Steam News - July 6, 2007

[CSN NewsBot]

There really wasn't too much new in the July 6 news update.

A few of us around the office took some time playing the recently released Insurgency MOD, which has vaulted into the lead in terms of player numbers for any third party modification. For those of us that played for an hour or two we thought there was a ton of polish for a first release, and a lot of potential around the core of the game in the long term. If you haven't yet, head over to the Insurgency site to download the first beta release and get playing.



Iocaine, a small indie team, has brought Threadspace: Hyperbol to Steam. There's a demo available now and you can prepurchase for 20% off until the full game is released on July 12.



Today we've also launched the official website for the Orange Box, so head on over to the site to learn more about Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.



Finally, you'll be able to read Penny Arcade's brilliant comic strip right in Steam. It will have a home on the front page of Steam, or you can get to it directly by clicking here.

I guess that answers the mystery of "where will the Penny-Arcade comics appear in Steam" question that some had.



I'm still in awe over the Left 4 Dead footage. The Insurgency devs held a Team Speak interview today. Their new patch was supposed to be released by now, but apparently the person in charge of distribution has fallen asleep.

[omgomgz]

This post is reserved for future reference in which I will use to rip on Valve for selling Insurgency on Steam.



Oh, lol.. "BEARLY".. I get it.

[Haklin]

PS...new insurgency update has been released.

[stevomanevo]

I don't play steam anymore as of the last year because I've been stuck on dialup, but I do know this. Steam is a company with one goal. And all of you that disagree are either rich and don't care about 20 bucks or you are victims of advertisement. Steam is a program that was made to advertise shitty third party games to millions of people that they would never be able to sell their crappy games too. Natural Selection is the only third party mod i've ever liked and they didn't start off saying "Try our game now for 20% off! What a deal! For 20 bucks!". I say this because it's true. these third party mods developed by clans shouldn't be sold like they are. this is worse than the tobacco industry.. I really hope more people so this more clearly so people will stop wasting money on these shitty games! And sorry cs-nation for being on this third-part mod topic and I know you guys just do your job to keep the site going advertising.

[InTheFade]

stevomanevo wrote..

I don't play steam anymore as of the last year because I've been stuck on dialup, but I do know this. Steam is a company etc. etc. etc.

Eh? Last time I checked NS was free, and so are most of the mods available.



And stuff that's 20% off are usually new releases. Do you know of any game retailers that give you a discount on a newly released game? I don't know of any. Many of them are also made by independent developers trying to make a break, cut them some slack will you.



PS. Steam ain't a company. Valve is though.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Wow, stevo, what you said is pretty much lacking a lot of logic.



Independent game developers need a place to publish their game, and EA games probably aren't going to pick up a small-time game just like that, despite it (possibly) having such great content.



Steam helps a bit with that. They can make some deserved income from their hard work by getting a chance to publish it over the internet. Albeit they could upload it to their web server, etc etc, but those can be insecure and there's usually an easy way to get around paying to download the game at topic.



And Source mods are free, you tool.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Click here to visit the Insurgency download page, which now features the beta 1.1 patch for clients and servers alike.



Haven't had a chance to test it out yet, so if you have... post your feedback here eh? A big thanks to the Ins team for working this quickly to resolve some of the big issues though. :)



As far as PA goes, their recent comics haven't been too fantastic, but they have some real jewels buried in their archives, a few of which I mentioned in my earlier post on the subject.