Support NeoGAF

[QFNS]

Seems like reactionary platitudes, honestly.

Yeah this is them implementing some CYA. No chance this actually results in any meaningful change to their business model or move toward an actual legitimate marketplace.

The idea of a marketplace like G2A where you can sell the keys for games you own is a decent idea, but in practice it requires buy in from so many different parties that it is probably impossible outside of someone like Valve/GoG/etc implementing it themselves. And I'm sure developers and publishers don't want that sort of a marketplace emerging either, as new sales would plummet as a result. There might be a way to deal with that by cutting in the devs/pubs somehow, but again the buy-in from so many parties makes the idea infeasible. The all-digital future (and present) definitely has some limitations to go along with its upsides.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

hmmm.... I wonder if G2A will actually become a reputable place to buy from then? =/

I still doubt it.

 

[Glitchesarecool]

Game key reseller G2A moves to legitimise its business

lol ok g2a

Their reputation is completely ruined. They would have to pull a 180 from their current setup for anyone to even pay attention to them.

These supposed changes are just talk at the moment. Let's see something happen first.

 

[sadblob]

[Rumour] Rocket League may be getting a crate system (a la TF2/CSGO).

The timing...

Could this be the prelude to f2p Rocket League?

 

[morningbus]

The timing...

Could this be the prelude to f2p Rocket League?

If so, they could finally make some money on the PS4.

 

[jshackles]

Yeah this is them implementing some CYA. No chance this actually results in any meaningful change to their business model or move toward an actual legitimate marketplace.

The idea of a marketplace like G2A where you can sell the keys for games you own is a decent idea, but in practice it requires buy in from so many different parties that it is probably impossible outside of someone like Valve/GoG/etc implementing it themselves. And I'm sure developers and publishers don't want that sort of a marketplace emerging either, as new sales would plummet as a result. There might be a way to deal with that by cutting in the devs/pubs somehow, but again the buy-in from so many parties makes the idea infeasible. The all-digital future (and present) definitely has some limitations to go along with its upsides.

One thing that would help tremendously would be for Valve to offer an API (even a private one, if need be) that would give places like G2A the ability to validate an existing Steam key without redeeming it. This could then be integrated into the seller's "listing" page so that the seller's key could be verified as legitimate for the game they're trying to sell. The API could then be checked again before the buyer checks out, ensuring that the seller didn't use the code themselves or sell it on a competing site. If it's not valid at the time of sale, no money would change hands.

This way you wouldn't be expected to pay for something silly like "G2A Shield!" (although with these scumbags, I'm sure they'd still try) and you would know the key was valid before checking out which I believe would greatly legitimize their marketplace.

It wouldn't get rid of the rampant credit card fraud that happens on those sites, but it would be a start. Although like you said, it would be considered a good amount of buy-in on Valve's part and publishers/developers might not like them going out of their way to help sites like this.

 

[Creamium]

Finished Inside, loved it. Everyone should play it for the finale alone, wtf man.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Should I buy Doom now? It being below $30 and today being payday seems like a sign.

It will either be now or Quakecon, just worried it won't end up being much fun as the demo was fun enough, but not sure if it gets a lot better as you progress.

 

[Jadax]

Finished Inside, loved it. Everyone should play it for the finale alone, wtf man.

tbf even Limbo's ending was pretty mindfuck - I liked it. I expect Inside to be more of the same, but done better.

 

[Glitchesarecool]

Should I buy Doom now? It being below $30 and today being payday seems like a sign.

It will either be now or Quakecon, just worried it won't end up being much fun as the demo was fun enough, but not sure if it gets a lot better as you progress.

From how people have talked about it and what I have seen, you will enjoy it all the way through.

 

[Tizoc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5AGFf_IOg
I need this game on Steam please.

 

[TheAutomator]

Should I buy Doom now? It being below $30 and today being payday seems like a sign.

It will either be now or Quakecon, just worried it won't end up being much fun as the demo was fun enough, but not sure if it gets a lot better as you progress.

It definitely gets better.

 

[Messiah]

Umineko is out now

 

[Arthea]

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/406550/header.jpg?t=1468013407[/IMG
[url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/406550]Umineko is out now[/url][/QUOTE]

yeah it is, and it's 23€
no day one discount either
*sigh

 

[Messiah]

yeah it is, and it's 23€
no day one discount either
*sigh

It's 10% off, just wasn't updated yet.

 

[Vazra]

yeah it is, and it's 23€
no day one discount either
*sigh

 

[kurahador]

Umineko is out now

Ah man what the hell? It's way more expensive than Higurashi.

 

[Messiah]

Ah man what the hell? It's way more expensive than Higurashi.

This is the first four chapters whereas Higurashi releases one chapter at a time.

 

[Vazra]

Ah man what the hell? It's way more expensive than Higurashi.

Its long as fuck tho and its 4 chapters instead of 1

 

[Pixieking]

So, got a question, regarding a game no longer available on Steam.

My wife loves Gemsweeper. Like, looooooooves it. And it worked on her current laptop when it was running Windows 8.1. Thing is, it doesn't work on Windows 10 - we've tried compatibility mode, we've tried running the .exe outside of Steam, we've tried admin mode. None of it works. Sometimes it'll say it's missing a steam.dll. Other times it won't work, but Steam does show her as in-game, and we have to close the gemsweeper.exe process through Task Manager.

I emailed the devs through their contact form on the website, but that was a couple of months ago now, and not had any word.

Any help? Pls. Pls pls pls.

 

[Danj]

So, got a question, regarding a game no longer available on Steam.

My wife loves Gemsweeper. Like, looooooooves it. And it worked on her current laptop when it was running Windows 8.1. Thing is, it doesn't work on Windows 10 - we've tried compatibility mode, we've tried running the .exe outside of Steam, we've tried admin mode. None of it works. Sometimes it'll say it's missing a steam.dll. Other times it won't work, but Steam does show her as in-game, and we have to close the gemsweeper.exe process through Task Manager.

I emailed the devs through their contact form on the website, but that was a couple of months ago now, and not had any word.

Any help? Pls. Pls pls pls.

It's presumably still in your library though, even if it's not on Steam any more? Have you considered taking a backup of the files, then deleting the local files and redownloading it?

 

[someguyinahat]

So, got a question, regarding a game no longer available on Steam.

My wife loves Gemsweeper. Like, looooooooves it. And it worked on her current laptop when it was running Windows 8.1. Thing is, it doesn't work on Windows 10 - we've tried compatibility mode, we've tried running the .exe outside of Steam, we've tried admin mode. None of it works. Sometimes it'll say it's missing a steam.dll. Other times it won't work, but Steam does show her as in-game, and we have to close the gemsweeper.exe process through Task Manager.

I emailed the devs through their contact form on the website, but that was a couple of months ago now, and not had any word.

Any help? Pls. Pls pls pls.

downgrade to windows 8?

 

[Pixieking]

It's presumably still in your library though, even if it's not on Steam any more? Have you considered taking a backup of the files, then deleting the local files and redownloading it?

Yeah, sort of - just did a simple delete local files/redownload, and it didn't help. Will try a more in-depth version if I have to. Maybe try and run it on my laptop, too - still Windows 10, but it might throw a different error.

downgrade to windows 8?

Ah, she's only recently got used to Windows 10, so that's not gonna fly. Plus, she uses it for work, so can't have it out of commission for any length of time.

 

[spindoctor]

Should I buy Doom now? It being below $30 and today being payday seems like a sign.

It will either be now or Quakecon, just worried it won't end up being much fun as the demo was fun enough, but not sure if it gets a lot better as you progress.

The full game is much more fun than the first level (which is the what the demo has). It's the best shooter since Wolfenstein a couple of years ago. Get it.

 

[Last Baron]

What's good on the Steam Controller aside from Rocket League?

 

[Pixieking]

What's good on the Steam Controller aside from Rocket League?

Dark Souls games. Dirt Rally. Ori and the Blind Forest. And based on how well Dark Souls run, I'd say any Third Person Shooter type game, so GTA V and the Tomb Raiders.

 

[pantsattack]

What's good on the Steam Controller aside from Rocket League?

I'm teaching myself the SC by playing System Shock 2. It has a fleshed out profile.

 

[Soulflarz]

Umineko is out now

welp
ffxi->griasa and root double since GAF guys gifted me those->umineko I guess

oh
and TMS in there too

 

[Anno]

What's good on the Steam Controller aside from Rocket League?

I enjoyed Dark Souls 3 and Momodora quite a bit with the controller. Moreso when I just gave Momodora the same control scheme as DS3 and instantly got over all control adaptations; that was honestly my most "wow" moment with the controller so far. It was even pretty decent in something like Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Corpekata]

Any games that don't require right analog for camera control are pretty good on steam controller. I love it on 2d games. The extra buttons on the paddles means you can assign some cool stuff like abilities that are 2 button presses (like X+A) to them.

Works well with some of the Final Fantasy ports that would assign their "cheats' like the fastforward to something like R1+X on a gamepad or just F1 on keyboard. Just assign F1 to the paddle.

 

[Anoregon]

edit: err woops, somehow ended up in wrong trhread!

 

[AHA-Lambda]

£17 for Umineko? Better than I expected

 

[QFNS]

One thing that would help tremendously would be for Valve to offer an API (even a private one, if need be) that would give places like G2A the ability to validate an existing Steam key without redeeming it. This could then be integrated into the seller's "listing" page so that the seller's key could be verified as legitimate for the game they're trying to sell. The API could then be checked again before the buyer checks out, ensuring that the seller didn't use the code themselves or sell it on a competing site. If it's not valid at the time of sale, no money would change hands.

This way you wouldn't be expected to pay for something silly like "G2A Shield!" (although with these scumbags, I'm sure they'd still try) and you would know the key was valid before checking out which I believe would greatly legitimize their marketplace.

It wouldn't get rid of the rampant credit card fraud that happens on those sites, but it would be a start. Although like you said, it would be considered a good amount of buy-in on Valve's part and publishers/developers might not like them going out of their way to help sites like this.

Sadly, I don't see any incentive for Valve (or any marketplace really) to add a system like this since it helps people bypass their marketplace and set up other competing markets. Too bad though, because it is a good idea, and would certainly help the fraud issue if a marketplace already existed. I suppose developers could create such a system that would let you validate your key against some kind of master list they have, but again, I don't see any incentive for them to do that or any chance every single developer ever would co-ordinate enough to make it standardized.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Was talking about this with jshackles earlier on IRC, but here's how I think Valve could help avoid people being defrauded on the secondary key market.

- Create a private, rate-limited API for resale platforms to verify key status.
- The API takes the following arguments: 1) an API key, 2) a steam key, 3) an app id, 4) optionally, a small number of 5-6 user ids.
- If the API key is not provided or invalid, the request is rejected. Multiple rejections and you get blocked.
- If the API key has been used by any unauthorized IP address, the request is rejected, so end users cannot use the API key and sites cannot have the end-user do it client side. Multiple rejections and you get blocked.
- Valve checks the status of the Steam key you provide.
- If it's an invalid steam key or the steam key does not match the app id, you get a {"status": "invalid"} response. If you submit more than <x> invalid requests a day, you are cut off, where <x> is very low. Get cut off a few times and you get blocked. So it is not viable to use this in parallel to scan the key space--also, requiring the app id verification makes it exponentially more difficult to bruteforce keys.
- If it's a valid steam key that matches the app id, you either get {"status": "redeemed"} or {"status": "unredeemed"} responses.
- If the status is redeemed, and you provided a user id that matches the user id that redeemed it, you get a {"redeemedby": userid} response. If you try to check more than, say, 10 unique user ids through this API per day, you are cut off. Get cut off multiple times and you get blocked.

This would:
a) Not have an excessive server burden
b) Not be a security risk
c) Give people peace of mind in secondary resale
d) Empower stores to investigate fraud cases effectively
e) Empower devs to investigate chargeback cases effectively
f) Empower Valve to track the secondary market more effectively.

And they already have a more burdensome version of this by letting you put in a key, see that it's already redeemed, and trigger the nonsense "who redeemed this" email. So actually, this would lower the resources they need to expend on that feature.

 

[derExperte]

Unravel and NfS will be added to the EA Access on Xbox next week. I assume Unravel will come to PC soon as well, meanwhile the NfS 10hrs trial has become available for everyone.

 

[jshackles]

Sadly, I don't see any incentive for Valve (or any marketplace really) to add a system like this since it helps people bypass their marketplace and set up other competing markets. Too bad though, because it is a good idea, and would certainly help the fraud issue if a marketplace already existed. I suppose developers could create such a system that would let you validate your key against some kind of master list they have, but again, I don't see any incentive for them to do that or any chance every single developer ever would co-ordinate enough to make it standardized.

One of the things I talked about with Valve employees at length when I was invited up is what they thought about the so called "second-hand" or key reselling market, although more specifically how it related to legitimate key reselling through sites like Amazon.com, Newegg, Gamestop, etc. I was interested in finding out if they thought Enhanced Steam's price comparison feature would have a huge negative impact on their own store.

While they're obviously not going to incorporate that feature into their own store, I thought their response was interesting. They said "If someone else is selling the same product, that's activated through Steam, for a lower price, then that gives us a starting off point to engage that developer or publisher in discussion as to why that is." They know it's happening, and in fact have provided the tools to make it happen by giving developers and publishers the ability to generate Steam keys. While I ultimately didn't agree with some of the feedback that came about as the result of that discussion (like the fact that your friend activity page won't show new games you've obtained on Steam unless they're purchased directly from Valve) I certainly admired and appreciated their thoughts on the subject.

As Stump said above, it would be possible to do this without a huge burden to themselves outside of the initial creation of the API as long as the proper precautions are put into place beforehand. The benefit to Valve is that it would ultimately reduce the amount of fraud that's happening on their platform, would increase customer satisfaction, and could have an impact on reducing the load on their support department.

 

[Nyteshade517]

Unravel and NfS will be added to the EA Access on Xbox next week. I assume Unravel will come to PC soon as well, meanwhile the NfS 10hrs trial has become available for everyone.

My guess would be Unravel would be added to Origin Access next week like on XB1 since all the versions came out at the same time...NFS probably won't be on Origin Access until later this year for PC since it got delayed

 

[Glitchesarecool]

Warframe major content update dropped today. Specters of the Rail is part two of the three part release schedule for Update 19. This introduces major reworks to the map system, void system, a new companion, and a UI overhaul, as well as some loot changes that should make things more streamlined and understandable for newer players. Full changelog here (It's a bigg'un).

I suspect we'll see the usual Steam ad when War Within drops though.

 

[Regginator]

The timing...

Could this be the prelude to f2p Rocket League?

Absolutely not. The sales still exceeds their expectations so they have literally nothing to gain by going f2p. If anything they'd probably have a lot of angry customers for having spent money on it. And I also don't expect something like CSGO, full priced + crates and keys, and whatever. At least, I hope Psyonix won't do that. I'm expecting a 1-on-1 trade with other players, but the items themselves can't be bought or sold for real life money.

 

[White Wolf]

Unravel and NfS will be added to the EA Access on Xbox next week. I assume Unravel will come to PC soon as well, meanwhile the NfS 10hrs trial has become available for everyone.

good news, i'm still waiting for battlefront to hit the vault and i think i'll buy a month or three then.

 

[Ludens]

Was talking about this with jshackles earlier on IRC, but here's how I think Valve could help avoid people being defrauded on the secondary key market.

- Create a private, rate-limited API for resale platforms to verify key status.
- The API takes the following arguments: 1) an API key, 2) a steam key, 3) an app id, 4) optionally, a small number of 5-6 user ids.
- If the API key is not provided or invalid, the request is rejected. Multiple rejections and you get blocked.
- If the API key has been used by any unauthorized IP address, the request is rejected, so end users cannot use the API key and sites cannot have the end-user do it client side. Multiple rejections and you get blocked.
- Valve checks the status of the Steam key you provide.
- If it's an invalid steam key or the steam key does not match the app id, you get a {"status": "invalid"} response. If you submit more than <x> invalid requests a day, you are cut off, where <x> is very low. Get cut off a few times and you get blocked. So it is not viable to use this in parallel to scan the key space--also, requiring the app id verification makes it exponentially more difficult to bruteforce keys.
- If it's a valid steam key that matches the app id, you either get {"status": "redeemed"} or {"status": "unredeemed"} responses.
- If the status is redeemed, and you provided a user id that matches the user id that redeemed it, you get a {"redeemedby": userid} response. If you try to check more than, say, 10 unique user ids through this API per day, you are cut off. Get cut off multiple times and you get blocked.

This would:
a) Not have an excessive server burden
b) Not be a security risk
c) Give people peace of mind in secondary resale
d) Empower stores to investigate fraud cases effectively
e) Empower devs to investigate chargeback cases effectively
f) Empower Valve to track the secondary market more effectively.

And they already have a more burdensome version of this by letting you put in a key, see that it's already redeemed, and trigger the nonsense "who redeemed this" email. So actually, this would lower the resources they need to expend on that feature.

I think the real problem with G2A is fraudolent keys purchased with stolen credit cards, not invalid keys.

 

[Kuroyume]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/399130/

Riiiiiighht

 

[L.O.R.D]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/399130/

Riiiiiighht

 

[jshackles]

I think the real problem with G2A is fraudolent keys purchased with stolen credit cards, not invalid keys.

G2A doesn't need Valve's help with fixing that, though. They just need to hold the seller's payments for 60-90 days before they're able to cash out of the system. Of course that would require an actual "fraud department" from G2A that would investigate buyer's claims but it's completely within the realm of possibility. For convenience, Valve already has a public API that you can feed a SteamID and it will tell you what games are owned by that account, as long as their profile is public.

But they won't do that because they actually profit from the sale of fraudulent keys - and that should tell you all you need to know when trying to decide if you should shop there or not.

 

[Lomax]

One of the things I talked about with Valve employees at length when I was invited up is what they thought about the so called "second-hand" or key reselling market, although more specifically how it related to legitimate key reselling through sites like Amazon.com, Newegg, Gamestop, etc. I was interested in finding out if they thought Enhanced Steam's price comparison feature would have a huge negative impact on their own store.

While they're obviously not going to incorporate that feature into their own store, I thought their response was interesting. They said "If someone else is selling the same product, that's activated through Steam, for a lower price, then that gives us a starting off point to engage that developer or publisher in discussion as to why that is." They know it's happening, and in fact have provided the tools to make it happen by giving developers and publishers the ability to generate Steam keys. While I ultimately didn't agree with some of the feedback that came about as the result of that discussion (like the fact that your friend activity page won't show new games you've obtained on Steam unless they're purchased directly from Valve) I certainly admired and appreciated their thoughts on the subject.

As Stump said above, it would be possible to do this without a huge burden to themselves outside of the initial creation of the API as long as the proper precautions are put into place beforehand. The benefit to Valve is that it would ultimately reduce the amount of fraud that's happening on their platform, would increase customer satisfaction, and could have an impact on reducing the load on their support department.

It would be fascinating to see what would happen if Steam charged even a small amount (1-2%) for key generation. Or maybe charge something like 5% upon key redemption (and cut off key generation if the account is in the negative). After all, it's not like they need the new users now, growth rate has already slowed dramatically and will only continue to do so, so their motivation for allowing outside keys to get people into the ecosystem is presumably a lot less now than it was a few years ago. Not to mention retail is basically dead at this point. I guess their concern would be AAA publishers only selling non-Steam keys off site, but that's already happening anyway.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Watching the Trine 3 SGDQ run and it looks pretty fun. I worry about Frozenbyte. Their mobile game was not a hit; Trine 3 failed very publicly; and Shadwen seems to have not made an impact. I feel like 3 misses in a row is a lot for a team to sustain. Hope they don't go under.

I think the real problem with G2A is fraudolent keys purchased with stolen credit cards, not invalid keys.

Both are potential problems, but especially the lack of ability for anyone to figure out what happened afterwards which would be mitigated with this.

 

[Stallion Free]

Watching the Trine 3 SGDQ run and it looks pretty fun. I worry about Frozenbyte. Their mobile game was not a hit; Trine 3 failed very publicly; and Shadwen seems to have not made an impact. I feel like 3 misses in a row is a lot for a team to sustain. Hope they don't go under.

As a fan of the first two game I don't think the physics-based gameplay transitioned very smoothly to 3d. Everything feels less precise and the first two were the definition of imprecise when it came to sidescrolling gameplay. The ridiculous visuals are almost worth the downsides though.

 

[L.O.R.D]

so,PalmDesert has been finally Dethroned,at the cost of $13000

man,if i had $13000,i sure gonna use at least half if it to level up my steam level just to show off.

 

[Anno]

I've never really tried any of these Minecraft/Terraria-esque games, but Starbound looks really interesting for some reason. Guess it's time to see what this kind of stuff is all about. Any advice or recommendations?

 

[QFNS]

One of the things I talked about with Valve employees at length when I was invited up is what they thought about the so called "second-hand" or key reselling market, although more specifically how it related to legitimate key reselling through sites like Amazon.com, Newegg, Gamestop, etc. I was interested in finding out if they thought Enhanced Steam's price comparison feature would have a huge negative impact on their own store.

While they're obviously not going to incorporate that feature into their own store, I thought their response was interesting. They said "If someone else is selling the same product, that's activated through Steam, for a lower price, then that gives us a starting off point to engage that developer or publisher in discussion as to why that is." They know it's happening, and in fact have provided the tools to make it happen by giving developers and publishers the ability to generate Steam keys. While I ultimately didn't agree with some of the feedback that came about as the result of that discussion (like the fact that your friend activity page won't show new games you've obtained on Steam unless they're purchased directly from Valve) I certainly admired and appreciated their thoughts on the subject.

As Stump said above, it would be possible to do this without a huge burden to themselves outside of the initial creation of the API as long as the proper precautions are put into place beforehand. The benefit to Valve is that it would ultimately reduce the amount of fraud that's happening on their platform, would increase customer satisfaction, and could have an impact on reducing the load on their support department.

Interesting. That is not what I would have expected from them. I wonder if they would ever speak publicly about this. The topic seems to be hot with G2A and their shadyness atm, but I imagine the fraud rate tracks quite closely to the rate that credit cards/etc are being stolen. I doubt Steam sees more than its fair share of fraudulent transactions at least in a world where fraud is caught and the theives don't get to keep any of the ilicit goods. Clearly, illegal activity would thrive anywhere potential thieves can get away with it. Hard to know if Steam is in that situation or not, and there is 0 chance they would ever admit it if they were.

Re: the API idea. I don't disagree that it would would be a nice feature. Hard to make specific comments about the proposed one that Stump listed since I don't know enough about what Valve is doing and how they store keys. I do work in software for a living so I can at least say that Stump's requirments specifications are pretty decent =)