Latest news with #SteamDB
Metro
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Elden Ring Nightreign's most requested game mode is coming next week
FromSoftware is hoping to maintain momentum for Elden Ring Nightreign by addressing one of the biggest complaints against the game. Elden Ring Nightreign seemed a bit of a risk at first, being a multiplayer-only follow-up to the epic original, but the game has been a major success. After topping the charts in the US for a second month, developer FromSoftware announced Elden Ring Nightreign has surpassed five million copies sold within less than two months. At the same time, the expansion for Elden Ring, Shadow Of The Erdtree has hit over 10 million sales. To celebrate the milestone, FromSoftware has another treat up its sleeve for Nightreign enthusiasts, with a mode which probably should have been included all along. As shown in a new trailer, Elden Ring Nightreign will get 'Duo Expeditions', aka a two-player mode, in a new update set to be released on Wednesday, July 30, 2025. The 1.02 update will also come with quality-of-life improvements to the user interface, including more filtering options for Relics. Elden Ring Nightreign was predominantly designed to be played in groups of three, and while there's the option to play solo, that makes it far more difficult. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. It's unclear how this Duos mode has been implemented, but hopefully it will be balanced to level the playing field and make two player expeditions not too punishing. Considering FromSoftware has dedicated a trailer to its existence, it suggests a fair amount of work has gone into it. More Trending More fundamentally, it's much easier to coordinate with just one another player instead of two, so this might make Elden Ring Nightreign more accessible in general, especially to those who don't have two other mates who are Elden Ring fans. While Elden Ring Nightreign's popularity has dropped on Steam since it launched in May, it has remained steady over the past few weeks. Over the past 24 hours (via SteamDB), the player peak hit just over 50,000 players, just behind Palworld and Red Dead Redemption 2. FromSoftware's next game will be The Duskbloods, which is set to be released on the Nintendo Switch 2 sometime next year and is also multiplayer-focused. A recent rumour claimed the studio is also working on another project for 2026, which may be tied to the Armored Core franchise. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: The Witcher dev CD Projekt's new game revealed in oddly descriptive job listing MORE: Xbox games for Switch 2 'expected' soon ahead of rumoured Nintendo Direct MORE: Mario and Peach are just 'good friends' says Nintendo despite kissing for decades
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Steam's got a new rule that puts the kibosh on 'certain kinds of adult only content' that make Visa and Mastercard sad
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Devs are biting their nails over a new Steam rule that prohibits—in painfully vague terms—certain kinds of content on its platform. The new rule (seemingly introduced incredibly recently, and definitely introduced since the Wayback Machine's last Steam rules snapshot from April 14 this year) forbids "Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers." In other words: keep Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal happy or sling your hook. How do you do that? Valve doesn't say, only noting that particular care should be taken with "certain kinds of adult only content." No elaboration is offered as to what kinds of adult-only content that means, leaving NSFW devs groping in the dark to appease payments processors. I've reached out to Valve to ask for clarification on this rule, and I'll update this piece if I hear back. But while we wait, maybe we can connect some dots. As spotted by SteamDB on Bluesky, the new rule coincided with the sudden removal of a significant number of incest-themed adult games from Steam's storefront. Anyone who had any number of the Interactive Sex or Sex Adventures games on their wishlist should have bought them sooner: they've been suddenly and unceremoniously yoinked. I've reached out to the dev behind some of those games, too, to ask if they've had any communication from Valve, and I'll update if I hear back. Image 1 of 2 Image 2 of 2 It would seem, then, that incest might be one of the themes that falls under Valve's (or, more accurately, Valve's payments processors') new rubric of verboten games, but there's a wrinkle here too. There are still some incest-themed games available for purchase on the platform, including one from the same Interactive Sex series that was hit so hard in the removals noted by SteamDB. Could it be they just slipped some sort of automated removal net? Or was the disappearance of so many games with the same, um, theme just a coincidence? Without clarification from Valve that goes beyond the couple of sentences that have been chucked into its Steamworks onboarding docs, it's tough to say. What's less hard to parse is the very real fear this has struck into the hearts of Steam users and devs both. Fears abound that Steam is in for the kind of turmoil that struck OnlyFans all the way back in 2021, when the site—almost exclusively associated in people's minds with the sex workers who use it to make a living—said that pressure from banks was forcing it to ban pornography on the platform. The policy was eventually walked back after an outcry, but it was just one more thing that makes trying to make a living from sex work uniquely precarious in the age of online payments and platform-dependency. It's not just OnlyFans that has come under the eye of Sauron for this kind of stuff, either. Tumblr, infamously, banned porn on the platform, with CEO Matt Mullenwegg bluntly stating that "Credit card companies are anti-porn." Patreon, too, has initiated crackdowns on certain kinds of NSFW content at the behest of payments processors. Processor hostility to adult content has heightened in the wake of the 2020 scandal where popular adult site PornHub was found to be hosting revenge porn and content featuring minors. That led Mastercard and Visa to terminate service to the site—a termination that continued even after PornHub went nuclear on videos from unverified performers. Credit card companies categorically do not want their names associated with that kind of reputation-damaging content, to say nothing of the increased risk of chargebacks and fraud that comes from online pornography. Meanwhile, Valve categorically does not want Steam users to suddenly find themselves unable to buy games using ubiquitous payment methods like Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal, meaning it's a lot easier to simply bow to their whims than stick up for adult game devs. The fact that Valve doesn't feature live performers in the adult games on its platform—it's hentai as far as the eye can see—apparently bears little relevance here. We might not miss the glut of incest-themed games that have seemingly (but I stress it's not been confirmed) been hit by this rule, but I fear it's the thin end of a very thick wedge. On the one hand—as much as I enjoy poking fun at the more obsessively goonerlicious games that mark our hobby—it's my position that what other people get off to is none of my business, the usual caveats about everyone involved giving informed consent applied. On another, darker hand, there's a not-unreasonable fear that what begins as a crackdown on porno shovelware could eventually spread out to target queer creators and games of all stripes. "It's the quiet normalization of financial censorship and it's going to hurt LGBTQ+ games and devs," writes NoahFuel_Gaming in a popular Bluesky post. "Banks like Visa and Mastercard are now backdoor moral authorities. They already pressured Patreon, OnlyFans, and others to remove NSFW content. Now Steam is next. And guess who they'll target first? Queer, transgressive, or 'unusual' games. "Queer content gets flagged as 'explicit' even when it's PG. A trans dev making a personal story? 'Too controversial.' A surreal queer VN? 'Sexualized.' Financial deplatforming in action." In a time of seemingly global reactionary backlash against LGBT people and queer lifestyles, it feels more important to push back on this kind of puritanism than ever. 2025 games: This year's upcoming releasesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together Solve the daily Crossword
Engadget
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Steam now bans games that violate the 'rules and standards' of payment processors and banks
Steam has added a new rule to its guidelines that has resulted in certain games getting banned, according to a report by Automaton . The new clause states that "content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers" is not allowed and could result in removal from the platform. In other words, if credit card companies get mad about something, they could actually have the power to ban a game. The clause goes on to say that this will affect "certain kinds of adult-only content." This has likely already resulted in many games being pulled off the platform . The vast majority of these titles have obvious sexual themes and many have the word "incest" in the title. SteamDB doesn't give a reason for these removals, but the timing does match up. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Steam has added a new rule disallowing games that violate the rules and standards set forth by payment processors and card networks, or internet network providers. At the same time, many incest themed games were removed from the store. — SteamDB (@SteamDB) July 16, 2025 This move might sound unusual on its face, but payment processors have consistently fought against being used to purchase adult content. These battles are typically instigated on the notion that adults-only platforms don't have enough safeguards in place against illegal content. Mastercard and Visa blocked the use of their cards on Pornhub in 2020. Mastercard went a step further in 2021, adding language to its "Speciality Merchant Registration" requirements that announced "banks that connect merchants to our network will need to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content." I doubt you'll find too many people upset that games with titles like Sex Adventures - Incest Family were removed from the platform, but it could set a potentially troubling precedent. Some Steam users are upset with this rule change on the grounds that it creates the "quiet normalization of financial censorship." In other words, if gigantic financial institutions get to decide what is appropriate and what is not, who is to say it won't eventually impact regular games? One Steam user notes that "queer content gets flagged as 'explicit' even when it's PG," which is a sentiment echoed by others . One user says this move "looks innocuous at first glance but it's a trojan horse." On the flipside, Steam has been home to some truly foul content over the years. We've reached out to Valve to ask for a comment on this news and will update this post when we hear back.
CNET
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Marvel Rivals Season 3 Banks on Blade, Phoenix, Shorter Seasons Restoring Excitement to the Hero Shooter
Marvel Rivals is gearing up for the start of season 3 next week, and we got our first look at some of the upcoming changes, including glimpses at the two new fan-favorite Marvel heroes, Phoenix (Jean Grey) and Blade. The season trailer also heavily teased that the villain Knull might be making his way to the game in future seasons. Season 3 is a major turning point for the hero shooter, marking the start of its new two-month seasons and the start of the era where we'll be getting new heroes every month (one at the start of the season and one at midseason). Previously, seasons were about three months long, with new heroes coming out roughly every six weeks. The new cadence is an aggressive pace for expanding the game's roster and threatens to keep the metagame churning even faster, assuming those new heroes are relevant at launch. It's once again a high-stakes season for Rivals, which has been bleeding active players since launch. Based on SteamDB data, the start of each new half-season brings in fewer players than the previous (e.g. fewer players joined for season 2.5 than for 2.0). More concerningly, even the the start of each half-season doesn't bring in enough players to reach the lowest point from a full season ago: Season 2.0's peak count of 315,000 sits below season 1.0's low point of 331,000 players, and season 2.5's peak of 190,000 is just below the season 1.5 valley of 196,000. That means the start of new seasons -- the most exciting moments for the game -- are losing their ability to bring in new players or bring old players back. Steam numbers don't include console players, but it's difficult to imagine the story there looking much different. Rivals is probably hoping that the official launch of two long-awaited heroes and a faster seasonal rotation will reverse that trend. Here's everything we know about Marvel Rivals season 3.0 so far. When does season 3 start? Marvel Rivals season 3.0 is scheduled to start on Friday, July 11 UTC. Typically, this involves servers going down for a few hours around midnight PT before being turned back on for the new season in the very early morning. Marvel/Screenshot by Adam Benjamin New Marvel Rivals heroes It's finally happening! After half a year of being rumored additions to the roster, Jean Grey and Blade are officially joining the party. Jean Grey, wielding the powerful Phoenix Force, joins at season start. While we'll have to wait another day for a hero trailer to see her kit and abilities, the devs teased Phoenix's AOE damage through a chain-reaction mechanic and her mobility. They also said that Phoenix's ultimate deals massive damage and gets rid of enemy summons on the battlefield -- great news if you're facing down any combination of Namor's turrets, Moon Knight's ankhs, Peni's nests and Rocket's beacon (the latter of which have a team-up together). Rivals continues to make Blade fans wait, as that hero won't be added to the roster until season 3.5. But at least that's only a month away under the new season structure. Rivals season 3 balance changes Rivals devs gave us a quick breakdown of the upcoming balance changes, though we're still waiting on full details from official patch notes. Here's the quick breakdown, with any confirmed details in parentheses. Buffs: Venom Thing (gains a new ability to jump to enemies, possibly knocking down fliers) Namor (primary fire) Scarlet Witch (ultimate) Invisible Woman (healing efficiency) Mantis (healing and ultimate utility) Nerfs: Emma Frost Iron Man (poke potential) Punisher (turret) Mister Fantastic (survivability) Loki (ultimate charge) Ultron Phoenix adds some literal firepower to Wolverine's attacks with the new team-up. Marvel/Screenshot by Adam Benjamin Team-up changes Rivals is adding two new team-ups, tacking heroes onto two existing ones and removing two others (Storming Ignition and ESU Alumnus) from the game. It's also nerfing another. Here's the quick rundown: New -- Primal Flame: Phoenix anchors to add damage over time and lifesteal to Wolverine's attacks after his leap. New -- Ever-Burning Bond: Human Torch anchors to let Spider-Man shoot a burning web with a flaming tracer. (The flaming tracer stacks with Spidey's regular tracers, devs said.) Updated -- Symbiote Shenanigans: Adds Hela, giving her Soul Drainer Hel Sphere slowing tendrils. Updated -- Stark Protocol: Adds Squirrel Girl, giving her an explosive, homing gauntlet. Updated -- Guardian Revival: Devs said they'd be nerfing some element of the Guardians' team-up. Other things coming in season 3 The battle pass is getting some adjustments to account for shorter seasons. Battle passes still offer 10 skins, but you'll earn tokens at a faster rate to make it easier to progress through the entire battle pass in the shorter time period. Daily missions are also going away, with weekly missions shifting to permanent quests instead of being time-limited. Seasonal missions that offer large batches of tokens are also being added. Rivals devs also announced a new competitive mode coming in season 3.5 but said we'd have to wait for any details about it. The game is also adding accessories (which appear to be animated stickers that float above the KO notifications), new chroma options and visual effects for ultimate abilities. Perhaps the nicest quality of life change is the ability to mix & match MVP animations with any skins, instead of having certain MVP animations locked to specific skins.
Metro
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Monster Hunter and Marvel Rivals player numbers plummet after initial success
After enjoying successful launches on PC, Monster Hunter Wilds and Marvel Rivals have been steadily losing players over the past few months. Thanks to the success of games like Fortnite, video game publishers are obsessed with creating their own 'forever game'; something that people will keep playing and spending money on for many, many years after launch. We've seen too many attempts at this crash and burn in less than a year because they failed to garner much of an audience. However, even the success stories – the ones that do prove immensely popular at launch – aren't able to rest on their laurels. All too quickly, a once devoted player-base can turn on and abandon a game, even if it's generally considered to be good, as evidenced by recent downward trends affecting Monster Hunter Wilds and Marvel Rivals. Monster Hunter Wilds is widely agreed to be the best game in the series and after its launch in February, it became the best selling new game of 2025. The PC version attracted a larger player base than the last two entries, helping Steam break its peak concurrent users record, and its last reported sales figures stands at over 10 million, already making it Capcom's seventh best-selling game ever. Only four months later though, and user reviews on Steam have taken a shocking downturn, with a swam of overly negative reviews shifting its *recent reviews* rating to 'Overwhelmingly Negative.' Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Glancing through recent examples, this is primarily a result of the game's performance on PC. Many describe it as being poorly optimised, which means unstable frame rates, muddy visuals, and the game simply not running as well as it should, even on high-end PCs. This has led to a sharp decline in player count. While such a decline is inevitable, seeing how much it dropped in March alone is bound to have Capcom executives sweating. While Monster Hunter Wilds isn't a live service game in the traditional sense, as support is unlikely to last more than a few years, but Capcom does want people playing it regularly, as evidenced by its post-game content, new paid DLC, and free post-launch updates that add new monsters and weapons. Per SteamDB, Monster Hunter Wilds peaked at 1,384,608 players in early March and that number has now dwindled into the tens of thousands. At the time of writing, it has even less than that, at just 8,077 players. That's less than the current player count of 12,508 for the seven-year-old Monster Hunter: World. As for Marvel Rivals, its drop in player count has been more gradual but, as you can see on the SteamDB chart, it has consistently lost players in between seasons, and each new season has been pulling less and less players back. After peaking at 644,269 players, with the launch of season one, Marvel Rivals is past the midpoint of season two and it has less than 100,000 concurrent players. It's recent user reviews on Steam are notably more mixed than Monster Hunter Wilds', but the negative reviews all mention similar complaints regarding poor and unbalanced matchmaking and a toxic community. These sorts of issues won't be exclusive to the PC version either, so while there's no accurate way to check, it's not unreasonable to assume Marvel Rivals' active player base on consoles is also suffering. More Trending Some will argue that Marvel Rivals' drop in player count is only natural and nothing to be concerned about. A lot of players will naturally lose interest as the hype wears off and a dedicated core player-base is cultivated. But when the game had such a strong start, publisher NetEase Games is unlikely to be satisfied seeing hundreds of thousands of people abandon it. Especially since the game makes use of an extremely recognisable, and expensive to obtain, licence and is free to play, meaning it makes all its money through microtransactions. Let's also not forget that even when Marvel Rivals was exploding in popularity, NetEase still laid off a number of staff from its design team, setting a grim portent for what could happen if the game starts failing to meet the company's expectations. All this shows that while launching a popular live service game is very difficult, it's perhaps even more difficult to ensure it stays popular. Such games need to be frequently monitored and re-evaluated and simply pumping out new content isn't always enough to keep people interested. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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