sitting on your sofa, a 360 controller in hand, while attractive locals fan you with palm fronds.

(more…)