Valve

Valve and five major PC publishers - ZeniMax, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home Interactive, and Koch Media - have found themselves on the wrong side of European antitrust regulators, it seems. Today, the European Commission announced that it is penalizing all six companies with a collective €7.8 million fine (around US $9.5 million) for making bilateral agreements that geo-blocked certain PC games in the European Union.

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Steam has received a new searching feature that makes it easier to find precisely what you're looking for in a game, including everything from the type of graphics to the general mood or theme, whether it's first- or third-person, and more. Called Faceted Browsing, the feature is intended to help find new games during the Winter Sale.

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Just as the prophecy (which in this case is SteamDB) foretold, the Steam Winter Sale officially kicked off today. This is one of Steam's biggest sales of the year, matched by only the Summer Sale, and much of Steam's catalog will be discounted for the next two weeks. On top of that, voting for The Steam Awards is also open, with the winners being announced once we're into 2021.

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The end of the year is quickly approaching, and for PC gamers, that means the Steam Winter Sale is on the horizon. The Winter Sale is one of the two biggest sales of the year for Steam along with the Summer Sale, and it's a big event for PC gamers who may have a break from school or work for the holidays. While Steam hasn't outright confirmed the start date of the Winter Sale just yet, we do have a good idea of when it will kick off.

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After months of testing, Steam today rolled out its News Hub to all users. As the name suggests, the News Hub acts as a personalized space for news on the games you play. For instance, not only will you see every post from the developers of games you play - including announcements and patch notes - but you can also see gaming news posts from a number of publications that are active on Steam through the curator program.

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Last month, Valve rolled out DualSense support in Steam, only a couple of weeks after the new controller launched alongside the PlayStation 5. At first, DualSense support was only available in the Steam beta client, meaning that Steam users had to first opt-into that client in order to use their DualSense controllers in PC games. Today, that all changed, with Steam shipping a new client update for Steam that includes DualSense support.

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Most probably see Steam simply as a store and launcher for games but Valve has always positioned it as a platform. It is, after all, one of if not the first to implement systems like achievements and trophies separate from whatever reward systems the game may have built-in. Steam also offers tools for developers to manage, monetize, and monitor their games and Valve is now giving them yet another tool that could make it easier to invite people to test games that are still in development.

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The folks at Rocket Lab have teamed up with Valve's Game Newell to launch a garden gnome into space. But why? To raise money for charity, of course. For each individual person that watches the launch of said garden gnome into space, Newell will donate one dollar to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Starship. That'll be racked up during the launch live AND inside a period of 24 hours after the launch, on replay.

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As expected, Valve kicked off the Steam Halloween Sale today, discounting a number of spooky and scary games for the next few days. While the Halloween Sale often acts as a prelude to the larger Autumn and Winter Sales that follow in November and December, this year's Halloween Sale is taking things one step further by advertising in-game Halloween events alongside all of the deals.

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Gaming platforms have started to realize that harm doesn't simply come from seeing or having access to age-inappropriate games, it can also come from seeing inappropriate or hurtful messages. Gamers, especially in highly competitive titles, have long used colorful language, to put it mildly, in communicating with others, sometimes without considering whether the recipient is comfortable with it or not. Valve is now rolling out a chat filtering system for Steam that puts gamers in complete control while keeping its own hands off moderating these chats.

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Valve has announced that users now have access to a beta feature that enables them to filter unwanted words from chat, preventing conversations from being derailed. The feature is available now through Steam Labs and involves the chat filtering technology the company made for its most popular games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2.

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Valve has always been accused of trying to monopolize the PC games distribution market, especially after Epic Games' colorful statements last year. Warranted or not, it may have helped push the company to change a few things and open its doors to more of its competitors. Considering it was a long time coming, it may have been presumed that EA will never make good on its promise to bring its subscription service to Steam. That is finally happening this month but there's a bit of a catch.

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