Steam news

[Seawolf]

A service which keeps your savegames online.

They'd talked about the possibility of this before so I was expecting it, but it is damn nice. No more losing stuff to an OS reinstall, at least for games that support it.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52906

Valve today announced Steam Cloud, a free Steam system that will retain users' saved games and configuration files indefinitely.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 will be the first games to support the service. User key mappings will also be saved in Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead will ship with the feature.

If players are offline, the service will store the data and then add it to the network on the next connection. According to Valve, saved games and configurations will be stored forever.

Valve further noted that the service will be freely available to developers, and is set to launch in the "near future."

The company also detailed plans for several new Steam systems, including a driver auto-updater and calendar functionality.

Another feature in development is a system-requirement checker. The program will analyze your hardware and compare it to multiple games, estimating your performance and recommending upgrades.

Valve is also considering storing replay videos and kill-cam screens from games such as Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source.

thread renamed from
Valve announces Steam Cloud
to
Steam news
impar

[impar]

Greetings!

[powerarmour]

That's a pretty good idea in theory, but we'll see how it works in practice. I'd imagine all your saves/quicksaves would get uploaded after you quit the game, otherwise the save delay would be annoying.

[Seawolf]

I imagine so. I lost my savegames right at the end of Portal and HL2 ep2, so this may be late but it'll save me from having that problem again.

[impar]

Greetings!

[URL=http://storefront.steampowered.com/Steam/Marketing/message/1843/]As a part of our continuing efforts to support the MOD community, we will begin hosting selected MODs directly on Steam starting next week. The first five MODs to ship on steam will be Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic. As always, owners of any Source game will be able to download and play all of these MODs for free.

Once installed, these MODs will appear in your "My Games" list and will receive automatic updates just like other games on Steam. Also, these MODs now take advantage of Steamworks, which provides stat tracking and tighter integration with the Steam community.[/URL]

[impar]

Greetings!

[URL=http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55705]Steam Cloud Launching With Left 4 Dead;
Custom Settings To Be Automatically Backed Up, Applied[/URL]

Valve today confirmed that its cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead, due November 18, will be the first game to pack support for its free Steam Cloud technology, which automatically stores game settings online.

The initial release of Steam Cloud will store keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, along with multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images, on Steam, allowing gamers to easily play with their settings on any Steam-connected PC.

The initial release of Steam Cloud will not archive saved games, Valve confirmed with Shacknews, though the promised functionality "is coming."

[impar]

Greetings!

Steam has now a localised european store. Go here and press "Enable European Currency Beta".

Some prices Steam offers in my IP, followed by direct conversions to £ and US$ using this site:
CoD5 - 54,99€ - 49,35£ - 73,42US$
FarCry2 - 49,99€ - 44,86£ - 66,74US$
L4D - 49,99€ - 44,86£ - 66,74US$
iFluid - 9,99€ - 8,97£ - 13,34US$
Defense Grid: TA - 19,99€ - 17,94£ - 26,69US$
FM2009 - 44,95€ - 40,34£ - 60,01US$
GTA4 - 49,99€ - 44,86£ - 66,74US$
Fallout3 - 49,99€ - 44,86£ - 66,74US$

Lets hope those € prices already include the 20% VAT...

[Doc Oc]

Just as I expected... the same convenient 1:1 dollar-to-euro exchange rate most other games use too. Bah.

[jpr]

Lets hope those € prices already include the 20% VAT...

All prices include VAT where applicable

[impar]

Greetings!

Lets hope those € prices already include the 20% VAT...

All prices include VAT where applicable

Yah. Saw it later.
Even so, Steam continues to disrepect current legislation about invoicing and pricing display.
Should be something like:

49,99€
41,66€ + 8,33 (20% VAT)

Not:

49,99
All prices include VAT where applicable