Dota 2 Compendium

Is up for sale again for this year.

Thoroughly enjoyed it last year.

Won't be buying it this year.

My stance of selling mods

The long and the short of it: Mods should be FREE

In the past I done a bit of modding. Started on the C64 with a few constriction kits. One being Aliens in the Adventure constriction kit ( which would be foxed if it was ever released ).

Later some Doom maps.

Most of the work people know me for is the quick maps I made in JK2. The 1 hit 1 kill mod my server used to run and my work in Neverwinter Nights with Tyranni.

During this time, I never felt entitled to being paid anything for my work. During the JK2/Neverwinter time I was in fact putting money in to keep the free services and games running. Even today I do this without any advertising or other kinds of funding. I don't even collect revenue from any of my You tube videos.

I am sure people think I am crazy as I have put a lot of work into everything I do but I just don't fell justified claiming money built upon other peoples games.

So steam selling mods has me disillusioned as to where things are going. Today I learned that Space Engineers might follow suit.

This is a early access game which is no where near complete wanting to make more money by getting the community to build content for it. Will they opt for the gold standard 75% cut of profits ?

Because of this, I utterly refuse to even think of getting Medieval Engineers.

Garrys Mod as well and I am waiting for Bohemia to say something about Arma.

If you want to make money from modding I feel you are better off getting Unreal or Unity and selling assets in their assets store or building a complete game. These days I am tinkering away inside Unreal and if I do make something worth selling I am going to get a far better return on money earned:

Once you make over $3000 a quarter with Unreal you pay Epic 5% of your earnings. This is a good Deal.

With Unity 5 you must buy Pro once you make over $100k. Even better deal

Steam workshop, they take 75% of what you make.

So if your like me and don't like all this rubbish, what can you do about it. One of the best things you can do is stop buying games that support this money grab. You can also buy games off other platforms. Here is the prefect example.

If you are going to get the Witcher 3:

PLEASE BUY IT OFF WWW.GOG.COM

You loose nothing but gain so much.

1) The game is cheaper
2) You are directly supporting the devs CD Projekt Red
3) You get a DRM Free version of the game

This is the prefect example of a protest option. Valve get no cut of the game as it isn't a steam works title.
I know I will be checking other platforms before buying something off steam.

Elite Dangerous now on Steam

You can now buy Elite Dangerous via steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/359320/?snr=1_4_4__106

And the NZ price isn't too bad.

I have been playing this game now for a year and have enjoyed every part of it. It breaks my

EvE -> Freelancer -> X3 -> Back to EvE cycle

I would start on EvE but feel that the universe was just disconnected and boring, so I would move onto the faster pace Freelancer but then loose interest due to lack of ship management and choice so then I would move onto X3 and find another stale universe that lacked multiplayer. Then I end up back in EvE.

Now its just Elite -> Elite for me its the perfect space game. I can dip in and out of multiplayer, experience and do everything on offer without the need of a large group of other people with their own agenda.

Steam tags were good idea, then users abused them and now devs

The prime example was Line of Defense by DEREK SMART.

Sure it was copping a lot of flak but the tag, 'Overpriced port of a moblie game' was very truthful even if he is spending to much time trying to defend that it isn't.

As stated in the FAQ for steam tagging beta:

Q. What if I don't agree with a tag that has become popular for my game?

A. Tags can be a good indicator of when there is a mismatch between how you perceive your game, and how your game is perceived by customers. Often this is simply because there is some piece of information regarding the game that customers feel is missing from the store page.

The game is perceived to be a mobile port. It screams of it on the store, the very first screenshot is this:

But don't worry, the PC version includes 1000 CEP as part of the price .....

Still this isn't a post about what is and isn't porting. Its about the tagging system and how people perceive games.

Here are the current tags on the store page:

Scam might be a bit harsh, Overpriced yes, but its not a scam. Also I can't comment on Desktop Commander as that would require the game to exit to the desktop with no error or warning. Something that is very hard to do using Unity.

One thing that could cut down on targeted tag abuse would be making that only those who own the game can tag it but I don't think the tags should be so easily removed. Unless they are offensive in nature. 

Anyway, tagging still has potential to be a great system. I have been tagging Unity built games ( like the one above ) so long as negative tags can be added without fear of being removed.

Deep Silver Saints Row 4: Price Gouging

I was keen on getting Saints Row 4 after the last trailer, that was until I saw this on Steam, see if you can spot the difference:

The top one is the price that appears if I log in via steam, the bottom on is shown if I look at the steam site without logging in. Basically they are slapping $20 USD onto the price just to sell it to New Zealand.

This isn't steam but the publisher Deep Silver who is Gouging us. Saints Row 3 from THQ didn't have this non-us tax slapped on.

So I will not be buying the game, I will also not be pirating the game as I have just lost all interest at this point but I know it will get pirated a lot more because of this.

Deep Silver aren't the only ones practising this scam on steam. As shown here, only Bohemia Interactive and Sony aren't ripping us off. 2K Games, Bethesda, Sega all should be ashamed of themselves. 

Steam viewed from outside the USA

Steam from inside the USA

Grimrock is better on Steam

I recently re brought the Legend of Grimrock when it was on sale over the weekend on steam. Originally I had the Good old games version ( as it was announced on there first ) but when the editor came out with steamworks the Good old games version was left out in the cold with only the Nexus for mods.

Since re buying it on steam I have gotten back into the game in a big way and its great to be playing dungeon crawlers again. Finding secrets, wondering what to do when you run out of food ( current situation as I scavenge the lower levels for monsters to eat ) and just what is the game going to throw at me next.

Already the mods being made for the game are amazing with new tilesets and monsters. Everything is modable in the game and it is now a complete dungeon crawler construction set.

Steam workshop just makes it easier to browse the mods and the nexus for the ones to large to fit on steam.

Dear Esther now on steam

This is a Half-life 2 mod which I have been following for a very long time. It is now on steam for $9.95

http://store.steampowered.com/app/203810/

I usally don't like buying mods but as this provides a single player expereance I will be picking it up.