Articles about Steam

BlueStacks, the company whose software makes it possible to run Android games on Windows and macOS, has great news for gamers. It has announced a new BlueStacks Inside SDK which will make it easy for developers to bring their mobile games to Windows and deliver them through Steam.

Just as with the main BlueStacks software, this is not about emulating mobile devices. It's also not about porting games -- mobile games effectively become native PC games.

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Having been slapped with antitrust accusations by the European Commission, Valve has responded to complaints about geo-blocking on its Steam gaming platform.

After the Commission complained that Valve and five game publishers had come to arrangements between themselves to region-lock certain titles, the company says that only a very small portion of games available on the platform are subject to geo-locking.

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The European Commission has informed Valve that geo-blocking in Steam contravenes EU competition rules. Similar warnings have been issued to five games publishers.

Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax have been told that "European consumers should have the right to buy and play video games of their choice regardless of where they live in the EU". The Commission says that the use of geo-blocking to prevent cross-border sales is a breach of antitrust rules.

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In the world of non-console gaming, the Windows platform reigns supreme. That's not to say that Mac and Linux users aren't gamers, but their computer-based gaming choices are rather more limited thanks to developers' tendency to offer Windows support over anything else.

Now Valve is looking to change things with its Steam platform. The latest version of Steam Play makes it possible to play some Windows games on Linux, greatly increasing the size of the gaming catalog available to Linux-based gamers.

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Depending on which analyst firm you believe, Windows 10 is either a whisker away from overtaking Windows 7 as the most popular desktop operating system, or still quite a distance off.

Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows usage share from the gamers’ perspective, paints an entirely different picture however. It has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until recently, when Windows 7 roared into the top spot.

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While Bitcoin is growing in value and attracting more and more capital, it is hard to make a case for it as a payment method these days. Sure, you can buy things with Bitcoin, but fact of the matter is it lacks mainstream appeal among businesses -- at least right now.

It is easy to see why: it's incredibly volatile and the fees are high too. So, if you want to buy something with Bitcoin you will probably pay more than if you were to use dollars or euros, for instance. This is something that Valve has experienced as well and it is doing something rather interesting to make things better for Steam customers: it's dropped Bitcoin as a payment method altogether.

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While Windows 10 still lags behind Windows 7 in terms of market share, there’s one section of user that has embraced the new operating system since day one -- gamers. That’s no surprise of course, as they like to run the latest and greatest hardware and software.

Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows the state of things from the gamers’ perspective, has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until last month when -- to the surprise of many -- Windows 7 took over.

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Microsoft has -- for the moment at least -- stopped updating its official Windows market share page, which means if you want to see how well the various flavors of Windows are doing, you have three options. StatCounter’s latest update shows Windows 10 closing in on Windows 7, while NetMarketShare’s figures have the new OS still a long way off reaching that milestone.

The third option is Steam’s monthly user survey, which shows the state of things from the gamers’ perspective. Usually Windows 10 is by far the most popular OS but in October its share tumbled, while Windows 7’s shot up. A mistake surely? But no, it seems to be correct.

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Skype has been having problems this week as a result of a DDoS attack which began on Monday. The Skype team acknowledged the problem, confirming that "some users will either lose connectivity to the application or may be unable to send or receive messages" as a result.

In order to mitigate the impact, Microsoft made some configuration changes which seems to have helped. A group called CyberTeam has claimed responsibility for the attack, and says it plans to target gaming platform Steam next.

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Yesterday, I reported on how Windows 10 usage had fallen in February according to the latest figures from NetMarketShare.

Today, Steam releases its hardware survey for February, and that shows that Windows 10 usage has fallen on the gaming platform too, and not for the first time. Usage in January was also down from the month before. Is it the start of a downward trend?

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Valve, the company behind games distribution platform Steam, is being investigated by EU antitrust regulators. Agreements in place between Valve and five game publishers that implement geo-blocking in titles could breach European competition rules.

Valve, alongside Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax, is under investigation to determine whether the practice of restricting access to games and prices based on location is legal. At the same time the European Commission is launching an investigation into ASUS, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for price manipulation.

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Steam Cleaner is a portable tool for removing junk game files left behind by Steam, Origin, Uplay and GoG.

The program is as simple as this kind of application can be. It’s a single executable, no installation required, no settings to think about, not even a "Scan" button -- just launch it and within a second or two you’ll see a list of any game leftovers. The developer says Steam Cleaner can clear up "gigabytes" of data in a few seconds. It found more than 100MB of junk on our tiny Steam setup, so this could be plausible.

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September wasn’t a good month for Windows 10. After enjoying uninterrupted meteoric growth since launch, usage share for the new OS actually dropped off last month, according to the latest figures from NetMarketShare announced on Saturday.

That's not the only bad news for Microsoft either. Gamers, who typically prefer to be running the latest operating system, also turned their back on Windows 10 in September.

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Facebook is starting to take gaming far more seriously. Not content with funneling the likes of Candy Crush through its servers, the social network is now joining forces with the company behind the Unity game engine to create its own desktop gaming platform.

The aim is to tap into not only the millions of gamers that are already on Facebook, but also to gather more from the PC-gaming community. It's a new venture that very clearly treads on the toes of Steam, and is likely to cause ripples in the gaming world.

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Microsoft is on a mission to destroy Steam with Windows 10. At least that is what Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games believes. He says that Microsoft's love of UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps means that Win32 apps are gradually being driven to extinction.

In an interview with Edge magazine, Sweeney says that he predicts Microsoft will release patches for Windows 10 over the next few years that will render Steam "progressively worse and more broken".

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