Steam

Valve's own games have long been popular not just for their intrinsic value but also for their modder-friendliness. That kind of thinking has fortunately also seeped into Steam via the platform's Workshop feature, giving rise to countless mods, some of which grow up to be games in their own right. Now Valve is extending that to its first big VR game, giving modders the green light to take what they can from Half-Life: Alyx for their own twist on the game or even completely new VR experiences.

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No longer the unchallenged king of PC game digital distribution, Valve has been updating its Steam platform not just in appearance but also in small bits of behavior here and there. Those have mostly been filed under its "Steam Labs Experiments" but, from time to time, those features do make their way to the actual Steam implementation. Just like Experiment number 008 that is now rolling out to the Steam Library to tell you you might want to play next.

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The folks at Square Enix just put a whole bunch of games in a big bundle to sell to gamers staying at home - all to fight COVID-19. This might be the start of a big push on the part of game-makers across the spectrum. If the Square Enix Stay Home & Play campaign "rewards gamers for practicing social distancing and also help charities that need support," and it works, the future's going to look a whole lot more bright than it looks today.

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This morning the folks at 505games announced the Early Access release of DRIFT21, a fully immersive high-end car racing game with fully licensed vehicles and tracks. This game includes hardware steering wheel accessory support right out the gate with Thrustmaster, Fanatec, and Logitec. Users will be able to begin playing immediately with a relatively limited cross-section of vehicles and tracks - but that'll expand QUICKLY.

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This week Valve made clear they're not in a position where it makes sense to continue supporting Apple's OSX for their SteamVR platform at this time. They've suggested that the SteamVR platform will continue to receive support, but all support will be focused on Windows and Linux. Users of Apple computers, running OSX, will need to use use "legacy builds" from this point forward.

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With various stay-at-home orders in place in many regions around the world, there are a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands. Thankfully, many game publishers have held sales or even offered some games for free for a limited time. Sega is the latest publisher to do the latter, announcing that Total War: Shogun 2 is free to keep on Steam for a limited time.

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Today the folks at Bandai Namco US delivered a message of thanks to the public with their "goodwill ambassador" PAC-MAN. Their announcement was that they'll be "asking fans to do their part and have More Fun For Everyone at home" - the "more fun for everyone" is their own tagline. To make this a reality, and to thank gamers for staying home, Bandai Namco US is delivering PAC-MAN Championship Edition 2 for free starting on April 24, 2020.

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For the longest time, Steam was really the only giant PC digital game distribution platform outside of publisher-specific launchers or the more niche (at least back then) GOG. With the Epic Games Store and even game streaming platforms nibbling at its market share, Valve has stepped up not only to redesign the way Steam looks but also the way it behaves. That has led to its Steam Labs Experiments that mostly focus on improving discoverability and, in this latest installment, how well it understands what you're searching for.

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The Linux (or GNU/Linux) operating system has always been promoted not only as a free (of monetary costs) alternative to the likes of Windows or macOS, it is also praised for its security, privacy, and adaptability to all kinds of devices and use cases. Despite those strengths, it retains an almost fractional slice of the consumer desktop market for various reasons. One of the most cited reason is having no access to the most popular PC games in the market. Almost two years ago, Valve released its Proton tool for Steam and it has had a tremendous though mostly unpublicized effect on the Linux gaming market.

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A new mode of gameplay was introduced this week in World of Tanks Blitz. The war machine fighting game now includes a dogfight battle mode called Gravity Force. Imagine you've got control of a massive cannon on treads that you can use to blast your friends into oblivion - but not here on earth. This tank battle takes place on the moon!

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Fallout 76 launched about a year and a half ago, but when it did, it was exclusively available through Bethesda's own launcher. Slowly but surely, Bethesda has been trending in the same direction as other major publishers throughout the years, launching its games through a first-party launcher instead of letting stores run by third-parties take a cut of each sale. In regards to Fallout 76, that's all about to change, because the game is finally about to make its way to Steam.

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For several years now, Microsoft has been making an effort to bring its first-party Xbox games to PC as well. More recently, we've seen the company launching its games on Steam, with titles like Age of Empires II Definitive Edition and Halo: The Master Chief Collection both available through Valve's storefront. Microsoft revealed today that it won't be long before those titles are joined by Sea of Thieves.

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