The Steam Review

Hurrah!

You’re probably all aware of Valve’s recent “Steam and the PC platform in general” press conference. Steamcloud is the headline announcement of course, but our old friend John Cook also listed a few other upcoming developments.

Prey has been marked down by 80% for one weekend only, sending it soaring past the other Top Sellers entries but, perhaps due to the weekend timing, not earning it much media attention. Which is a shame, because it’s a novel and otherwise effective marketing strategy.

Last Friday, Valve began preventing retail copies of their Source (i.e. post-2004) games bought in Thailand and Russia from being played outside their country of origin. The internet has exploded the story in the way only the internet can, and it’s high time for some rationality.

You may be forgiven for feeling a touch of déjà vu this week…

You may by now have heard that “Steam” was broken into a week and a half ago and “consumer” credit card details stolen. As the quote marks suggest the breach has been played up by those behind it, whose exaggerations have been somewhat naively passed on by a number of big sites today.