The annual Steam game sale celebration is here, in the form of the Summer Sale. The now legendary platform for games consumption on the PC ecosystem has announced that from today through July 9th, thousands of games are experiencing price cuts that can go up to 90%. If you're planning to get your game fix, and it isn't an EPIC Games Store Exclusive, you can try and pick it up here at a discounted price - provided you can actually reach the site. Storefront price cuts are Devil May Cry 5 (-34%) and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (-50%) but you can also grab Ni-oh, for example, at a 60% discount. The new Summer Sale now features a Steam Summer Grand Prix mode, where users can band together in groups to complete milestones (including unlocking quests and achievements) that will grant users games from their wishlist as they achieve "Pit Stops".

As it stands, it seems there have been some connection issue,s with users reporting "502 - Bad gateway" errors. For me, the page simply appears blank, with not even a single error report shown (after I finished writing this piece, I tried the steam store page again, and it seems to be working - at least for now.

The EPIC confrontation with Valve has become a hot topic in recent months, as a veritable Exodus of titles have migrated to the greener, 12%-limited cut that the EPIC Games Store takes from publishers who put their games on the EPIC Games Store digital storefront. Mostly, user reception of EPIC's practice of securing mostly one-year timed exclusivity deals for games that would otherwise also be available through Steam has left a sour taste oin gamers' mouths, as it is seen as a forced way for EPIC to fracture the PC gaming space.

However, a former Valve developer has come forth to say that in his view, Valve's 30% cut was already way behind the times, and was actually "killing PC gaming". The train of thought is that Steam itself changed Valve from a software company to what mostly amounts to a service provider, with Steam serving as a veritable digital money printing machine, that stole focus from games to games publishing, due to higher margins and much lower development costs. It's interesting - and logical - to assume that the reason an Half Life 3 never saw the light of day was because Valve had its revenue stream well secured in Steam. Why invest for a game that could be a flop, when you can just take a 30% cut from other developers' efforts?

Well, that tweet that fans of the Borderlands seriesfeared meant platform exclusivity on PC actually manifested itself. Gearbox today announced that Borderlands 3, the hit sequel to one of the first loot-shooters, will indeed be releasing on September 13th for all platforms - but will be distributed exclusively on the PC digital platform via the EPIC Games Store. Other storefronts will have to wait until April 2020 to sell copies of the game.

The game will also feature optimized performance for AMD's CPU and GPU portfolio, with AMD aiding in performance optimizations for its Ryzen CPUs, current GPUs and, expectedly, next-generation Navi. The announcement trailer and 2K's press release points to a story-driven shooter, that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford pitched (ahem) as "a love letter to fans of the series, but also as an ideal entry point for new players to jump-in alone or cooperatively, on or off-line, in the latest and greatest installment of the definitive best-in-class benchmark shooter-looter." The announcement trailer follows.

Randy Pitchford is an interesting character even as game company CEOs go, with a.. checkered history in the last few months that go from funny all the way to controversial at minimum. As the head of Gearbox, he holds a lot of power when it comes to the Borderlands franchise, which itself teased a third numbered entry to be revealed at PAX East later this month. His social media activity has been a prime example of what not to do as a CEO owing to some personal and professional issues alike, which meant that this latest tease not only got people looking at more about the Borderlands franchise, but also his twitter account.

Users dug up an old tweet from December 2018 wherein he claimed he was "excited to support the Epic Games Store", and this was enough to initiate concerns that Borderlands 3 might be an exclusive to the Epic Games Store on the PC platform. Subsequent replies did nothing to quell these concerns, although there was nothing to confirm anything either. This may all be making a mountain out of an imaginary molehill, but it makes sense for Epic Games to go after Borderlands 3 to get more customers on their side- especially knowing that such exclusivity deals could be in the millions of US dollars. We will know more when the game is officially announced, so keep an eye out for that.

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Update: Currently only available to consumers in the Continental U.S., Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Canada

We reported earlier this month how Steam users were resorting to review bombing of the previous game entries in the Metro franchise, mostly driven by Deep Silver/Koch Media's decision to take Metro Exodus over to the Epic Games Store for a timed exclusive. 4A developers commented on how this could impact further game development on the PC platform, and that ended up being more kindling to the fire despite some language communication gaps in play. Metro Exodus has since launched, and has been getting reviews from the media and players alike, with the former mostly agreeing it is a good game, but not necessarily as good as the previous entries were. The latter, however, is where things got interesting- especially on Steam.

For those who were able to add the game to their Steam library before it got moved, and there are a lot of those too given Metro Exodus rose to the top spot of best selling titles once that news broke, the game appears to be more than satisfactory at first glance. While many were expecting users to review bomb the title negatively again, the current status of the game on Steam is "Very Positive" as far as user reviews go. Discussions have been mostly on point as well, until you dig deeper. The most helpful reviews, as rated by other Steam users, are really just a dig at the Epic Games Store, with language used that is less mature than the game rating itself. Newer reviews continue to do the same, so perhaps this was an attempt by many to appease the game publisher by leaving positive reviews of the game, but still making it more about the Epic Games store than the game itself. Not the best way to go about things, but it is still better than review bombing the game.

The launch of the new Epic Games store for the PC has created many an aftershock in the gaming industry, including Steam updating their revenue share model, but the games press and media alike were quick to discuss implications more so for the equally new Discord store that understandably is more in line as far as breaking into the market goes, and impact from competition accordingly. In a series of moves that no doubt pleases game developers and publishers alike, Discord announced that they are going to offer a 90/10 revenue distribution with 90% in favor of developers- an increase over the industry leading "up to 88%" from Epic Games until then.

There is a small catch in that Discord is allowing developers to self-publish the games if they so desire, which in turn is how they will get that 90% revenue share, so it remains to be seen how user friendly that process is. Discord in their blog post made a big point about how it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018, a move that will no doubt be examined throughout not only the gaming industry but every single online app distribution platform where a 70/30 split is the current industry standard. As long as this move enables the store to break even and churn out a profit, we would like to see more of this happening to where game developers get more money and do not feel compelled to work ridiculously long hours.

Epic Games has been pulling a few major moves in the PC gaming market lately, none bigger than creating their own game store and following up with shifting over some of their games from Steam. The company promises a more lucrative profit distribution share to developers (to which Valve had preemptively countered slightly with their own Steam revenue update), and that did help get some game developers and publishers on board, including Supergiant with their new games Hades.

To appease the cautious PC audience thus far, Epic Games has decided to begin with some free games for account holders. As of the time of this post, the excellent aquatic survival game Subnautica is up for grabs. The game was somewhat of a sleeper hit this year, and well worth the free price of admission for anyone interested. The game is available through December 27, after which Epic Games will offer Super Meat Boy for free the following two weeks.

An AMD "Concept Store" opened in the Philippines. The store retails AMD processors, graphics cards based on AMD GPUs, and pre-builts such as notebooks and desktops, which feature either or both. It wouldn't surprise us if they took the concept a step ahead with processor + motherboard + memory + graphics card combos. There could even be fully functional gaming desktops so customers could experience gaming in-store. The store has just the AMD logo in its masthead, and no other retailer branding, leading us to believe this could be an experiment by AMD's local office for the country to dabble with direct retail in an emerging market with relatively low awareness of alternatives to larger competitors such as Intel and NVIDIA.

Ubisoft is holding a special Spring sale over at their Ubi Store. The French video game publisher is offering discounts up to 75% on some of their games, DLCs, and other merchandise including clothing and collectibles. Titles from the Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, and Watch Dog franchises carry some juicy discounts. Some might find the Assassin's Creed Origins deal quite tempting as the game is currently at half-price. The Ubisoft Spring Sale isn't exclusive to the PC crowd. Console owners can get in on the fun as well. The majority of the discounts should be valid worldwide, although some might be restricted to certain regions. Here are a few of our recommendations.

Feral Interactive announced today that DiRT Rally, the acclaimed rally simulation game, will be released for macOS via Steam on November 16th. The Mac App Store version will be arriving shortly afterwards. Developed and published by Codemasters for Windows and consoles, DiRT Rally has been praised for its realistic handling and pure focus on rally driving. DiRT Rally will support Metal 2, Apple's latest graphics API.

DiRT Rally is the most authentic rally game ever made, with a highly sophisticated handling model that perfectly captures the exhilaration of driving cars at the edge of control while tearing along treacherous, undulating tracks at breakneck speed. Its high-risk, high-reward gameplay challenges players to learn and master three different disciplines: the point-to-point races of Rally, the tight circuits of Rallycross, and the legendary slopes of Hillclimb.

In an internal presentation, Valve, the company which simply won't give us Half Life 3, made a pretty interesting presentation on its growth and plans for the future. During the independent games showcase Indigo 2017, which took place in the Netherlands this past June, Steam revealed it had achieved a record 14 million concurrent users, up from a 2015 peak of (comparatively) just 8.4 million. Some other interesting statistics include an average of 33 million daily active players; 67 million monthly active players; and around 26 million gamers who made new purchases since January 2016.

North America seems to represent the bulk of Steam sales, with around 34% of sales through the market occurring way over that side of the ocean. Next comes Western Europe, with 29% of the sales pie, followed by Asia, which achieves a grand total of 17%. Next come the Russian Territories, Oceania and Latin America, which account for 5%, 4%, and 3% respectively. We'll just assume the remaining 8% come from Eastern Europe, the African Continent, and those researchers in Antarctica. Jokes aside, this shows monumental growth for the company, which should only increase provided the continued growth of the PC gaming market. Steam certainly has features games appreciate already - the growth speaks strongly for this. So now Valve only has to not ruin it, and keep on adding incremental features.