The ongoing Epic Games vs. Apple dispute over Fortnite on the App Store platform has sprung up some surprising facts. Apparently, Epic has spent a massive $1 billion since September 2019, getting game studios to launch their titles exclusively on the Epic Games Store (EGS). It This sledgehammer fashion of taking market-share away from Steam rides almost entirely on investor money, and the firm's next $1 billion funding round is already underway. Epic aims to have as many as 52 exclusives on its storefront in 2021. The meteoric rise of EGS dates back to late 2018, when it gave away fairly new AAA games for free, a move that cost it $11 million, but generated a large number of new sign-ups to the platform. From here, the store rode on offering game studios a greater revenue share of games sold than Steam does, and additional incentives for exclusives.

A new fan-made mod for Valve's classic (I think we can say classic) Portal 2 has been made available on Steam, bringing a plethora of new content to the fine wine puzzle game. The mod, named Portal Reloaded and available on Steam for anyone who already owns a copy of the original game, adds a grand total of 25 new test chambers to out-think and out-puzzle, alongside a brand new mode for the Portal Gun - a Time Travel one. This Time Travel portal joins the classic blue and orange ones, and gives players the ability to jump 20 years into the future so as to be able to wreck havoc with the time continuum all in hopes of solving just... one... more... test chamber.

The mod includes 100 new voice lines and an original soundtrack, and should bring veterans or newcomers to the Portal series a new reason to stay awake until dawn breaks. Be careful when bringing cakes from the future, however - we all know what happens to people who want their cake and eat it too. Check some of the trailers explaining the new mechanics after the break.

Steam Link is a program developed by Valve which allows gamers to remotely play games from their main computer on other devices. The program originally launched for Android before expanding to iOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, tvOS, and now macOS. The Steam Link application relies on Steam Remote Play technology which performs real-time H.264 video streaming over a low-latency protocol to the connected device, resolutions of up to 4K 60 FPS are possible if enough bandwidth is available. The Steam Link app is now available to download through the official Mac App Store and comes in at just 30 MB. Steam Link for Mac requires macOS 10.13 or higher along with a PC to host the games running on the same local network.

Apple and Epic Games have had quite a turbulent history of legal issues in the past year. Fortnite, the world's biggest battle royale game, got removed from the Apple store because its developer, Epic Games, had refused to comply to store rules. If a developer is listing a game on the Apple store, all in-game payments must be processed through Apple, with the company taking a 30% tax cut for it. Epic Games didn't like that idea too much, so the company just used an external system that gave players the option to pay for in-game goods using different ways. However, that represented non-compliance to Apple store guidelines, and Apple took the Fortnite game down.


Update February 26th 07:50 UTC: In thecourt hearing on Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered that Apple's subpoena was considered valid. Valve's lawyers urged the judge to not force the company to produce the requested data, however, Apple's lawyers have said that the request is doable and the company is only requesting data on a few hundred games, and it could have been worse by requesting data on over 30000 games instead.

Valve has recently been ordered to pay 4 million USD in damages after they knowingly infringed on patents owned by Ironburg Inventions with the Steam Controller rear grip button design. Ironburg Inventions is the IP-holding arm of controller manufacturer SCUF who was acquired by Corsair in late 2019. Valve was warned by Ironburg Inventions in 2014 that their Steam Controller infringed on their patent relating to rear-side control surfaces. Valve ignored the warning and went on to produce 1.6 million units before discontinuing the device in 2019. The Jury awarded Ironburg Inventions 4 million USD in damages and found that Valve willfully infringed on Ironberg's patents which opens them up to further litigation. Corsair has published a statement on the case which can be found below.

SteamDB has recently received a leaked email to Steam partners confirming the dates for Steam's next sale. The Steam Lunar New Year Sale 2021 will take place from February 11th to February 15th. Steam regularly sends out emails like this to their developers so that they can prepare for upcoming sales. These emails aren't supposed to be made public. Steam will also be having a Game Festival early next month before the Lunar New Year Sale where they will be releasing free demos for upcoming titles and highlighting indie games.

Steam has started off 2021 by breaking it's concurrent player record with a new peak of 25,416,720 players. This new record comes after the previous peak of 24 million was reached in December. This increase in concurrent players can be attributed to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 and the COVID-19 lockdowns across the world. Several older titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Rust all continue to provide a large number of concurrent players. This record is likely to be broken again as lockdowns continue.

Steam has recently published their Best of 2020 awards which highlight the best selling, and most played games of 2020. The awards include six categories including Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Top Selling VR Games, Top Early Access Graduates, Most Played Games, and Top Controller Games. The 100 games in each list are ranked as Platinum (1st - 12th), Gold (13th - 24th), Silver (25th - 40th), and Bronze (41st - 100th) with each rank of games being randomly sorted.

Starting with the Top Sellers we have Grand Theft Auto V, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, DOOM Eternal, Monster Hunter: World, Dota 2, Among Us, Destiny 2, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive all taking the top platinum rating.

The 15th Annual Steam Winter Sale is on now thru January 5th, offering big savings on thousands of titles, new seasonal items in an upgraded Points Shop, and the chance to vote for the final nominees in the 5th Annual Steam Awards.

In addition to offering massive savings on thousands of titles, the Steam Points Program is updated for the event with new seasonal items -- including animated stickers, avatars, and the Seasonal Profile -- plus additional upgrades and community awards to redeem for Steam Points. Meanwhile, Steam Chat now includes in-line chat reactions with emoticons and animated stickers.

Whether you're at work, on the bus, or playing at home, you can now browse your personalized Steam News Hub to easily find updates, announcements, and events for the games you play, wish list, and follow. The News Hub is designed to be flexible and personalized around your games and preferences, with many customization options built in. By default, the News Hub shows posts from the games you play, wish list, follow, or are recommended. Or, if you want to take full control, you can change all that with a few quick setting adjustments in the left-hand menu. Plus, you can choose to follow and receive news from dozens of top gaming news sources across a variety of languages.

First launched as an experiment in Steam Labs in March, the News Hub has been developed with the feedback of players along the way. Today it becomes a full feature of Steam and replaces the previous news feed found at /news.

Steam has recently recorded a new peak concurrent player record of 24,804,148 users, this record comes after the previous record was broken in March as lockdowns and stay at home orders were issued. The release of Cyberpunk 2077 is a driving factor of the cause of this new record as the game recorded over 1 million concurrent users. The game had sold over 8 million pre-orders across all platforms leading up to its release with Steam sales accounting for over 50 million USD. This stellar release combined with the growing popularity of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also surpassing 1 million concurrent players helped break the previous record.

Thanks to our most recent Steam client update, all games currently using the Steam Input API are now fully compatible with the new PS5 controller - with no developer updates required, it just works.

Full support for the LED, trackpad, rumble and gyro features are available for players to configure in games such as Death Stranding, No Man's Sky, Horizon: Zero Dawn and more. This support is now available for players opted into the public beta Steam desktop client with platform wide support targeted to ship after further testing.

Electronic Arts have recently confirmed that Apex Legends will be coming to Steam when Season 7 launches on November 4, 2020. Players with existing progression and unlocks can transfer their progress from Origin to Steam and vice versa. The game will still require an EA account to play even if launched through Steam. EA also announced that the Nintendo Switch version has been delayed to 2021 but will include full feature parity and cross-play support with existing platforms.

Available now through Steam, Chat Filtering allows people to customize the language they see from others on the platform. The new Steam feature takes the chat filtering we built for games like CS:GO, Destiny 2, and Dota 2, and moves it into Steam for a customized experience that is consistent across supporting games, the Steam desktop client, web, and mobile chat experiences.

By default, strong profanity and slurs from people you don't know are now obscured in Steam Chat and supporting games. You can set your preferences to turn this off, or to control whether you want the default filters to also apply to chat messages from your Steam Friends. You can also select the type of language that is filtered. And because each player's tolerance for difficult words is unique, we've included the ability to add or remove words to form your personal filter. You may also upload lists of words or phrases from other sources, enabling groups and communities to work together to define and share your own sets of language guidelines. We believe this level of control is especially important given that language is constantly evolving and is used differently among various communities around the world. With Steam chat filtering, we've made sure you can choose to filter language as much as you want, or not at all.

It's time for players of all skill levels to lace up their boots and step into the ring: WWE 2K Battlegrounds is here! Developed by Saber Interactive and available now for the PlayStation 4 system, the Xbox One family of devices, including the Xbox One X and Windows PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch system and Stadia for $39.99, WWE 2K Battlegrounds brings fast-paced action and an assortment of power-ups, special moves, unconventional melee items and interactive environments to take the brawl to the next level. Players can take on the challenges alone or compete with friends and family on the couch or online in cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes.

"We're excited to add WWE 2K Battlegrounds to 2K's growing portfolio of WWE and licensed sports properties, and to offer yet another way for gamers to enjoy WWE video game action," said David Ismailer, President at 2K. "This arcade-style brawler offers a completely different experience from our WWE 2K simulation franchise and WWE SuperCard collectible card battling game, that we're confident fans will enjoy."

Microsoft is gearing up for release of the Definitive Edition for Age of Empires III, the latest release (looking way back at 2005) in the acclaimed RTS series. The new Definitive Edition will see 4K graphics, rebuilt 3D assets, a modernized UI, cross-play multiplayer, and fully enhanced soundtrack and audio. It will also feature all expansions released for the original game (The WarChiefs and The Asian Dynasties). All in all, we're talking about three full campaigns, and a total of 16 playable civilizations (14 from the original game and expansions, and two new factions in the form of the Incas and Swedes).

Interesting to note is that Microsoft realized they weren't faithfully representing Native American civilizations and their cultures in the original game, and "worked with tribal consultants to respectfully and accurately capture the uniqueness of their peoples, history, and cultures". As a result, "returning players will find there's been some fundamental changes to the Native American civilizations ".

EA has recently added Steam achievements to a number of their games on the platform after popular demand. EA has enabled over 1000 Steam achievements for a large number of recently released games including Battlefield V, Titanfall 2, and Need for Speed Heat. These Steam achievements will be awarded retroactively to gamers who have already complete the achievement on Origin or in-game. The full list of games that have received achievements on Steam can be viewed below.

IO Interactive revealed that Hitman 3, the next chapter in the stealth assassin sim, will be exclusively available on the Epic Games Store, for the PC platform. This marks a departure from over a decade of Hitman releases on Steam, including its most recent entry, the 2018 Hitman 2. Hitman 3, like the previous two titles since the franchise's 2016 reboot, will be a collection of locale-specific missions that are loosely interconnected by a storyline. With Hitman 3 transitioning to Epic Games Store, it will be interesting to see if the game retains the seamless campaign experience of Hitman 2, which let you play forward from Hitman 2016 missions, onward to new missions from Hitman 2. IOI Announced that Hitman 3 arrives in January 2021.Update 06:40 UTC: Turns out, that the EGS exclusivity is for 12 months only. Want the game on Steam? Wait until January 2022.

Intel recently announced its 10th Gen Core KA line of Socket LGA1200 desktop processors that are co-branded by Marvel's Avengers, complete with fancy retail channel packaging that's sure to attract collectors from the Marvel fanbase. Turns out, that the box doesn't actually include the game by Square Enix, as discovered by momomo_us. A fine-print on the bottom left corner of the front face of the retail box reads "Game Not Included." All you really do get is a fancy box that's been designed by artist Tristan Eaton. Some retailers may include plushies such as the one pictured below, which obviously cost less than a copy of the game. Marvel's Avengers (the game) releases on September 4, 2020, and is up for pre-order on Steam for $59.99.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has recently launched to mixed initial reactions with many users on Steam frustrated with the current install system. When downloaded through Steam Microsoft Flight Simulator initially installs just a small launcher which then proceeds to download the 150 GB game. The problem is Steam's playtime counter starts when this launcher is opened and with install times taking upwards of 3 hours on a 500 Mbps connection the two hour refund window expires before you can get into the actual game. Players have suggested an extension to the refund time window with many expressing their frustration with negative reviews for the game causing the average to drop to just 6/10.

Valve has recently updated it's Steam Community Hub policies to prohibit the mentioning of non-Steam versions of games, this likely comes as competition increases in the largely stagnant PC gaming market from the likes of the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Game Pass for PC. This will mean that the Steam Community Hub will no longer include mentions to releases on other platforms. These new rules apply to both releases and DLC effectively stopping the promotion of other platforms on Steam.

SteamIn the game you ship via Steam, and in communications on Steam, you may only promote the Steam version and its availability via Steam, and not other distribution outlets. This applies both to full versions of your game and to content patches that change the existing version.

EA is preparing to launch its game subscription service EA Access on Steam. The EA Access service grants access to a library of over 70 EA games, this is the first time the program will be available outside of the company's Origin launcher. The game subscription service will cost 4.99 USD per month or 29.99 USD per year and includes major titles from the Battlefield, Need for Speed, Plants vs Zombies, and STAR WARS Battlefront series. Program members will also receive a 10% discount on all EA games & DLC along with a 10 hour early access period for certain new titles. This will be the fourth platform to receive the program after the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Origin client.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is the latest game from Mediatonic which launched to impressive levels of popularity this week. The game which is available on PS4 and Steam has recently overtaken Grand Theft Auto V to peak as the fourth most played game on Steam at 124,772 consecutive players before dropping back down to fifth. The casual multiplayer game has received mostly positive reviews on Steam but has faced various server issues over the last few days due to the unforeseen demand. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is now available on Steam here for 19.99 USD.

EA has recently decided to break away from the exclusivity of its games on Origin game launches and started to offer some games on Valve's Steam gaming platform. The move has turned out to be quite substantial for EA and Valve just reported some big news. Out of the top 20 best-selling games on Steam for the month of July, EA games accounted for eight of them. This rather massive share is all thanks to the new markets EA opened themselves to. Without a doubt, Steam is still the world's biggest gaming platform, so it was a smart move to expand the availability of games to it. The financial gains follow as well. EA saw a massive 74% surge in PC revenue it is a quarterly report, all thanks to expansion to Steam.

Steam has updated their purchase and pricing restriction in wake of continued abuse from users exploiting regional price-differences via VPN. You may have read about this recently following the availability of PS4-exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn on the PC platform, with the release being priced differently by the publisher according to the purchase region of its respective users. However, one way users found to circumvent these restrictions and purchase games at a lower price was to use a VPN service and appear as if they were connecting from one of the lower-priced regions. This prompted a price-hike for Horizon: Zero Dawn in those exploited regions - sometimes by as much as 389%. Such was the case for Argentina, where the game, which was originally being sold for ARS$539,99 ($7,47) got its price hiked to ARS$2100 ($29,06). The game was being sold in US-based stores for $39.

Now, Steam is forcing currencies used on the purchase to match those of the country where the purchase is (apparently) being made. This means you can't pay in dollars a game that is priced in Argentinian pesos or any other currency. This move by Steam aims to keep pricing fair according to users' and countries' purchasing power, and aims to protect users with lower purchasing power from price-hikes derived from the exploitation of regional pricing. An Argentinian user, where the country's minimum wage is set at $233,55, now is protected from users with higher purchasing power being responsible for game price hikes that mean it costs them 10% of their minimum wage to get a single game from the Steam store. You can replace Argentina with any other country that saw its regional pricing being abused via VPN-hidden users who wanted to take advantage of the price difference. I can hear some Game of Thrones bells ringing in the distance.