Nathan Grayson

Steam Users Love Ravenfield, Even Though It’s Pretty Glitchy

Ravenfield fascinates me. The Battlefield-inspired large-scale FPS just launched on Steam and rocketed to the top of the sales charts. Its reviews are over 90 percent positive. I’ve played it, however, and it’s barely functional in some places. Why is it getting a free pass from the Steam quality control mafia? I can see what…

Thousands Of People Are ‘Playing’ A Hidden Steam Game

Spacewar is a game that draws thousands of players every day. If you search for it on the Steam store, though, you’ll never find it. You might recognize the name. Spacewar is, after all, Valve’s take on an influential early video game that went by the same name. It’s an extremely basic space shooter where…

Valve Making Big Changes To Steam Trading Cards To Combat ‘Fake Games’

Steam is littered with games of, shall we say, questionable quality. This has been a known issue for quite some time. Only recently, however, has Valve begun to directly address it. Last month, they said they’re taking aim at so-called “fake games.” Now they’ve detailed their first plan of attack. As Steam users have long…

Torment: Tides of Numenera just got a big update. It’s free and includes a new companion, Oom, as well as a codex. There are also improvements to crises, character progression, and the UI. If you want to try the new stuff—especially Oom—inXile recommends that you start a new game.

Guy Gets His Dad To Reenact Overwatch Emotes

It’s Friday. Finally! Obviously, it’s time to unwind the same way you do every Friday: by watching a video of somebody’s dad. Nick Luciano got his dad to reenact a bunch of emotes from Overwatch. His dedication to accuracy is surpassed only by the sheer will he’s forced to conjure to stifle his laughter. The…

The Five Highest Rated Games On Steam Probably Aren’t What You Expect

Of the 100 billion games on Steam, one for every star in the sky, which are the absolute cream of the crop? Which have users rated the highest? To borrow a cliche from The Bad Internet, the answer may surprise yo—[vomits profusely]. Seriously, though, you’re probably expecting a bunch of Valve games and maybe, like,…

Steam’s Latest Hit Is Like Castlevania, Except More Random

My favorite moment in Dead Cells so far came right after I won my first boss fight. I gained the ability to make climbable vines sprout from certain surfaces, allowing me to access areas I hadn’t previously been able to. Classic Metroidvania stuff, right? The twist: Dead Cells’ levels, unlike those of a Castlevania or Metroid,…

Blizzard Responds To Controversial Rumors Of $20 Million Overwatch League Buy-In Fee

Blizzard’s official Overwatch League is supposed to be the thing that catapults Overwatch esports to the next level. This week, though, it’s become an ominous cloud hanging over the scene. In the past nine days, nine days, no less than five esports organizations have dropped their Overwatch teams. Why so many? And why now? A…

Overwatch Sky Fight Is Some Dragon Ball Z Shit

People might tell you that Overwatch revolves around pithy things like “team compositions” and “the payload,” but they’re wrong. Hideously wrong. Only one thing matters in Overwatch: airborne superiority. This clip is short, but I think I speak for everyone who’s spent their life with the cold shackles of gravity wrapped tight around their ankles…

Prey Runs Remarkably Well On My Wimpy Microsoft Surface Tablet

The other day, my colleagues Kirk and Riley were having a discussion about how miraculously well Prey runs on their gaming PCs. “Good optimization?” I thought. “In a big-budget game with console versions? Obviously, I have to put this to the test.” I travel a lot, so what I wanted to know wasn’t whether Prey…

GTA V‘s Police Are A Danger To Themselves And Others (But Mostly Themselves)

You thought Grand Theft Auto V’s firefighters were bad? The police would like to have a word with you. Documenter of incidental GTA chaos and disaster artist extraordinaire Merfish turned the police into their latest muse. Unlike GTA V’s firefighters, the police had to be provoked a little, but once they turned aggro, things quickly…

Five Pro Gaming Teams Drop Overwatch In One Week [Update]

It’s been a gnarly handful of days for the professional Overwatch scene. Since last Tuesday, four organizations have dropped their Overwatch teams, citing a lack of certainty about Blizzard’s upcoming Overwatch League and potentially prohibitive costs they’ll have to pay in order to join it. Today, esports organization compLexity bid farewell to their Overwatch team…

Battlegrounds Players Win Match Without Killing Anybody

I’ve tried winning PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds matches with pacifism. I’ve tried hiding out, talking to other players, and (very unsuccessfully) blocking bullets with a frying pan. I never believed it was actually possible, though. Eventually death—aka the ever-encroaching blue fog of doom—claims us all. Against all odds, however, Kurtjmac and a partner pulled it off. They spent…

Overwatch’s Hanzo Mains Don’t Think They Deserve All The Hate

In Overwatch, “Hanzo main” is a dirty word. The Japanese marksman has become a joke, an insult bandied about by hardcore players and school children alike. But people keep picking him, sometimes heedless of team composition and multiple all-caps insults. Why? I asked a whole mess of Hanzo mains to find out. The majority of…

Steam just added a widget that helps shed light on why the store is showing you particular games. It’s not crazy in-depth or anything, but it does demystify the processes underlying Steam’s increasingly important algorithm a little bit. Check out Valve’s full post for the reasoning behind this addition.

League Revising Rules After Trans Players Rejected From Women’s CSGO Tournament [UPDATE: Hoax]

UPDATE 5/9/17 12:00 PM: This story seems to have been based on a hoax designed to get BuzzFeed and, by extension, other sites to publish an inaccurate news article. Sly Buehl Rigilio is quoted in a new article on Infowars saying that he and his friends posed as trans women to trick BuzzFeed “for the…

For Twitch Streamer Who Got Swatted On A Plane, Notoriety Is A Double-Edged Sword

Since the end of last week, news reports have been circulating about Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino, a streamer who got swatted while on an airplane and subsequently got banned from Twitch. In his eyes, he was booted unjustly, chewed up and spat out by Twitch’s new “IRL” section. However, this isn’t Denino’s first brush with…

Blizzard Reveals Overwatch Loot Box Odds In China

Overwatch loot boxes feel like goddamn Christmas to open. Then a bunch of garbage spills out, and you feel like a jackass. Some people suspect that they’re rigged. Blizzard, however, insists they’re not, and they’ve finally released official loot box odds to back that up. At least, for China. As part of a new law…

Battlegrounds Will Add Loot Crates And Skins, But Not Until After Early Access

With over two million copies sold, I think it’s fair to say that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is doing alright, money-wise. The developers hopefully will not starve. They do, however, have plans to make more money off the game in the future. But not until it’s “done.” In an interview with Gamasutra, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene said that…

Steam Users Are Concerned About Valve’s New Gift Policy

As part of a recent round of tweaks to Steam, Valve made some subtle quality-of-life changes to Steam’s gifting system. Users, however, pointed out that the consequences are farther-reaching than they initially seem. What the change is: First and foremost, gifting is now more straightforward. Instead of gifting games to a friend’s email address or…