Steam

Most PC gamers probably see steam only has a digital games store but developers will tell you that the platform is a lot more than that. While it offers developers some features like controller support, statistics, and others, platform maker Valve is also thinking about other features to add to the platform itself. Now it is gathering those experiments under a single Steam Labs roof for the public to see and, for the daring, to try out.

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After spending just a few minutes with Valve's new Interactive Recommender for Steam, I can already see the massive improvement. I've been using app stores and game stores since before they were digital, and I've never experienced such a smooth process. This is a positive, well-planned, thoughtful, non-intrusive way to use machine learning, and I'm glad it was a gaming company that had to be the first to make it happen.

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The Steam Link app for iOS has gone through quite an odyssey over the past year or so, but back in May, it reappeared on the App Store and now it seems like it's here to stay. Valve pushed the first major update for the Steam Link iOS app today and it's adding some pretty big features. Chief among them is the ability to remap your controllers, which is a pretty big deal for PC players.

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Epic Games kicked up a storm when it announced its own Epic Games Store with a not so subtle challenge at Valve’s Steam and, more importantly, industry business practices. But while it presented itself as a champion of developers and gamers, both camps chided Epic Games for pushing developers and publishers to put their games exclusively on that store. Nowhere has that clamor been more audible than with the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter who will now be refunding backers who don’t feel like supporting Epic Games in any way whatsoever.

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If you hopped on Steam to check out the Summer Sale only to be confused by the complex Steam Grand Prix mini-game at the core of it all, you definitely aren't alone. The Grand Prix mini-game pits five teams of Steam users against each other in a race to the finish each day, but the rules surrounding things like using and earning boosts are hopelessly complicated. Not only that, but there are some developers who are noticing something very alarming as a direct result of this sale.

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Those who have been following the leaks over the past few days probably won't be surprised by this news, but the Steam Summer Sale has officially kicked off. As always, this means deep discounts on much of Steam's catalog, giving price-conscious gamers the chance to pad out their libraries on the cheap. That's all well and good, but at the moment at least, there's one small problem.

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Due in part to the feedback given to the group over the weekend and because of their connections with Valve, Canonical did an about-face today. They've suggested that feedback from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community led them to change their plan and will "build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. Whether this will change Valve's future with Ubuntu Steam, we'll see.

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The majority of the time that Linux gets dragged in the spotlight is when there are high-profile security bugs that remind people how Linux practically runs the world behind the scenes. This time, however, the controversy is ironically around one of the operating system's weakest points: gaming. A Valve developer just "announced" on Twitter that the company will be dropping support for future releases of Ubuntu and, as expected, it has driven Linux users into a slight frenzied panic.

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Back in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment released a role-playing game by the name of Alpha Protocol. Though there was a good amount of hype heading into Alpha Protocol's release, the post-launch reaction to it was divided. Some loved it, some hated it, some never played it. That was the only Alpha Protocol game publisher Sega commissioned from Obsidian, and though the world has since moved on from Alpha Protocol, it has remained available through various digital storefronts, waiting for people who may want to dive into Obsidian's back catalog.

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There always comes a time when fans of a gaming franchise creates a mod that proves to be equally or even more popular than the original. At times, those developers get lucky and get hired by the original owners to work on an official version. Other times, those original owners try to strike off on their own to eventually wipe the mod from history. Both have happened to Dota, originally called the Defense of the Ancients. Valve has just fully revealed Dota Underlords, its own take on the Dota 2 Auto Chess mod that's taking the market by storm.

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Even though Shenumue 3 was recently pushed back a few months, it's still far enough along in development to make an appearance at E3. Deep Silver and Yu Suzuki delivered a new trailer for the game during E3 2019's PC Gaming Show today, but unfortunately, that trailer was also accompanied by what's sure to be some controversial news. Shenmue 3, as it turns out, will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC.

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With every new Steam sale comes lamentations from players who acknowledge they already own more games than they can play, and that they're going to buy even more titles they'll probably never finish. In light of that reality, Steam has announced a new event called Spring Cleaning that encourages players to dust off those old forgotten games, offering them rewards in exchange for playing what they already own.

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