Nathan Grayson

Spintires‘ Steam Clusterfuck, Explained

Spintires is a popular Steam driving game. Recently, it stopped working under mysterious circumstances. People came to believe the game’s own programmer, Pavel Zagrebelnyy, sabotaged it because he wasn’t getting paid. That’s (probably) not true. Yesterday, reports emerged that Spintires had more or less become unplayable. Upon digging through its code, players reportedly found tens…

Steam Users Think Valve’s New Trading Restrictions Go Too Far

Wanna use Steam’s market or trading features? Don’t have a compatible mobile phone for security purposes? Then prepare to wait weeks before anything happens. Valve recently announced big changes to Steam’s trade (directly between individual users) and community market (where you can post listings for virtual items to buy/sell) features. If you’re not using the…

Overwatch Player Goes From Hero To Zero In Seconds

There’s nothing more heartwarming than a good comeback… unless you’re on the receiving end of said comeback. Jonathan Larsson pulled off a beautiful play as Tracer, resulting in a four-player multi-kill. Each team is made up of six players, so it was essentially a minor extinction event. The other team was getting awfully close to…

Nice One, Stardew Valley

As somebody who obsessively roots around in video game trash cans, I’m pretty happy with what Stardew Valley gave me for my troubles. Take that, AOL of the year 1996.

BalanCity Is SimCity Meets Jenga

Managing a city is hard. Managing a city that could topple off a teetering platform and into the hungry sea below at any moment is harder. I don’t really know why BalanCity exists, but I’m glad it does. I mean, look at this. It’s goofy as hell: You try to keep your population happy and…

Steam’s Latest Hit Is A Game About Farming And Relationships

I could feel it setting in: the rhythm, comforting as the twang of a slightly out-of-tune guitar. Wake up, clear my field, water my plants, fish for a bit, talk to folks, give gifts to pretty folks, go to bed. Starting Stardew Valley was like a homecoming for me. The home in question? Harvest Moon…

Haunted Counter-Strike Map Is Full Of Ghosts And Dragons

Counter-Strike is a game about terrorists and counter-terrorists locked in an eternal dance of strife and headshots, as viewed by an audience of chickens. Except when it’s not. CTX (⚆‿‿⚆)‘s newly released coop_mission_haunted is one of the most popular maps on Counter-Strike’s Steam Workshop right now, and it’s not tough to see why. The cooperative…

Steam’s Popular Portal Knights Channels Minecraft And Zelda, Comes Up Short

If you want, you can tunnel all the way to the center of Portal Knights’ floating island world. There’s just one problem: it’s hollow. Portal Knights hit Steam Early Access yesterday, and it’s been in the top ten best sellers ever since. If you find yourself thinking, “Gee, that sure reminds me of Minecraft, Terraria,…

‘James Is An Ass’: Gabe Newell Explains Why Valve Fired Dota 2 Commentator [Update]

This week’s $3 million DOTA 2 Shanghai major has been a bit of a disaster. Streams dropping, cameras getting stuck, awkward or non-existent commentary, dead air—it’s been a comedy of errors. On the back of it all, Valve let go of one commentator, James Harding, to a storm of backlash Harding has a reputation for…

Obliteracers Manages 16-Player Local Kart Racing

Obliteracers is an over-the-top kart racer (think Mario Kart meets Twisted Metal) that lets you play against 16 people. In the same room. It’s a recipe for unbridled havoc, and Obliteracers’ developers know it. If you want to, you can control the game with gamepads, laptops, keyboards, and even smart phones. Whatever you need to…

One Of The Best World Of Warcraft Guilds Calls It Quits

Paragon, the famed Finnish mega-guild responsible for multiple world-first World of Warcraft boss kills, is dropping out of the raid game entirely. It’s the end of an era. You might be tempted to chalk this one up as a sign of the times, of WoW’s waning appeal. Guild leader Seita, though, said the decision came…

Remember Punch Club, the game about managing a starving kickboxer? It’s getting a free expansion. It’ll be about three hours long. The plot sounds great. “New storyline where you find a suitcase that pinpoints crimes in the city. Only logical thing to do is put on a mask and start fighting crime.” Truth.

Modder Is Trying To Make XCOM 2‘s Snake Ladies Sexier

I suppose this was inevitable. Somewhat notoriously, XCOM 2 has snake lady enemies called Vipers. They’re alien snake monsters with boobs, which of course flies in the face of hella biology, but whatever. Aliens. They don’t play by our silly, boob-less rules, apparently. Maybe they store venom in there. Or maybe Firaxis didn’t take time…

Valve Is Making Counter-Strike Look Better

After a lengthy update drought, Valve is suddenly lobbing Counter-Strike news like a first-time player haphazardly tossing grenades. First there was the new Nuke (Newke) and Operation, then $1 million CSGO majors, and now new graphical effects. Valve has introduced a whole host of new lighting and shader effects to CSGO (the nitty gritty elements…

The Steam Controller has rumble functionality now… kinda. A new beta update adds “experimental rumble emulation,” which reproduces the feel of rumble despite the fact that Steam Controller’s haptic tech is “a very different technology than rumble motors.”

A Survival Game Based On Actual Survival Techniques

The Flame in the Flood is a survival game that just launched on Steam. It’s not about building, or zombies, or pranking your friends. Just surviving and seeking civilization. That makes sense, given its background. The Flame in the Flood may not strike you as the most realistic-looking game around, but it started from a…

Popular Driving Game OutDrive Just Isn’t Very Good

OutDrive has spent the past couple days near the top of Steam’s popular new releases section, and it only costs a few dollars. What could possibly go wrong? OutDrive is a neon-drenched—or drowned, really—endless driver. Billed as an “aesthetic experiment” with a focus on experiencing music, it looks very nice and sounds even nicer. Unfortunately,…

An Hour With The Solus Project, A Survival Game With An Actual Story

A lot of survival games claim to Not Be Like The Other Survival Games. The Solus Project is actually not like other survival games. While ostensibly sharing at least part of a genre with the likes of Ark: Survival Evolved, DayZ, Rust, and the like, The Solus Project also has a lot in common with…

From now on, all Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major tournaments will offer $1 million prize pools Valve says the massive bump (previously majors topped out at $250,000) is representative of CSGO’s growth into one of the world’s most popular eSports.

A Musical Tribute To Counter-Strike‘s Most Frustrating Moments

Counter-Strike is an amazing, brilliantly tactical game. It can also be total bullshit sometimes. Dragonu Ro put together a song/video tribute to his love-hate relationship with Valve’s perennially popular shooter. [UPDATE: Turns out, he didn’t! He took the video from Stagged, its real creator. Apologies for the error.] From constant container disappointments, to shitty teammates,…