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Steam Community Offline Message

Definitely do not visit that site mentioned (url removed)

As of 11/11/11 Gabe Newell has expressed his regret with the hack whilst providing further information that another separate database has indeed been compromised.  This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information:

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.

• Update 7/11/11 2:26: forums.steampowered.com is completely down.
• Update 7/11/11 2:45: store.steampowered.com and client fine. Likely a vbulletin exploit.
• Update 11/11/11 9:46: Message from Gabe.

On the platform side, it’s sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms,” he said.

Platform providers that used to use their role to enable developers “instead view themselves as more rent guys who are essentially driving their partner margins to zero,” he said.

They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people’s access to those things,” he said.

Upon reading this quote the letters EA followed by BF3 kept appearing in my mind though I’m sure Gabe was referring to physical gaming platforms, or was he?

I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people’s expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he said.

If Apple took the Ipod mentality and usability and applied it to a networked home device such as the Apple TV, this may indeed become a possibility for a lot of people who like to keep things simple. For the rest of us whether or not it could become a defacto standard remains to be seen.

I consider Apple to be very closed,” Newell said. “Let’s say you have a book business and you are charging 5 to 7 percent gross margins. You can’t exist in an Apple world because they want 30 percent and they don’t care that you only have 7 percent to play with.

This will and will always be an issue when a corporation like Apple creates a clever defacto monopoly.  Market to the people first and foremost, the developers, artists and publishers will have no choice but to use your service.

Steam is built with a very similar business model though in defense Gabe states:

Steam gets a commission if games are sold through Steam, but developers can use its free tools and services and sell their games elsewhere and “we don’t take anything.”

And last of all from the same Seattle Times article – David Bluhms, president and chief executive of game company Z2Live, finally stood up for Cupertino:

I would argue Apple’s system is very open but very proprietary … it’s open with their rules,” he said.

Which makes it about as closed as it gets.

Divinity 2 starts off like a lot of typical Western RPG’s with a seemingly standard  introductory storytelling experience.  Just when you think the game is being too generic for its own good it suddenly gets epic, it actually takes you by surprise.  Welcome to the world of Divinity 2, Larian Studios most ambitious RPG title to date.

Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga is a reworked and updated package to the original Divinity II – Ego Draconis which also includes the full length addon Flames of Vengeance.

The land of Rivellon is a whimsical yet foreboding ecosystem filled with colourful characters and sinister creatures, all of which are surrounded by a gloriously thought out fantasy realm powered by the same Gamebryo engine used in Oblivion. It is a place where talking to obnoxious fruit and getting seduced by lascivious treasure chests is the norm.

This sort of fantastical absurdity makes Divinity 2 all the more engaging and places it in a class above the normal RPG fare.

Damn Floating Towers!

Let’s delve into Divinity’s 2 premise:

Beginnings: What a nice place to relax!

Divinity 2 is real time action orientated Role playing experience with dense, yet slick old school RPG elements.  The character creation process is simple yet effective as your characters progress is shaped through the course of levelling up. Unlike some other games in this genre, enemies do not scale and level with you which is a refreshing change, if you fancy taking on a new area with low experience prepare to get your ass handed to you – you will be slaughtered!   This element may initially force you to stay close to home, but it also allows you to flesh out your abilities, strengths and weakness and work towards the goal of combating these high level foes.  If you do manage to take out some high level enemies, the XP gained is truely worth the effort.

Divinity 2 TDKS Item Screenie

Throughout the realm there are tonnes of hidden caves, chambers and areas filled with all sorts of loot, all of which will help in your quest.  Weapons, garments and armour can also be charmed altering the statistic values based on the type of charms used as well as enhancing your own skills. Levelling up allows you to assign points to various skills, all of which are accompanied with an introductory video on what each skill does in the real world – a great touch.

Later on in the game you get the ability to transform into Dragon and be in command of your very own Battle Tower, I won’t go into any spoiler specifics with this but it presents the player with a completely new gaming mechanic in regards to both combat and fast travel.  Certain locations can only be accessible in Dragon form and populating your Tower is an excellent well thought addition to an already astounding RPG.

Take that statue!

Pop culture references feature throughout Divinity 2 in humorous abundance adding to its charm and appeal.  NPC voice acting is fantastic, breathing life into a densely populated land.  The characters you meet all have there own motivations and needs which you can manipulate to your advantage with the Dragon Slayer power of Mindread – with often hilarious results.

Both Divinity 2 and the sequel Flames of Vengeance are excellent examples of the RPG genre that are definitely not dumbed down for the masses and will provide a richly rewarding experience for any player willing to invest some time in the land of Rivellon.

Fancy a bit of fishing?

I can definitely recommend Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga if you want an in-depth, charming and highly playable action RPG, I grabbed it on sale off Steam a while ago and have put well over 100hours into this game. Divinity 2 has all the popular RPG staples such as lore, books, thousands of weapons, items that can be “charmed”  and presents itself with golden age RPG sensibilities with no constant hand holding.

• Fantastic characters and voice acting.
• Enemies do not level up with you unlike oblivion which I love.
• Tons of hidden stuff.
• Great humour and pop culture references.
• No hand holding.
• Difficult choices are required to be made.

The only real negatives I could find with this game is probably the slow start which could turn off some players and the fact the sequel is not as open ended as the first instalment – minor yet something to be aware of.

If you do buy this game on Steam, make sure you get the remastered version with the expansion Flames of Vengeance included as all versions can be bought.  The link to the Steam Store in the info box at the top of this review is the correct version.

Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance Intro video (contains Spoilers)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHwGL7vtTqs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6JXDiz0C-s

There are issues however and if you are an Australian Steam user you know full well the price discrepancy that can be seen with some game releases. Also, some Steam features may or may not be to every ones liking. Games you do not buy from steam, cannot take advantage of any of Steams features making it a tough ask for a lot of people to put all their faith into one platform.

This begs the question, are there any alternatives to Steam? Of course there are and here are some of the best!

Greenman Gaming

Green Man Gaming is a digital retailer of PC games based in London which sell games to over 89 countries. The most unique aspect to GMG is the ability for customers to trade-in their digitally downloaded games for extra credit in their account and this credit can then be used for new purchases.

Greenman Gaming also sell Steamworks based games which are not tradeable via their service but can be added to Steam. For certain regions, buying a Steamworks game from GMG is often cheaper than Steam itself which makes buying from Greenman Gaming all the more pleasant.

EA Origin

Origin is a revamped EA Store that allows you to purchase and play your favourite EA games. Features include an in-game overlay that allows you to chat with friends and browse the web while playing select games.

Origin’s new social features allow you to create a profile, connect and chat with your friends, share your game library, and effortlessly join your friends’ games.

The most interesting feature of Origin is the ability to register non Origin bought games and integrate them into the service – though this does not look to have been implemented at the time of this article.

GOG

A testament to the statement classics never go out of style, Good Old Games specialise in PC games from yesteryear and have a massive community of gamers eager to explore and return to a period when games were a little more complex.

GOG releases are completely DRM free and to ensure compatibility on newer hardware, are often bundled with emulation software like ScummVM and DOSBox depending on the game.

GOG is owned by Polish developers, CD Projeckt, famous for the excellent The Witcher series of games for the PC and their flamboyant public humour.

Impulse

Impulse is a digital distribution platform from retailers GameStop that allows users to quickly and easily find their favourite game or software and download it automatically to their PC. In 1998 Impulse Inc. was one of the first companies to distribute its software via a free digital distribution program known as Component Manager and has grown to become the Impulse we know today.

Unlike Steam, pricing has been localised for the Australian audience using current exchange rates.

Besides games, Impulse also features applications, utilities, themes, available to purchase or download free and offers community centric features like in game chat, friend finding and online game searching.

Direct2Drive

Direct2Drive doesn’t have a client like Steam and operates more as a traditional online shopfront. This fact alone is quite possibly a bonus for many users with no need for other features and prefer to keep digital downloads simple. Regardless of this fact, it is currently Steams biggest competitor.

Like GMG, various Steamworks games are also available making it another money saving option. There is also a price match guarantee where D2D will match any lower price offered by Steam and a few other digital content delivery networks.

D2D is owned by the online gaming rental service Gamefly who acquired the service from IGN earlier this year.

Like Steam, EA Origin will be offering more than just downloadable games, Origin will feature social networking features, trophies/achievements, in game messaging and probably the most interesting, the ability to register non Origin bought games and integrate them into the service.

From the Wall Street Journal excerpt available via MorningStar.

Even if consumers don’t purchase games through Origin, they will be able to use it to create profile pages that record all of their scores and other progress on EA games and to establish Origin friend lists based on their friend lists on Facebook and other social networks.

This ability is something I wished Steam should have done a long time ago and fingers crossed, regional price gouging is kept to a minimum.

Is this the EA Origin Homepage or some Mockup?

I have no idea where the image came from – this one was taken from Kotaku.

Valve earlier today disclosed its plans for a new “big picture” mode of Steam which will offer controller support and navigation designed for television interaction.

Details regarding big picture mode are among the highlights Valve plans to share with developers and publishers in its partner meetings during GDC this week in San Francisco.

If you want a pseudo big Screen Steam experience now why not try it the way I currently do.  My lounge room  HTPC runs XBMC which is set to launch Steam when a HDTV PC gaming fix is needed.

It is as simple as adding the XBMC shortcut to Steam and adding Steam to the XBMC launcher plugin.  You can then add Steam shortcuts directly to XBMC and activate each game at the click of a button.

Games with controller capability make for the best big screen experience though on more than one occasion I have sat on the couch with keyboard and wireless mouse in hand!

Portal 2 offers cross platform play and Steamworks abilities like cloud based storage of savegames only on the PS3 and Steam versions. Steam Press Release.

Special pre-order offers vary at participating outlets around the world and include a variety of dollars off and/or exclusive in-game content for those who reserve the game for purchase before it is released the week of April 18. These include $5 off the full price, exclusive in-game skins for the coop bots (Atlas and P-body), and more.

For more Portal 2 news, screenshots and other media, head over to thinkwithportals.com

Pre-order Portal 2

• Amazon $54.99 PS3 and 360, $44.99 PC,
• Steam $44.99 PC

Steam User Darth Tealc has managed to decode the in game audio samples from the newly added Portal radio that is scattered in each level, which when taken to the appropriate spot, an audio sample will play.

Radio achievement added and ringing the radios in-game to different spots in each map give soundclips SPOILERS:

I am decoding the images from the radio sounds – here they are – (EDIT: All have now been uploaded)
Note – dinosaurs 1, 5, 12, and 17 are morse code, not images. See this topic for the morse code translations.

dinosaur2 – http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/2862/dino2.png
dinosaur3 – http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/5395/dino3.png
dinosaur4 – http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/8126/dino4.png
dinosaur6 – http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/474/dino6t.png
dinosaur7 – http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/804/dino7.png
dinosaur8 – http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/4015/dino8.png
dinosaur9 – http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1900/dino9z.png
dinosaur10 – http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/6002/dino10.png
dinosaur11 – http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/5893/dino11.png
dinosaur13 – http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/2015/dino13.png
dinosaur14 – http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/6633/dino14.png
dinosaur15 – http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/2716/dino15.png
dinosaur16 – http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/3671/dino16.png
dinosaur18 – http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5874/dino18.png
dinosaur19 – http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/8443/dino19.png
dinosaur20 – http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8295/dino20.png
dinosaur21 – http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6334/dino21.png
dinosaur22 – http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/6657/dino22.png
dinosaur23 – http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/4641/dino23.png
dinosaur24 – http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/1385/dino24.png
dinosaur25 – http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4139/dino25.png
dinosaur26 – http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3913/dino26.png

The Steam Store outlines all the changes and enhancements to the Steam client which you can digest here with my favorite being the new WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components which replaces the Internet Explorer dependency.  Fans rejoice!

As of today, a new version of Steam is available through a public opt-in beta, open to all Steam users. This Steam update provides several major upgrades to the platform’s core functionality. We’ve overhauled the Steam user interface to enhance the way you already buy and play games, adding more info about the things that matter — getting games, playing them with friends, and staying current in the gaming world.