I have a Defense Grid key that I don't need and am happy to give to somebody.

That is a great game.

Portal 2 for $5? Hell yes.

Pro Cycling Manager 2012 is $19.99 for another 3 hours.

Couldn't pass up on Pro Cycling Manager at that price, but the manual is corrupt through Steam which is annoying as hell. Anyone had any luck getting to the manual/downloading it? I get a ton of Adobe Acrobat errors and then crash.

I checked to see if I could download and view it. Works fine for me, but I'm using PDF Xchange and not Adobe as my reader. PM me with your email and I can send it if you'd like.

The manual opens fine for me in Chrome's PDF viewer. Any luck opening this link with Chrome if you can.

That worked fine, thanks. Seems to be a different link from the one in Steam.

A newb question that I didn't see covered - how do you make money/avoid bankruptcy?

I've started a few test games and been in the red after a couple months each time. Is it purely rewards for winning races/meeting your sponsors goals or am I doing something horribly wrong? Seems like I usually start with just enough balance to cover one month of rider salary and after a preseason training camp I'm in trouble by the time February rolls around

you guys who just bought PCM will want to hit up pcmdaily.com for real-name databases and tips

anyone play Driver SF? been reading theres some freezing issues having to do with the DRM.

I passed on Driver...lots of bad DRM with that one. I got Burnout Ultimate Box instead but cant play it :(

Seems Valve ran out of cd keys and a lot of people can't play it. Sucks

I jumped on it with 30 seconds to go :D


can you (or anyone) tell me if i´m missing sth or if it isn´t possible : I want to sim ahead a couple weeks or even a full season but can´t find a possibility to do it, all i can do is sim 1 day :confused:


Also, i downloaded the expansion pack with mirrors and the files seem messed up. I then seem to have fixed them and installed them but can´t choose the Database in the options :confused: I can however choose the different variants for the TDF when doing a stage race, so the install seems to have worked .


@ bhlloy : What team do you go with ? And did you start on easy, normal or hard ? On "hard", you´ll loose money unless you get pretty good prize money (on normal the budget should at least cover the salary, on easy you have extra to spend)

Unfortunately you can only see the prize money for stages in the calendar, not for the whole race :(

Are there any decent tutorials or beginners guides for Pro Cycling Manager?

Well i just finished buying my last game of the sale. Here's the damage heh

Portal 2 $5
Crusader Kings II $9.99
Crusader Kings II Sword of Islam $2
Binding of Isaac Wrath of the Lamb $2
Hard Reset: Extended Edition $3.74
Toy Soliders $3
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic $2.75
Left 4 Dead 1+2 $10
Europa Universalis III $7
Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012 $4
The Longest Journy $2.75
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit $5
Burnout: The Ultimate Box $4
Dungeon Defenders Lost Eternia Shards Complete DLC $3.75
Galactic Civilizations II $5
Divine Divinity $3.99

Total $71.98

Not bad...was hoping for some other games to go on sale, but there were so many repeats in this sale. I liked the Chrismas Sale better, i miss the achievements

edit: forgot about portal 2 heh

My damage was Legend of Grimrock and then just now Galactic Civilizations II. Great deal on that one-two or three expansion packs plus the original game.

My wallet :cry:

dola -

I really want to bite on Bioshock today as I have never played it. But I think I have too much.

Has anyone played Airline Tycoon 2? Doesn't look like it's a good buy at $20, but at $7, it might be...

It's good to be a PC gamer.:)

The hardest part is figuring out which one to play

man, Super Meat Boy is fun. i forgot i got in a Bundle a while back

One of my favorites games. :)

Interestingly enough I fired this one up randomly last night. I only really play it for 20-30 mins maybe every couple of months, but it's a great little time waster.

SMB is fun and really hard. Even though I had played that a lot, I hadn't picked up Binding of Isaac until this sale and I am now totally hooked. Love the twisted sense of humor of this game and it's definitely a challenge.

yeah Isaac is a great game, just wish it wasnt in flash. I suck at it, but its fun to play heh

just ended my spending spree with the addition of Jade Empire that never went lower than 50% off but that I really wanted to get...

In all, that's 15 games I got:
FM2012
Binding of Isaac Complete
Skyrim
Tropico 4
From Dust
Civilization 5
Left 4 Dead 2
Witcher Enhanced Edition
Shogun 2 Collection
Assassin's Creed director cut
Recettear
Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate
Risen
NFS Shift 2 Unleashed
Jade Empire

Total spent comes to 119.41 for stuff that's regularly price at 398.81, or all in all, 70% off. Not all bad and plenty to play for quite a while...

One that's getting me frustrated though is Skyrim. got it started the other evening, went throught the first 30 minutes without a glitch, up to where you pick a race for yoru character. Picked one and saved right after that. Since that time, every time I try to start the game, I'm getting a hang up and a message that says "failed to initiate renderer". Even if I go to "options" and ask the default so the game would pick graphic levels for me, it says the game has picked "high" level for graphics. I'm a bit frustrated by this, probably even more since that was the one game I spent the most money on.

My computer is a brand new laptop, Dell XPS15 with an i7 cpu, 8GB RAM and a GeForce GT540M for graphic card with 2 GB of VRAM.

Only thing I did after the time the game ran well is update my videocard drivers, which actually should help it, not make the game not work...

FM

dola, and for those who didn't know, FM2012 is selling for $7.49 in this last round of deals...

FM

I didn't pay much attention to the Christmas but while I liked the flash deals a lot early on in this sale, it turned out to take away a lot of my fun in the last few days for the regular deals. Same goes for the Community votes deals. many of the same games came back a few times in the rotation and when the fun 1pm time would come, they were all games I had bought when they first appeared in flash sales...

FM

Like I posted earlier. I had to stay out of this one for the most part. My PC's are already loaded with games that I have intended to get to but haven't and my PC's have been passed somewhere in about the last 12-18 months and can't play the newer games. Having said that, I added the DLC for Frozen Synapse, Portal 2, and Recettear.

FM, have you tried going into NVidia Settings, Manage 3D Settings, Add the executable for Skyrim, select High-performance NVIDIA Processor.

I have the same video card on my ACER Aspire 4750G.

For some reason, a lot of the Steam Games detect the GT540M and set their settings accordingly, but the one that's actually running is the Intel Integrated Graphics Chip.

This should force the Laptop to switch to the NVIDIA processor whenever you load the game. I do this for all my games, essentially.

yeah, I'd read about this, the Optimus technology in the GT540M not managing the GPU the right way, and I tried it last night. Still not working though :(

Kinda pissed and tired of trying. Will play some of the other games for now and will get into it at some point.

Thanks for trying.

FM

I liked the Christmas sale better myself, and have the same feelings about the flash sales kind of cannibalizing the daily deals by the end. There are rumors that some achievements will appear once the sale ends (so later today, I suppose), based on clues and hints that have appeared in the daily images and news releases. I guess we'll see. I'm happy to have acquired my King of the Fort badge regardless :)

Yeah, I could do without the Flash deals as well. Just give me the deals for each day and give me 24 hours to spend my money. Didn't feel like it added anything and in some cases made me frustrated that I missed something. When your customers get frustrated rather than having a blast like they usually do, you're going down the wrong path. I didn't buy nearly as much as I usually do solely for that reason.

I don't know, I can't say I was ever frustrated by the flash sales, especially because everything seemed to come up at least 2 or 3 times by the end of the entire sale. Pretty hard to completely miss something. And I only bought less than the Christmas sale simply because I still have so many 'leftovers' from that exact Christmas sale that I couldn't justify adding too many more games to my backlog at this point.

I mostly just missed the achievements and the coal and presents and stuff. They were just an element of fun that was gone this time around.

I did the same, and as always buying something is a sure way to get something to go on sale. Sure enough, the never on sale Jade Empire is 75% off for $3.75 today.

Save 75% on Jade Empire™: Special Edition on Steam



:lol:

JE is kind of odd that it falls in the area of the worst Bioware title but yet, that's like saying the worst Pixar movie. It's a rarity of a game for me since I actually completed it. I liked it. I just wanted more.

I've never played JE, but is it really worse than Dragon Age II?

So it's the Cars 2 of BioWare games?

No, much better than Dragon Age 2. Not up to Bioware's previous level of standards, but not a bad game.

I've got a 540 in my laptop and had the same problem back in November. Specifying it explicitly like this in the Nvidia console solved the problem.

well, that's annoying. Sure, it's only $3.75 we would have saved, but heck, it's annoying. And as you called it, "the never on sale Jade Empire". Have had it on my wishlist since some long time ago Steam sale and I never really saw its price drop until I saw this 50% on the sale... Oh well.

FM

the whole theme of Jade Empire appealed to the martial artist in me VERY much. Looking forward to playing it a great deal...

FM

didn't work for me and frankly, I'm stumped... everything says my laptop should be able to run this game, and it did run it, for a good 30 minutes without one hint of glitch but now something is keeping it from starting the game :(

FM

I actually had a different problem with the flash deals. I didn't mind them in theory, it was just that with games coming up 3-4 times between flash deals and daily deals it kept giving me chances to buy them- and not in a good way. What I mean is I would talk myself out of buying a game I didn't really need only to have it show up again in a day or two and I had to debate getting it all over again. Fortunately I remained mostly strong but I did get Left4Dead 2 after talking myself out of it twice (not that the $4.99 was that bad of a hit).

I said in the area. I didn't play DA II either. It is worth for it less than $4 though. The one tournament you enter was fun to play.

Honestly, I'd revert back to the old drivers if they worked.

that's the thing, I don't know which driver version was in there when I got the laptop and didn't think about making a restore point. :banghead: :(

Anyway I could find old Nvidia drivers I could install instead of the one I have now?

FM

I tried to run teh secondary installers mentioned in this thread The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - S - Knowledge Base - Steam Support and rebooted and tried it again, same result :(

FM

Dragon Age II was a pretty good game. Not as good as the first and it had some story structure issues, but it's underrated. Same with Mass Effect 3.

I thought Dragon Age 2 was a terrible game. It was a story that really needed to be driven by good characters but it had a cast of mediocre cliches and party members with inventory options stripped out because the developers didn't think Origins had enough cosplay. The combat ruined any strategic elements by having waves of enemies drop from the sky in the middle of battle and the dedication to, "IF YOU PRESS A BUTTON SOMETHING AWESOME HAS TO HAPPEN." All taking place in the same couple of lazily reused environments.

The reused environments were a problem. Definitely annoying and lazy. I didn't like the stripped down inventory much either.

I didn't feel like the strategic elements of the game were ruined by the waves. I adjusted. Combat and tactics felt very much like the first, save the camera was a bit more difficult to use because of the lack of a true over head view.

I enjoyed it. Much better than most games out there.

i loved DA:O, put in over 60 hours, but for some reason stopped playing....don't know why. Never tried the 2nd one.

Did you update the drivers externally, or via Steam?

Your Laptop Driver CD should contain the original drivers for you nvidia card.

I picked up Jade Empire for 75% off last night, based on my early enjoyment of Dragon Age Origins after picking it up during the summer sale.

How do I?
 

How do I access the product key # for my installed Steam applications?

Right click on the game and click on View Product Key.

didn't think about that. Had rolled back to some past driver last night thanks to Scoonz, then put in the CD just now and installed what was on the CD, a previous version of what I had installed yesterday. Restarted and all yet it still won't play... :(

FM

Is the Dirt series pretty good? Dirt 2 is five bucks on Steam and last thing I need is another game, but the reviews I've seen look pretty positive..

Dirt and Dirt 2 are pretty good racing games but the third I hear is a little bit different and not quite upto the standards of the others (from what I've read, I've not tried it myself).

That's not an option when I right click on any of my steam games either within Steam Library or from program listing in windows or on desktop icons.

Confused????

Product/license/cd key on the right hand menu?

Shift tab when in game?

Should be there.

We've seen what Steam sales can do to our own wallets, here's what it does for developers.

Gamasutra - News - Steam sales: How deep discounts really affect your games


The most surprising part is the sales can be double their previous level after a huge discount and is probably a sign that Valve does a great job using word of mouth advertising with Steam, and managing to do it without the requirement that people actually go out and tell their friends about games. Logging onto Steam and seeing that 5 of your friends you play games with are all playing a new game is likely better at getting someone to buy a new game than any review score or ad campaign.

well, I'll be damned! Skyrim works!!!

Long story short, I had bought a Targus docking station with my laptop and was having problem getting it to send the video feed to my external monitor using the right video card. Had even put in a customer service call to Targus. Guy was now asking me to download some beta DisplayLink driver and it after downloading/installing it and seeing it didn't fix the problem, I realised that this was another driver on top of drivers and it was sort of taking control of the resolution of both my laptop screen and monitor. I simply just uninstalled that DisplayLink driver and voilà, Skyrim works!

I'm now stuck with a useless docking station, but that's the least of my problem. Skyrim works! :)

FM

here's one guy reporting something similar:
Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion with Displaylink usb monitors - The Nexus Forums

And to Scoobz who really tried to help me the other night, I'm sorry I failed to report this installation. At the time, my external monitor wasn't hooked up and I never thought this thing could cause problems if I was playing right on the laptop screen...

FM

i had a ton of problems running Fallout 3 on my laptop(HP) and basically gave up. This was several months ago. I haven't tried it on my desktop yet, but I'm sure it will be okay.

and apparently, it was screwing up From Dust too. It was crashing to desktop at start every time I started it before but now seems to be running just fine. Piece of crap software...

FM

Those Steam bastards got me but good.


Jul 22, 2012
$6.23
Purchase
Hydrophobia: Prophecy, Galactic Civilizations II

Jul 22, 2012
$1.99
Purchase
Sequence

Jul 21, 2012
$27.47
Purchase
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Borderlands GOTY - Four Pack

Jul 19, 2012
$16.23
Purchase
The Longest Journey + Dreamfall, Fallout New Vegas Ultimate

Jul 19, 2012
$14.98
Purchase
Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition

Jul 18, 2012
$12.47
Purchase
SimCity 4 Deluxe, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Limbo

Jul 18, 2012
$18.66
Purchase
Bastion + Soundtrack DLC, Carpe Fulger Bundle

Jul 18, 2012
$13.73
Purchase
Torchlight, Summer Sale Indie Bundle Day Six

Jul 17, 2012
$32.48
Purchase
Double Fine Bundle, Batman 1 and 2 and Gotham City Impostors Bundle

Jul 17, 2012
$36.21
Purchase
EU III Chronicles, Dear Esther Game Plus OST, Pendulo Adventure Pack, Summer Sale Indie Bundle Day Five

Jul 16, 2012
$4.99
Purchase
Fallout 3 - Game of the Year

Jul 15, 2012
$16.23
Purchase
Freedom Pack, Civ V GOTY

Jul 14, 2012
$36.94
Purchase
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, Numen: Contest of Heroes, The Witcher 2, Avadon, Frozen Synapse: Complete Pack, Divine Divinity

Jul 14, 2012
$16.22
Purchase
MLB Front Office Manager, From Dust, Football Manager 2012

Jul 13, 2012
$32.18
Purchase
Star Wars: KOTOR, Sanctum 4-Pack, Sanctum: Official Soundtrack, Sanctum Aftermath DLC, Sanctum Killing Floor DLC, Sanctum Penetrator DLC, Sanctum Aftershock DLC, Sanctum Violator DLC, Sanctum Caverns DLC, Sanctum Slums DLC, The Political Machine Preorder, Adam's Venture Complete Pack


I don't want to know what that adds up to. I haven't played any PC games for a while. But I upgraded my system earlier this year. I wanted to catch up with some of the stuff I missed over the past few years.

Wow you got so many games! Let me know when you're done playing them. :)

Just kidding, I spent about $80 this time, but my catalogue is pretty dense right now with over 200 games. I'm able to cherry pick now.

Just Bastion for me. OTOH, I spent several hundred on a new computer, so I'm now able to play games previously purchased that wouldn't run on the old rig. That count? :D

Orcs Must Die 2 on July 30!

Valve launching non-game software on Steam this September | Joystiq

Steam will start selling software other than games later this year.

Very much looking forward to this :)

When are they going to start distributing TV Shows, Books and Movies. I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't already working on that. Amazing what Valve has accomplished with Steam.

I think that Indie Game: The Movie was probably a test run for how they could sell videos, so it would surprise me if that they will add before too long.

is Valve a publicly traded company?

No.

Valve is privately owned with no management which is one of the reasons they can sometimes take so long to release games or implement features, but also one of the reasons their games are so damn good.

For those of you who play Dungeon Defenders, the new Jester hero class is free on Steam through August 22nd.

Steam Greenlight

Steam Greenlight is live.

happy I missed this. Wow. The Longest Journey one would have got me. Jade Empire Dragon Age for SURE!

Steam Greenlight :: IHF Handball Challenge 12

HANDBALL CHALLENGE MUST COME TO STEAM!

Big Picture

So I take it this is separate from their announced HW platform. It is just a Steam client optimized for 1080p from what I can gather.

Wow, I just heard a bunch of virgins and nerds complaining about the transition to controllers.

Looks awesome.

Looks to me like a Apple TV version of Steam. Me likely.

They haven't announced anything as far as hardware yet, it doesn't look like there will be any hardware associated with this anytime soon. Right now it's just a UI designed to be used with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard to make playing on a TV easier. Some sort of set top box that you can plug a controller into and stream from a PC over wifi (sort of like Onlive except on your local network) would be nice for people with their TV and PC in separate rooms though.

I'd also like it if Valve managed to get some developers to have a desktop and big picture UI while adding some sort of "Optimized for Big Picture" of the store, while also making native support for split screen in their own games.

upvoted!

Finally, An In-Built Way To Choose Steam Install Locations | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

About damn time, even if it still takes a little tweaking to get working.

Entering "install_folder_ui" and getting a command not found error. Am I doing it wrong or did they patch this out?

Edit: Skipped over opt in to Beta.

Big Picture Beta is now available on Steam. Looks pretty simple to get started.

Wow.. I just bought Sins of a Solar Empire - Trinty on Steam and this is one fantastic 4x RTS game!!!

Steam X-COM Preorders just hit their target for tier 3, which means I get a free copy of Civilization 5. Yay!

Seeing as how I already have Civilization 5, I will gladly gift it to anyone who wants it.

First person to soot me a PM gets it.

Gave Civ 5 out to a lucky FOFCer. Cheers guys.

I've been debating on whether to pre-order War of the Roses or not since it is close to its release date. I went to their official forums. What a train wreck. The people who are "testing" it now are not fans of the game at all it seems. Too bad, I really hoped the spiritual successor to Warband would be a solid game off the bat.

Potential Steam security breach:

Steam browser security loophole spotted | News | PC Gamer

Don't you mean potential Safari breach?

No, it is not only a problem for users on Safari. Safari is the most vulnerable because it is the only major browser that will run Steam:// links without asking the user, though a browser asking the user if they want to run something has never been a completely effective measure. The other issue is that even though other browsers won't automatically run the links by default users may have used a Steam:// link before and told their browser to automatically run them in the future.

The exploit will also work without prompting the user with a webkit, which means anyone using the Steam or the Steam in game browser will be vulnerable.

To check the status/change how Firefox handles Steam links, I have not seen a way to do this with Chrome.

Until there's a fix it might be a good idea not to use the browser in the Steam overlay on anything but sites you absolutely trust.

To make sure Steam links do not automatically open in Chrome.

Is there a way to purchase a gift certificate to Steam? I was on the site last night and I see you can gift games but didn't know if you could just purchase a certificate voucher for someone...