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PC Games (Games) Games

How Steam Revived a Dead Game 234

Posted by Soulskill from the price-is-right dept.
Ask Stenum writes "Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting write-up about how Unreal Tournament 3 has risen from the dead after Epic Games patched it, made a deal with Valve to put it on Steam and making it available for free for a weekend. It's interesting to see how a multiplayer game that's almost one and a half years old suddenly has become what it never could be; a game with multiple players. What other (maybe older?) online multiplayer games would you like to see make a comeback?" UT3's resurgence was mentioned here briefly last week as part of our discussion on the future of game pricing.
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How Steam Revived a Dead Game More

How Steam Revived a Dead Game

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  • Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kelbear ( 870538 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:39AM (#27237251)

    Advertising is key for game sales. Great games have come and gone virtually unnoticed without sufficient marketing (ex. Beyond Good & Evil).

    Good quality racks up great word-of-mouth(which takes time to circulate!), but these big bursts of sales only come when there's enough people aware of the game so that they can take time to consider it.

    The free-weekend though was a fantastic idea. Getting to see exactly what you're paying for relieves a lot of the doubts that a potential buyer may have.

    • Re:Advertising (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kelbear ( 870538 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:43AM (#27237285)

      Further to the above, a lot of really mediocre games get great sales through advertising...

      • Re:Advertising (Score:4, Insightful)

        by bonch ( 38532 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @03:02AM (#27237993)

        HALOHALOHALOHALO
        *cough*

        • in that case it's the reverse (Score:5, Funny)

          by emj ( 15659 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @07:17AM (#27239057) Journal
          Halo sold to mediocre gamers

          </anti:ms>

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by bigstrat2003 ( 1058574 ) *
          Except, y'know, for the fact that Halo was actually a damned excellent game by any sane standard. You may not think it's good, but many people do (more than think it's lame), and you don't have any more authority on the matter than them.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Cowmonaut ( 989226 )
            No. Halo is really not a "damned excellent game". The story nor the gameplay compares to other games. Course I could be biased as I tend to think Half Life and System Shock are two of the bestests games ever. Halo was marketed to your stereotypical frat boy rather than 'hardcore' gamers. Really, its one of the big reasons gaming has taken off (expanded the player base) but it is a very, very mediocre game and this is coming from someone who had an okay time playing BREED for crying out loud.

            • The gameplay is meh, but the story far outstrips anything that came before it, including System Shock, and especially Half-Life.

              My point is, though, that because so many people think it is an excellent game, and a game's excellence is purely subjective, it is an excellent game. End of story.

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by PaganRitual ( 551879 )

                The gameplay is meh, but the story far outstrips anything that came before it, including System Shock, and especially Half-Life.

                Give me a break. The story is trash sci-fi at best. And you can't possibly be standing around here protecting it if you don't have a hard-on for the 'gameplay', bad-example-of-a-console-FPS as it is.

                Half-Life doesn't have a story, by the way, it has around about a sentence. System Shock doesn't necessarily have a proper story that plays out in cut scenes, but the events that occur provide quite the experience, and I believe it likely that you've never played it.

                My point is, though, that because so many people think it is an excellent game, and a game's excellence is purely subjective, it is an excellent game. End of story.

                This right here. This is the type of person th

                • Give me a break. The story is trash sci-fi at best. And you can't possibly be standing around here protecting it if you don't have a hard-on for the 'gameplay', bad-example-of-a-console-FPS as it is.

                  You have no idea what you're talking about. I meant what I said: the gameplay is meh, but the story is goddamn exquisite. No story in an FPS has come CLOSE to sucking me in the way the Halo story did. You're welcome to disagree, I have no issue with that... but don't make yourself look stupid by insisting I'm lying because I have a hard-on for the gameplay. Why the hell would I waste my time lying about my opinion of a video game on an internet forum, anyway? I gain nothing from it.

                  This right here. This is the type of person that Halo was marketed to. If you read this and thought "yeah, this makes sense", then Halo is probably your game.

                  Say what you want, it's t

                  • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

                    by jgtg32a ( 1173373 )
                    You need to play Deus Ex the story in that game is incredible, much better than Halo.

                    But I did like Halo's lore, but it didn't come through as well as it should have, and defiantly not to the point were people can seriously consider it to be an excellent story, the games themselves spend too much time beating off the MC.

                    I've actually read all of the Halo books except for the most recent one, and they do an excellent job at describing how the conflict is going.
                    In all actuality the Covenant should have st

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by geekoid ( 135745 )

                    "...but the story is goddamn exquisite."
                    No, it isn't, however maybe you meant this:

                    "...but the story is goddamn exquisite compared to any other Sci-fi FPS story".

                    At least that's what I think your saying.
                    AS a story, in and of itself, no it is not exquisite.

                    You can measure aspect of a story to qualify it as good. There are some base line story telling rules that are followed.

                    AS far as Halo is concerned, I found it to be a fun game, but not really worth the hype. However, I ahve only played it on the PC. I jus

                • The masses say HALO 3 is awesome. This week it was #1 on xbox. I don't think that it has fallen further than #3 since release. Even when it falls, to slot 2 or 3, it comes back. This game has legs. I have provided evidence that Halo is a good game (Major Nelson posts xbox usage stats here [majornelson.com]) If you can provide evidence that Halo sucks, I'm all ears, but until then, you are a troll.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Kelbear ( 870538 )

                    Halo was the game I had in mind when I commented about "mediocre games selling well". It's the most obvious example. Halo 1 was merely decent compared the other FPS games available at the time. It stood out for being done on a console at a time when console FPSes weren't popular.

                    However, I don't lump Halo 3 in the same basket as Halo 1. It's not particularly new or different(it's the third in a trilogy after all), but the amount of polish that went into putting all the elements together should be recognized

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by neomunk ( 913773 )

                I was going to disagree with your original quotation of "...any sane standard...", and I still disagree that it's excellent by ANY sane standard, but you did make a very good point about excellence being subjective, to which I concede Halo's excellence. Excellence isn't PURELY subjective though, as there is technical excellence (control setup, graphics, you know) too.

                All that is just a side point to what I wanted to say. I REALLY liked the story in Return to Castle Wolfenstein (and Wolf3D for that matter)

              • My point is, though, that because so many people think it is an excellent game, and a game's excellence is purely subjective, it is an excellent game. End of story.

                But the question remains, would all those people have thought Halo was excellent without all the advertising surrounding it?

                Now I'm not saying it wouldn't have still been enjoyable to those people, but how many of them would be defending it to the degree that can be witnessed here? If Half Life had had the same massive advertising surrounding it, would more people be flocking to defend it?

            • I think you're letting a historical view - propagated since the game's popularity has taken off - get in the way of perspective. The first Halo, for a console shooter, was very good. Furthermore, it wasn't presented to the fratboy crowd, it caught on with them. It was only after Halo's popularity jumped that the stupid shit started happening.

              I'm not saying Halo is the bee's knees; it's above average when all is said and done, but not amazing. But I don't think it's the standard of mediocrity that everyone s

          • Well (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )

            I think part of that depends on your perspective on it. From a console standpoint, it was pretty amazing. From the standpoint of someone who'd been playing games like Quake and UT, it wasn't nearly so amazing. I remember all the console gamers I knew carrying on about how revolutionary the multiplayer was and all I could think was "I saw this years ago." It's not a bad game, don't get me wrong, just had it been a PC game I don't think it would have made all that big a splash.

          • The only people who liked Halo were those who had never played any FPS on a PC. Nooblets.

        • Wow, someone who sees through all the hype! :)

          Halo sounded excellent to me when it was Mac only, but when MS got their grubby mitts on it I soon lost interest.. not to mention that's around the time I got my first Windows machine (my dad pointed out if I was going to be a developer I might as well develop for the most commonly used OS despite the fact I hated Windows) so I had Half-Life and Counter-Strike to keep me happy.

    • Re:Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anenome ( 1250374 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:46AM (#27237307)
      Great game + great advertising = long-time sales. Great game + No, or inadequate advertising = Sleeper hit. Bad game + Great advertising = Over-hyped P.O.S. Bad game + Bad Advertising = Daikatana :P

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CedgeS ( 159076 )
      It took me forever to find a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. It was a great idea for a game, but unfortunately it wasn't actually playable. A couple hours in I reached a point with infinite enemy spawns and a way forward that had to be opened by the AI partner. Even if I killed all the present enemies and told the AI partner to open the way forward he would, instead, attack the next enemy to spawn.

  • I consider myself a pretty serious gamer, and I had no idea that UT3 was even out, until all this fuss started up with Steam. I remember playing the game at PAX, thinking it was a pre-release.

    I don't mean to malign Steam; it's having a tremendous impact on gaming, and it's mostly for the better. That being said, though, I don't think the turnaround would be this dramatic if Epic hadn't *completely* failed to get the word out.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Panzor ( 1372841 )

      Wait, this game was released over a year ago? I've been telling people that I've been getting a launch title for twelve bucks o_o. I'm with this guy *points to above post*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        I only heard of UT3 in a forum two months ago (January 2009!) when one guy pointed out that he built his "rig" for UT3 and then that died so he went to TF2 instead. My response was "buh?". If anyone does a halfway competent study on video game advertising, they should figure out who they advertised with and through what mediums, and completely avoid those, because they're obviously flawed and people with actual money to buy games clearly don't read those magazines/websites. Whoever had the advertising portf

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Shin-LaC ( 1333529 )
          One problem with UT3 might be the name. I remembered playing the UT4 demo years ago, so when I first heard about the free weekend for 3 I thought "wow, that's a *really* old game!". It was only when I saw this slashdot entry mention "one and a half years ago" that I realized something was amiss. I checked wikipedia and sure enough, the game I remembered playing was UT 2004

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by mog007 ( 677810 )

            It gets worse, UT2004 is actually the THIRD UT game for the PC. The sequel to UT was UT2003, and it wasn't nearly as fun as the original. Instead of just bypassing that iteration of the Unreal Engine, Epic decided to remake UT2003 into the fun game that the original UT was, and they released UT2004. It had a lot of the same stuff from UT2003, but it was vastly improved.

            UT3 is actually the FOURTH UT game.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by NorQue ( 1000887 )

              The sequel to UT was UT2003

              So, there was no UT2? Wow. That's worse than Final Fantasy, at least that had a coherent naming scheme somewhere in the world.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PHPNerd ( 1039992 )
      I'd like to second this. I also consider myself a serious gamer and had no idea this game was even out. Wwhen UT3 hit Steam I told my friends "Hey, look! They finally released UT3!"

  • A game I'd love to see (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TornCityVenz ( 1123185 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:53AM (#27237359) Homepage Journal
    Tribes 2. Those who played it know it was revolutionary, even to this day many games struggle to find the depth this game held. It's free now, and although Sierra shutdown the master servers a while back the community of die hard players stepped up and created several workarounds. I'm happy to report that on any given Friday night there is at least one server with close to (or up to ) 60 players picking teams and playing 3 maps. Friday Night Fights. The best part is gaming rigs have finally caught up to the task of running this game smoothly, when it first came out it was pushing the bleeding edge of machines to run it like it deserved.

    • Sierra / Vivendi Games pulled the Tribes 2 master servers and various other classic Sierra Online games last November. Sad thing is that Tribes 2 never had a patch released to make it possible to play online without the authentication system through Sierra's master servers. Sure there are currently a few workarounds, but none are realistic. So basically once Sierra killed the master server I lost my ability to play Tribes 2 online that I paid for six years ago. Hell I even bought the Linux port from tuxgame

    • Re:A game I'd love to see (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @02:08AM (#27237745) Homepage Journal

      download it here: http://www.tribesnext.com/ [tribesnext.com]

      play it here:
      66.162.166.53
      98.233.154.66

      • Re:A game I'd love to see (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Shin-LaC ( 1333529 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @04:57AM (#27238451)
        I thought of trying out Tribes 2 once, a while ago, when I heard fans recounting how great it was. But they also told me that everyone who still plays it is a master by now, and for a newbie to pick it up would be an exercise in pain. The fans actually explicitly advised me not to try their favorite game.
        • There are still new players coming to this game all the time. And the learning curve has always been steep on this game, but in a friendly atmosphere I would encourage anyone who wants to try possibly the best FPS game ever made to give it a few games before giving up. YES you will die, but in tribes you get to re spawn so it's not like counterstrike where your going to be sitting out waiting for the round to end. Also there are a variety of roles to play, all of them important you may not start out as a fl

  • The price sealed the deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RichPowers ( 998637 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:55AM (#27237375)

    UT3 is worth $12 and not a cent more, IMHO. I'll probably play it for a few weeks and move on (I purchased it during Steam's holiday sale and finally installed it to check out the update). So the cost/entertainment ratio is pretty good.

    Truthfully, most games aren't worth $20, let alone $50. I was browsing Steam the other day and noticed that EndWar -- a months-old console port with an attractive 67/100 Metacritic rating -- is being sold for the same price as Empire Total War and Dawn of War II. Hell, you can buy World in Conflict Gold for $30. So why on earth should I pay $50 for EndWar? Don't get me wrong, EndWar could provide a few days of stupid RTS fun, but it's simply not worth the asking price.

    Anyway, thanks to Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate and GOG, I can buy 5 (maybe more) games for the same price as a new one. Good games are always good, ya know? So not only are publishers competing with current games, they're competing with dirt cheap oldies, too.

    Enough with the arbitrary $50 price point. Some games are absolutely worth $50; most are not.

  • XvT ported to Linux! (Score:3, Informative)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:57AM (#27237379) Homepage

    I want that game back!!! All time most favorite and addicting game ever. I found myself calling in sick to work so I could finish a mission.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by The_Myth ( 84113 )

      Or just Xwing Vs Tie Fighter on any format that is playable. I had a copy and have moved and been unable to find it.

      I know they tacked part of this onto SWG and called it Jump to Light Speed but it just wasnt the same. I miss being able to go head to head at a lan party with different fighter configurations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Binestar ( 28861 )

        I still have my Disks for Xwing, Tie Fighter, XvT, and XWing: Alliance. None work on Vista64 (I tried last week actually). I don't game in linux, but I suppose I can try them under wine.

        Tie Fighter is the best of the bunch though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rennt ( 582550 )

      I just discovered the FreeSpace Open project, its not Starwars, but with the beam weapons and laser fire and HEAPS of shit going on at once it often reminds me of the epic Reaver space battle in Serenity

      Get the original game files from GOG for $5.95 then upgrade [fsoinstaller.com] to the open-sourced engine with modern resolutions and stunning effects.

      There is even a Starwars full conversion in progress. The models being created look amazing - they could almost be used to make a film - and one of the aims is to make it "look

      • You can get the original game files for free from HOTU. Personally I'd like a SW:Battlefront clone. I've been playing SWBF2 on Xbox and finally got SWBF, which has like ten times as many maps and such, but doesn't allow the same ease of control that SWBF2 does. I'd like to be able to have all the maps and all the goings-on with the newer control scheme. Might as well just have something genuinely good with KB+Mouse support, on my PC :)

  • Not exactly looking good in the MP arena. (Score:5, Informative)

    by nedwidek ( 98930 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @01:20AM (#27237489)

    Still looks moribund.

    http://www.game-monitor.com/search.php?game=ut3 [game-monitor.com]

    700 servers and 361 players right now.

    BF2 has over 5000 people playing right now.
    CoD4 over 8000.
    L4D over 6000.
    TF2 7001.

    And how is this for insult to injury. UT2004 currently has 641 players. Almost double UT3. UT3 just seemed like a tech demo. More to sell the engine to other game makers.

    • UT3 was just at tech demo.

      They completely failed to stay with the feature that made UT2004 a joy to play: pacing. UT2004 is manic. You run fast, the game-flow is fast. There's no room for error, and you get the feeling that standing still for even a second is a fatal mistake. When I first played UT3, though, it felt like everything was slowed way down. They lost the frantic twitch aspect, and therefor lost the feature that make their franchise distinctive.

      It's something that started with DOOM/Quake1, really - the "throw realism to the wind, let's just make it fast and fun" theory. UT seemed to be following in that style - doom3 certainly wasn't - but that's over now it seems.

      Hell, if they just remade the UT2004 gameplay straight into the UT3 engine, that could be a major win right there. Maybe they'll figure it out from the slow-sales of UT3. Well, one can hope...

      • The funny thing about UT3 is that everyone agrees that it failed to live up to UT2004's awesomeness, but nobody can agree on the reasons for it.

        Beyond the excellent onslaught mode and all the good stuff it succeeded in carrying over from UT, there was something ephemeral to UT2004's success. A lot of people say that UT3's fault is that it was developed for the PS3. I'm not sure how true that is. But UT2004 was a reboot of UT2003; maybe the Titan Pack can serve as the same kind of reboot for UT3, maybe not.

        • UT2004 was a perfect mix of many things.

          - The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem)
          - The pacing was incredible
          - The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.
          - Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)
          - A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.
          - Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.
          - An extra level of polish across the board. I never really found myself saying "if it only had this feature, it'd be perfect". Even the little stuff like settings to change the crosshairs on a per-weapon basis - it showed a level of caring about the gameplay (the "fun"!) that most games skimp on.

          I can't speak to how customizable UT3 is, but it(and many other games sense then) skimped on many of these features. The engine is there, though. It is potentially something that could be solved by simply adding a bunch of polish, little features, and playtesting a LOT to get the pacing/balance/etc right.

          Maybe we'll get lucky and see a "UT3.5" remake where they get it right... they did show they can "reboot" things once before.

          • Isn't amazing that Epic was able to take nearly ALL of the good things about the game and ruin them? I've been a rabid fan of UT from the start. We've run a little UT clan for 9 years now.
             
            And after UT3, I don't know that I'll buy another UT game. It would take a very, VERY large amount of positive press for me to send Epic another cent. I truly don't understand how anyone familiar with previous UT versions could have released UT3.

            • I know I will never buy another UT game. Why? Because I was lied too. I was told there was a linux version and it would be released.

              I'm still waiting.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ifrag ( 984323 )

            The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.

            Aww, the lightning gun was at least somewhat useful. Particularly in the pool on DM3. *evil grin*

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Draek ( 916851 )

            - The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem)
            - The pacing was incredible
            - The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.
            - Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)

            All of which also apply to UT3. Yes, it's slower than UT2004, but so was the original one and while I enjoyed UT2004's Quake-ness, it's good to be back.

            - A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.

            "Double Domination" blows, "Bombing Run" generally blows, and while Assault's loss was sad (though that kind of game mode is much better on something like Red Orchestra IMHO), UT3's Greed and Betrayal modes more than make up for it. Greed, specially is a stroke of genius, bringing DM-style action to a CTF-style game.

            - Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.

            And UT3 doesn't? fsck, I'd consider that a

    • That might have to do with the fact that UT 2004 has been available for some time from gog.com. I'm sure there were places where one could get it more or less continuously.

  • Quakelive?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 1+(smarterThanYou) ( 539258 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @01:39AM (#27237603) Homepage
    Quake 3 Arena is like 8 years old and is alive, well, and growing again thanks to id's free beta. Looks like Epic's strategy of copying everything id does is finally paying off...(kidding, mostly)

    • "Looks like Epic's strategy of copying everything id does is finally paying off...(kidding, mostly)"

      Totally baited me there, and you got me. Going from Quake to UT was like going from a nice but cheap couch to a leather recliner. Yeah you can sleep in both, but one of those PUTS you to sleep, while the other lets you sleep.

      I mean w/ quake, You got to really enjoy every frag count, and pretty much have to memorize every level. With UT3, I can jump in a map I've never seen before and be "led" to where I ne

  • Consider what happened to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, also available on Steam. When it came out, reviews were universally panning the game for its huge amount of bugs, yet by the time I bought it for $5 during one of Steam's weekend deals, the game was already on its fifth patch and with barely a bug to be found so I found instead one of the best FPSs of this decade, IMHO.

    With UT3 something similar happened. I got it during Steam's X-Mas sale and, while fun and very polished, the relative lack of

    • Stalker was one of the best games i have ever played. unfortunately i didn't know about the need to patch it and there is probably still a firefight going on at the junkyard. that said, i recommend it to everyone i know with a PC. when i finally upgrade my dusty P4 i am going to replay it again with a system that can actually run the graphics above low. that should be fun.
    • STALKER is great but you really need to Download the mod Oblivion Lost to really get the most out of the game

  • Definitely RTCW. Best online game I've played bar none - I got hooked into it for about a month solid. Sadly when I went back after several more months, it'd pretty much died. I've not found anything to come close to the gameplay (well, except Battlefield 2) and the way you get teamwork even from random folks on a public server.

  • I loved how Steam brought back the Quake expansion packs since I never played them when they first came. After recently reinstalling Quake with an open source engine, I remembered why I loved the mouse view in Quake II. Alas, I'm passing on the expansion packs.

  • Bah, FUD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by icsx ( 1107185 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @05:07AM (#27238513)
    Now after the weekend is over and it has been more than a week already, the players count has dropped rapidly. Nice warmping up for old game but it just didnt last. It should be updated regularely to keep people's interest on it. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ [steampowered.com] (Click link view stats per game)

  • How Verizon Killed Steam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by teridon ( 139550 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @06:22AM (#27238801) Homepage

    Every time I see a story mentioning Steam, I'm reminded how my Verizon-provided Actiontec router can't handle the Steam server browser [dslreports.com]. My only option appears to be to replace the provided router with my own.

    I haven't tried fighting with Verizon about how their router sucks. I guess I have the feeling they're not going to do anything about it no matter what I do.

    That said, they are still better than Comcast :-/

    • I have Steam, and I have FIOS, with the Actiontec router, and I never had problems in the past. Granted, I don't use Steam a ton, but it connected, and I was able to list and enter TF2 games when I tried it out.

      The Actiontec is not a great router, and it's a pain to open ports at times, but you can eventually work your way around things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Odd. I have a Verizon router(actiontec) and Steam works great. Every test I ahve thrown at it has been handles exceptionally.
      I have only had fios for about 4 months, so maybe I have a different version.

      Which router and firmware are you using?

  • The fix for Vampire is trivially easy: Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines [iain.cx]

    Someone should make a patch for it that isn't unofficial, and patch the Steam version. People aren't going to buy it when it says, "* Does not support Windows XP 64" and since it does with the amateur patch above they are losing sales.

    I mean, I've seen it sold as a promotion before (on Halloween weekend, I think), but it has always had this trivial GlobalMemoryStatus() [iain.cx] bug that causes it to crash in 64 bit. (By the way, I'm not under

  • Speaking of Zombie games, QUAKE Live was launched by Id a couple of weeks ago.

    Supposedly funded with in game ads.

    Runs in your frickin' web broswer!

    Played it myself. Basically Quake 3 in your browser, runs ultra smooth also. I personally had some punkbuster issues however.

  • I would like to have a system like steam for really old games. I just bought the extension cd for battle isle 2 for 20 euros which is from 1994. The only reason i had to pay that much is because it isn't produced anymore and the few people who still have it either want to keep it to play it or are collectors. With a distribution system like steam it would be no problem to offer something like this for =5 euros.

    But since we don't have something like this i'll create a torrent to spare others the effort i had

  • Starsiege Tribes 1. enough said.

  • fix popular game and release it for free sees uptick in downloads.

  • Since I abandoned Windows 2 years ago I haven't really played any games. Does UT3 run on Linux or do I need Cedega?

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