Valve

Epic Games almost started to become the shining beacon in the gaming industry with its launch of the very developer-friendly Epic Games Store. Thanks to its zeal to get developers and games onboard, however, it has started to be painted in a less favorable light. The latest controversy the game publisher has found itself in involves accusations of spying, for China even. The company naturally denies the admittedly flimsy association but does own up to peeking into the Steam data stored on PCs.

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In an age of user reviews, the practice of review bombing has become a serious problem. The tactic involves large groups of people leaving negative reviews in an effort to ruin a product's review score, and nowhere has it been more apparent than on Valve's Steam marketplace. The last few years have seen the company take steps to fight review bombing, which is less about evaluating a game and more about retaliation, and now they're adding a new tool to the arsenal.

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February saw just over a dozen employees laid off from Valve, possibly the result of shifting plans for the game company's virtual reality division. Among the 13 people let go, a number are confirmed to have been working on VR-related projects, including the SteamVR platform, along with some that are believed to have been involved in new hardware development.

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Steam has always been about games but, in recent years, Valve has worked to expand that brand to other gaming-related products, from hardware to operating systems to videos. That last bit, however, has also grown to include some videos that stretch that association too far. With Valve undergoing some introspection, the company has come to the decision that videos might not be that essential to its bottom line and will be retiring those unrelated content over the coming weeks.

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At the tail end of last year, during its annual Winter Sale, Steam had its users vote on the best games of 2018. There were eight different categories in all, each with a number of different games in the running. Today, Valve revealed the winners of each category, and if you regularly peruse Steam's top sellers lists, you probably aren't going to be surprised by the games that won.

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Deep Silver announced today that Metro Exodus will be making the jump from Steam to the Epic Games Store, becoming the latest in a growing list of games to be tempted into switching platforms by Epic's revenue sharing model. The Epic Games Store, for those who need a refresher, offers developers and publishers 88% of the revenue for each game sold, with Epic keeping 12% for itself. Steam, on the other hands, offers only 70% of sale revenue to developers and publishers, and though that share grows as a game sells more, it never exceeds or even meets the 88% that Epic offers.

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With its new PC games store, Epic is taking the fight directly to Steam. It's doing that by undercutting Steam on revenue sharing - while Valve's revenue sharing model starts off giving 70% of each sale to developers and goes up from there, Epic's model instead gives developers 88% of each sale from the very start. As you can imagine, that's likely to turn some heads among developers and publishers.

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In the midst of its winter sale, Valve has revealed the top-selling games on Steam for 2018. This is something it does every year, but instead of giving us actual numbers in terms of sales or revenue, Valve simply groups the year's best sellers into four different groups: platinum, gold, silver, and bronze. We're seeing some familiar titles make their way into that platinum group this year, which is somewhat surprising.

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Even though your bank account may be hurting thanks to all the gift giving that's about to occur, Valve is trying to tempt that wallet into opening up again. Today, it officially kicked off the Steam Winter Sale, which is one the biggest annual sales the platform hosts. With that in mind, it seems like the vast majority of Steam's catalog is discounted during this promotion.

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Valve has pushed out a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive update that brings a new game mode: Danger Zone. As previously leaked earlier this year, the new mode is a battle royale game not unlike Fortnite, H1:Z1, and PUBG. As always: CS:GO is free to download and play, and its new "Danger Zone" mode is no exception.

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Late last month, Valve discontinued the Steam Link and sold off its remaining stock during the Steam Autumn Sale. While the Steam Link app will continue to be supported (along with existing Steam Link hardware), the app isn't the best solution for some folks looking stream from their PC to another device. Luckily, Valve is giving users the ability to create their own Steam Link box today by bringing the app to Raspberry Pi.

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Is the world ready for yet another digital card game? Is it ready for one that is both closer to physical card games but also so different from them? But more importantly, are players ready to pay $20 for a game and more for additional cards? Those are the questions that are bound to be raised with Valve’s launch of Artifact, its first major non-VR game since Dota 2. Naturally, Valve’s answer to that is a resounding “yes!” but the jury will take a few days before it can make a verdict.

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