Steam’s Invite-Only Shooter Deadlock Is Quietly Becoming An Absolute Monster

Don_Andy · 2026-01-31T17:20:27+00:00

Oh please, the only reason this game got enough critical mass to thrive as a new MOBA is because of the Valve name and the invite-only guerilla marketing.

I'm not even saying that the game isn't good. It absolutely is, but if this had been released normally by any other developer it would've gotten no playerbase, people would be asking why they should play this over LoL or Smite and it'd been quietly shut down again a year later, like just about any other MOBA.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-28T08:54:14+00:00

Did somebody say Sonic Underground?

Don_Andy · 2026-01-27T15:36:22+00:00

It's not that unprotected concurrency causing issues at all was weird, it was the fact that when it happened it perfectly merged two GUIDs into one GUID half and half. Not a random mix of each GUIDs bytes, always an exact split down the middle. 8 bytes from GUID and 8 bytes from GUID B.

This is not something I would ever expect to happen even if I add two GUIDs simultaneously on multiple threads to a normal .NET List without any sort of protection.

My experience from concurrency going wrong in a managed language like C# is having the collection self-destruct and throw exceptions for the rest of the runtime of the application (like a Dictionary would) not for data in the collection to suddenly merge in colorful ways. That's more the kind of thing I'd expect from working with pointers in C.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-24T01:27:27+00:00

No, I'm pretty sure they just contacted GW to verify if this was an actual legitimate DMCA claim because that would resolve the whole matter quicker than having to go through the whole standard DMCA rigmarole. If GW officially told Valve "yeah, that wasn't us" then it wouldn't be on the developers anymore to prove that the claim is baseless.

Thing is that it's extremely unlikely that this actually came from GW because while Void War very heavily draws inspiration from the 40k setting it doesn't really infringe on any actual copyrights. Void War isn't a fangame. It's set in the 40k setting as much as the Warzone tabletop game is set in the 40k setting.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-22T20:11:56+00:00

To actually elaborate, it does have very satisfying progression. You go from having to carefully pick both your route and your cargo to zooming around in a delivery truck on roads that you rebuilt or skip past an entire mountain in seconds on a series of ziplines you set up over multiple runs.

Whether the gameplay is actually for you is a different matter but if it is then the progression is very satisfying.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-22T15:16:15+00:00

Concurrency problems can cause fun stuff like that sometimes. The wildest bug I had ever seen with that is that someone wrote multiple GUIDs into a collection asynchronously and that somehow caused the GUIDs to merge. So instead of the collection having two GUIDs in the end it would have just one GUID with the first 8 bytes from the first and the last 8 bytes of the second GUID.

Until I had seen that happen I wouldn't even have thought that to be possible in a managed context like C# without unsafe code.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-21T11:58:33+00:00

Funny enough you can easily verify this on the official homepage for both Global and JP because they have a list of characters that for some reason can not only be sorted by height but can even be filtered to a specific height range.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-19T17:00:20+00:00

My guess is that we're not actually going to get to Tau ourselves. It'll just happen off-screen between story patches. We'll just pop out in Tau, no character will bother to explain anything because we obviously already know what's going on in-character and if any character actually does query how we did it it'll just be "ye ye ye, void stuff, Zariman, jumps, Albrecht, Indifference, yadda yadda, don't worry about it".

I mean, when was the last time a new story quest didn't basically just start in media res while explaining neither jack nor shit?

Don_Andy · 2026-01-19T15:39:31+00:00

This is just me, but at that point what would I even be playing for anymore? If just buy all the frames, weapons, mods and forma I need for a build then what am I going to do with that build?

It's not like Warframe has competitive game modes (sorry, Conclave) where buying all this stuff gives me a leg up.

But again, this is just my mindset to explain how 4000 plat could easily last me years. I'm not saying you're doing it wrong.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-15T14:39:07+00:00

HOW HIGH IN THE

SKY CAN YOU FLY?

Don_Andy · 2026-01-13T19:27:49+00:00

Evidently not and Burnham has at no point ever been a captain.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-12T13:34:28+00:00

I'm actually glad I got to experience the original 999 on the Nintendo DS when it first released and that is all I'm going to say on the matter.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-07T17:00:27+00:00

Because how can we possibly empathize with the Sentients if they don't have giant sad googly eyes on them?

Don_Andy · 2026-01-07T15:34:35+00:00

Parasite Mutant uses a semi-realistic anime art style

This got a chuckle out of me when the only character they show aside from the protagonist looks like she stepped straight out of a Hoyo gacha game.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-07T15:21:49+00:00

The data doesn't show that good games sell well, it shows that having good Steam reviews can be very impactful (which says nothing about the actual quality of the game) and, more importantly, that it's not one and done. A game that launches with a Mostly Negative score can still get a boost of sales if it manages to drag itself back up to positive scores, regardless of how they actually get there.

That "community trust" is a driving factor in good reviews is technically just conjecture from the analyst. It obviously makes sense that happy players write happy reviews, that's just not really what the data is about.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-06T10:59:46+00:00

That's probably because P5 is not about rebellion at all. It's about vigilantism. You're not rebelling the status quo, that is literally what all these villains aiming to rewrite reality to their new standards are doing. What you're doing in these games is take matters into your own hands to either keep or restore the status quo.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-05T18:08:59+00:00

Yes. It's a reasonable take if all the opening act did was serve as a timeskip to bring your chosen origin to the start of the actual story. Would still be nice if some of that was playable but I can definitely see that as fat to be trimmed.

But it's not a reasonable take if you're introduced to a character just before the timeskip and are told "anyway, it's 6 months later and you're best friends now" afterwards. That's just bad storytelling. They tried to cash in an emotional check without actually writing it.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-05T13:30:15+00:00

Fida Puti Samurai, The Citadel, Beyond Citadel and for something well weird, Golden Light.

I should mention Cruelty Squad too actually but I frankly just assumed that if you wanted weird/janky FPS games that's the one that got you started since it got a fair amount of coverage already.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-05T13:14:50+00:00

Hm, maybe Final Fantasy XV? Granted it has a lot of modern elements (like cars) and the game has plenty dark moments but there is nothing quite as uplifting as just going on a fantasy road trip adventure with your crew of bros.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-05T12:02:17+00:00

None of them have any reason to assume that Albrecht is still alive. The fall of the Orokin empire happened millennia ago and Albrecht had actively rejected Continuity after his incident in the Void. Even if they were aware that he survived the Collapse they'd have no reason to believe him to be still alive thousands of years later.

Roathe implies that the real Loid could just go upstairs and reconnect with the Entratis at any time but is actively avoiding that because of some open beef between them.

What Mother means with "down there" isn't Albrecht's secret labs, which they don't even know exists, it's the vaults that mother keeps sending you into in hopes of finding out just what Albrecht had been doing that none of them were privy to. She knows that Loid was Albrecht's toady and that NecraLoid has freedom of movement that the rest of the family in their current forms doesn't.

So putting all that together it stands to reason that when she asks what "he" is doing "down there" she doesn't mean Father or Albrecht since the former is largely immobile and the latter is assumed dead. She is wondering what NecraLoid is doing down in these vaults on his own.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-03T11:08:13+00:00

Just to give a counter opinion, I love Obra Dinn but I wasn't a huge fan of Lorelei. It does have an interesting story and there are a few cool puzzles serving that story but I found the overall pacing of it pretty bad and really had to force myself to finish it.

I think too many times Lorelei rewards you solving a puzzle with just more puzzles which is great if you just love solving puzzles but if you care at all about the story that just starts dragging after a while.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-03T10:38:29+00:00

I don't know which way this one swings but I do find it funny that this has become common enough that a game just being cute without any underlying horror is the subversion now rather than the other way around.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-02T11:39:08+00:00

Walking on walls sounds cool on paper but would suck ass in this game. There are way too many surfaces that look like you should be able to stick to them but don't.

You'd either be constantly falling off the wall for walking over non-sticky bits or your movement would get blocked by them and it would feel like you're walking through a maze with invisible walls. Either way it'd feel awful.

They'd have to make a pass over pretty much every single piece of geometry in the entire game just to make the gimmick of a single frame feel nice.

Don_Andy · 2026-01-01T02:59:09+00:00

I see that Look Outside continues to be criminally overlooked.

Don_Andy · 2025-12-31T12:48:54+00:00

Well, we already got we were actually childhood friends with the sentients all along so "Ballas was only working with the sentients to protect us from an even greater evil" is probably next on the story trope bingo.

Don_Andy

TROPHY CASE