Cartoon of The Day: Steamed Up

 

 Taken at Caledon's Writer's Meeting. This charming fellow was all in armor with a boiler for a helmet. So why a boiler? I could think of one reason.

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Steam Gaming Service Removes A Number Of Adult Games Following Pressure By Credit Card Companies, Paypal Blocks Steam In Much Of The World

 

If you're a fan of game with mature themes, there's been a development on Steam that will likely leave you worried and/or upset. It seems following pressure from credit card companies, Steam has taken a number of adult-rated games off it's list for sale. 

 

In a PC Gamer article, Value, which owns Steam, was reported as saying, "We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks. As a result, we are retiring those games from being sold on the Steam Store."

 

Earlier, Steam had enacted a new, and vague, rule about banning "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."

 

An article in The Guardian stated the pressure by the credit card companies was due to pressure on them by "Collective Shout," a group seeking to ban adult content from Australian Internet access, saying the corporations were "facilitating and profiting from rape, incest and child sexual abuse game sales."

 

The result has been a backlash. On change.org, a petition was started protesting the censorship of the games, "not because they're illegal, but because they offend the personal values of executives or activist groups," going on to say, "These same payment processors allowed platforms like OnlyFans to operate with minimal oversight, despite multiple credible reports and lawsuits alleging the presence of real sexual abuse content involving real-life minors. That is a criminal failure of responsibility. Yet, when it comes to entirely fictional depictions, these same companies act swiftly — shutting down creators, restricting access, and acting as global censors." 

 

So far, the petition has gotten over a quarter million signatures. One who left a comment identified himself as a member of the LGBTQ community, "Banning sexual content never stops there, it always include non-sexual things. As such the fight to protect people’s right to sexual expression is vital for protecting my right to exist." 

 

Mastercard eventually responded, but denied making any pressure on Steam, "Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations."

 

To add to Steam's troubles, Paypal became unusable in most of the world as an option to pay for Steam purchases. It was reported in The Gamer only users in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and countries which use the Euro can still do so. At first, Valve offered no reason as to why, but later would explain, "In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies"

 

As of now, it is unclear when the delisted games will be restored, or when Paypal will be fully useable again. 

 

Sources: PC Gamer, The Guardian, The Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun 

 

Bixyl Shutan 

 

Puddle Jumper Mall Steamwork Clock

 

The Puddle Jumper Mall at Sunlight Bay in the Sunweaver community's a fun place to shop, with it's selection of freebies and the train service, as well as the nearby airport Farshore Field. But recently something was added, a steampunk clock. 

 

Besides the dial, there's some animated pistons that move and keep the clock working  It also whistles every hour and half hour. 

 
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunlight%20Bay/113/174/22

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Annoucement: Steam XIX Grid-Wide Hunt by Mieville Historical Hunts

 

 

 Mieville Historical Hunts proudly presents STEAM XIX!
Theme: Around the World in 80 Days

:STEAM XIX has three special adventures for you to enjoy:

 #1 - THE GRID-WIDE HUNT: STEAM XIX
Around the World in 80 Days, featuring 50 gifts!
(This blog post focuses on the Grid-Wide Hunt's participating shops!)

#2 - TWO THEMED MARKETS for your shopping pleasure!

 #3 - A HOT AIR BALLOON GAME played in the
Mieville Themed Market areas (Verne & Twain)
for added gifts and fun.

Use this landmark to start these adventures!
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mieville%20Shelley/82/217/22

 

 

RFL Purple Tears Steam Game Key Raffle

 

Come on down and take a drive along the lovely Route 9 in SL. And if you happen to be driving by the Purple Tears HQ (which is in desperate need of some decorating at some point, sorry) feel free to stop by and enter for a chance to win some Steam game keys! (If you don't want the game for yourself, you can always give the key to a friend/relative/enemy/whomever!)

Currently up for auction are:
Hogwarts Legacy Deluxe Edition
Star Wars Squadrons
Calico
Pathfinder: Kingmaker Enhanced Plus Edition
Worms Rumble

Raffles are set to end at 5PM SLT on April 30th this time instead of just a week to give people a chance to get there.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Choa%20Nu/140/168/37 

Announcement: Steam Hunt And Expo 2022

 

Welcome to the 16th STEAM Hunt & Expo 2022, a grid-wide hunt and entire themed sim.  The theme this year is "The Brass Menagerie".

WHEN:  5-27 March 2022

There will be free gifts throughout SL for you to find.  You'll be offered a variety of gifts as you search for the hidden items.  Only high-quality designers have been invited to participate, and their exclusive items will be available free only for the duration of the hunt.

This is the starting landmark:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mieville%20Shelley/62/160/1016

When you join the group Historical Hunts, Ltd. you can obtain a list of all the merchants' shops so that you can start wherever you like.  The hunters group is extremely valuable when you are stumped and need help, or simply to meet like-minded friends.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  

http://historicalhunts.blogspot.com/

There is NO HINT BLOG!  You will find hints at each shop location.

We ask you these favors:

● Please do not contact shop owners directly.  All enquiries should come to Perryn Peterson in the form of notecards as I/Ms are frequently capped.  

● Please respect everyone participating:  designers, shop owners, other hunters.  We expect courtesy in the group I/M as well.

● Please keep your lag as low as possible while hunting; do not wear a lot of prims, scripts and items like bling, weapons and HUDs.  These will slow things down for everyone.

All hunt items are clickable and will place items directly into your inventory in folders.

Enjoy and bring lots of friends with you!

Perryn Peterson
Producer, HHL Hunts & Events

HINT FOR THIS LOCATION:  There's a rare bird here!
 

Game Review: Wasteland Survival

 

As busy as I am with the paper, I do take a little time for games. One that got my attention recently was "Wasteland Survival" on Steam. As the title suggests, the objective is to try to survive in a land laid waste to by disaster. With a dog as your companion, you scavenge for resources while fighting off zombies, animals, and the occasional NPC survivor. The price of the game: Free. So is the game worth playing?

Read the review in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.
 

Reader Submitted- Game Review: Super Animal Royale

Longtime friend of the Newser, Aegis Hyena, or Xymbers Slade as he used to be known, is back with another Reader Submitted game review. "Battle Royale" type games can be violent and intense. So when Aegis heard about one that was more cartoony, that got his attention, especially since it was free. So he gave "Super Animal Royale" a try. So what did he think?

Read Aegis' Reader submitted review in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Sansar on Steam One Month Later

It was a month ago that Sansar was made available on the Steam gaming service. In it's first day, things were looking good at first with mostly positive reviews, and the statistics were showing up to 72 people users at once, which is up from it's high average several months ago of fifty to ten.

But after a few days, Sansar's numbers began to slip again. A look yesterday showed only 25 had been on at it's peak in the past 24 hours (statistics page). While there were still more positive reviews then negative, numbers were more mixed with 33 of the 79 reviews being negative.

When it was first announced by Linden Lab that Sansar would soon be available on Steam, there were some people who felt that this move was being made too early, that Sansar wasn't ready yet, and that the critics in Steams could be quite "brutal." While a longer time period is needed before a true conclusion can be made, right now, it looks like Linden Lab's move isn't having much of a long term impact on Sansar's numbers.

Sansar Now Available On Steam

About a month ago, Linden Lab announced that it's next-generation virtual world, Sansar, would soon be available on Steam. Yesterday, it was announced that Sansar was up and available there.

As of today, December 5th, we are officially live on Steam!

We wanted to give a huge thank you to our current community who have been so supportive, and to extend a warm “Welcome” to all our new community members joining us from Steam!

You can find us on Steam as an Early Access Game, where we’re free to download. Even better, you’ll get to enjoy all the benefits of Steam as a social platform for gamers including full access to our Steam Community Hub!

Sansar is one out of two products by Linden Lab available on Steam, the other being Blocksworld, which has been there since September 2017. Both are listed as "early access" platforms, "We plan on staying in Early Access until Sansar is the very best it can be." So far, there are a handful of reviews, which are mostly positive.

In it's move to Steam, Linden Lab did away with the SandeX, which was where Sansar users could buy and sell the virtual world's currency. There's no threads in the official forums about Sansar now being on Steam, though there is one in Virtualverse. Second Life had been available on Steam in 2012, but wasn't there for very long.

Ryan Schultz stated in his blog that why he hoped Sansar's move to steam was successful, he wasn't sure it would be, noting that High Fidelity doing the same didn't change it's numbers much. He did worry about Steam users being "brutal" with their reviews, though as mentioned earlier they are mostly positive so far. But he did say that two games in Sansar that had been getting attention, Hoverderby and Combat Zone, had been closed by the developers. If so, fewer available activities could make it harder for the next-generation virtual world to retain users.

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

Sansar Going To Steam, SandeX To Close

On Wednesday October 31, Linden Lab's Sansar team made a major announcement. The first part was that Sansar would soon be available on Steam.


Sansar has come a long way since we started the project. In 2018 we have devoted an enormous amount of effort to improving the end-user experience, and will continue to do so.

Given those improvements, we believe we are quickly approaching the point where we want to start bringing a large number of users onto the platform. This is an important milestone for us and especially our creators. One of the foundational principles of Sansar is that creators must be able to profit from their creations. For us to make that a reality, we need to give our creators a large audience of customers.

The cornerstone of our growth effort will be to put Sansar on Steam. Steam is where more than half of the VR market goes to find software. It also is a huge pool of users who are interested in our space and are likely to have the hardware required to run Sansar. We anticipate being able to get onto Steam by the end of this year. This is a huge step for us and we’re excited to be able introduce Sansar to an even wider audience.


Steam is a platform highly popular with gamers where people can buy games, expansions, and apps. According to the Wikipedia entry, Steam has over 150 million registered users. Linden Lab would have Second Life available on it in 2012. 

The second part of the announcement was that Linden Lab would be shutting down the SandeX, which is where users of Sansar currently buy and sell the virtual world's currency.


In order to do this, we are obligated to make significant changes to how Sansar works, especially in how the Sansar Dollar and process credit system work. These changes, will also make the credit process for Creators far more consistent and predictable. The first change is that we will be discontinuing the Sandex as of December 4, 2018.

After that date, we will be moving to a fixed conversion rate model. Creators will continue to be able to sell their work for Sansar Dollars on the Store (and soon in experiences!). Eligible creators may convert some or all of their earned Sansar Dollar balance to US dollars at a rate of S$250 to $1, and then request a USD credit to be processed in 30 days. This matches Steam’s payment timeline.

We understand that this may have an impact on the amount of revenue returned to creators compared to the Sandex. However, we believe that in the long run our creators will significantly benefit from having access to the larger Steam user base. In addition, anyone who has created their Sansar account before December 31, 2018 will receive a legacy conversion rate of S$143 to $1 until December 31, 2019, after which the conversion rate for all accounts will be S$250 to $1.

Our automated Sansar Dollar Conversion page will not be available until January 2019. In the interim, we are committed to working with our Creators to manually process credit requests of Sansar Dollars through an email process, the details of which will soon follow.


Ryan Schultz, who started his blog as focused on Sansar, remarked, "... Linden Lab is betting the farm that putting Sansar on Steam will lead to an influx of new users with cash to spend. They’ve weighed the pros and cons and they’re willing to put up with the fees that Steam will charge, in exchange for a wider audience.I simply cannot overstate what a major change in strategy this is." Schultz would also state that Linden Lab did answer a few questions in Sansar's Discord channel. Of the thirty day delay in processing credit, the answer was, "The problem is that Steam operates on a 30-60 day window. If we keep it at a few days, we will be floating credit for 1-2 months. That’s an uncomfortable financial situation to be in."

Daniel Voyager would remind his readers that, "Second Life didn’t work out very well on Steam back in 2012. It’s going to be interesting to see what impact this will have on Sansar’s user usage and revenue during 2019. The lab are gambling on a huge influx of new users with cash to spend to make Sansar more successful in the years ahead." On the Virtualverse forum (the successor to SL Universe), a couple posters were hopeful. But others were skeptical, one remarking, "the breathtaking potential that SL had in the early days is just not there."



Sources: Sansar, Ryan Scultz, Daniel Voyager, Virtualverse

Bixyl Shuftan

Marusame Arai Interviewed in Kotaku

Among those in the Sunweaver Estates, where the Second Life Newser's office makes it's home, is Marusame Arai. Between there and a few hangouts such as Luskwood, Marusame, or simply Maru to her friends, she's gotten a little attention through her cutsie mannerisms and her pinkish appearance, selling a few wares on Marketplace and appearing in an occasional cartoon.

More recently, Maru's made news by being interviewed by Kotaku, a video game newsblog. Besides her Second Life activities, she's a self-described "angry video game nerd" whom has a number of games on Steam. Among the things that makes her angry is the censorship of some video games, such as certain Japanese ones before being put on the US market. So she created a group on Steam: the "Cut-Content Police," which currently has over 970 members.

"I felt that knowing whether a game has been altered for censorship or is lacking features and or content should be transparent and it often isn’t." Maru told Kotaku, "Cut-Content to me is defined as content that was snipped out to appease something or someone AND is still being actively sold in its original form, that’s KEY." One can read the article, "The Steam Players Who Fight Against 'Censorship' " in full in Kotaku.

Most of her time Maru's appeared as a black Lusk "Wah," or red panda, dressed in pink with pink wings,  though more recently has gone about in a pinkish Kemono avatar. She's occasionally been called "The Pink Wonder." She also has her own "pink and fluffy" webpage at www.marusame.info.

Bixyl Shuftan

Forgotten City Sim to Close

A few years ago in January 2012, Gemma Cleanslate wrote about Forgotten City. After almost four years, co-owner Mandy Marseille had some sad news posted on the SL Universe forums: the sim will be coming down. "After like 4 or 5 years of existence, we are going to shut down Forgotten City."

In the forum post, she wrote that the idea for the sim's current form was, "a semi-living city to those who wanted to have a bit more lively inworld living. Unfortunately this make-life-in-the-city project was half done: lamplighter and janitor automatons plus a scheduled boat service was installed, but the city's mechanical population never came to life. As years passed we had the luck of providing housing to some very nice and talented renters, also hosted random RPs (at least we stumbled upon a few), moreover we had free super fun games on the many layers of the sim (Btw these games are still available (for free ofc) until the sim's closing).

"But as of now the income from our inworld store dwindled enough so that the sim is hardly able to maintain itself ... and thus we need to relocate the store to a 4k or so parcel and leave the rest behind to be forgotten (nomen est omen)."

A notecard at the entrance point,  Forgotten City (211, 77, 103), stated there wasn't much time as the end date was "around September 15," which is tomorrow. There are a few things do do there, an "alien shooting game," a shooting gallery, a racetrack with cars, and a winter park with a ski slope. Taking a look for myself, the shooting gallery and ski slope seemed a little bugged. The race cars and alien shooter seemed fine though.

"Thanks for the help and for everyone who came and visit (and maybe even bought something)."

Forgotten City (211, 77, 103)

Gaming News: Steam Suddenly Ending Modder Payment System, WoW Numbers Drop, A Cheater's Public End

There's been some interesting gaming news lately. The latest numbers of World of Warcraft are out. Guild Wars 2 got the attention of gamers from all around when a cheater people complained about on the forum had a youtube of his fate posted there. And we finally look into Steam's payment system for those wanting to make mods for the still popular Skyrim game, which was taken down after only for days. One of the problems with it, some brought up, was how Skyrim's modders were being treated by the game's creators.

Read more in Other Grids and MMOs.

Steam Summer Sales

One of the more popular gaming places out on the internet, if not the most popular, is Steam. Developed by the Valve corporation, the makers of games such as Half Life, Team Fortress, and Portal, it's evolved over the years to become a digital distribution platform with client software that allows for ease in purchases and playing, in addtion to chatting with friends. To further encourage purchases, there's often a number of games on sale, occasionally one up for free. In her article today, Nydia has a few words about Steam, and the fun it's provided.

See Nydia's commentary in Other Grids and MMOs.

Game Review: Sniper Elite V2

Nydia Tungsten recently found the game "Sniper Elite 2" on Steam for the very low price of "free." So she got it to see how good it was. The game has the player taking a role of a sniper in the closing days of WW2, taking out important targets. So was this a bullseye, or did the game developers need to spend more time in the shooting range.

Read Nydia's review in Other Grids and MMOs.

"Furry Gamers" Contest in "World of Tanks"

MAY 31st we are having a contest for the Furry Gamers. The prize will be your choice of game/s from steam up to $50.00 US Dollars.

The contest will be double elimination in one on one "World of Tanks" combat. The winner takes it at the end of the day. The tanks can be any nation you choose but no higher than tier 3 to give everyone a fighting chance, and maps will be picked at random by myself.

We will be starting at Noon SLT. so get as much practice in as you can and GOOD HUNTING!

PS: I will be streaming this as well, so make sure you smile as you pull that trigger

Nydia Tungsten

Game Review: Space Engineers

When one things of space games, one usually thinks of alien invaders and blowing them apart in battle. Asteroids, just an obstacle to move around with no purpose other than to wreck someone not paying attention. "Space Engineers" is a game in which the main purpose is not combat, but building. Although combat is an option for the more aggressive players, most of the time will be spent mining asteroids for ores, refining ores into various metals, and assembling the metals into various parts, and using the parts to build and modify stations and ships to suit one's needs and goals. Nydia Tungsten gives her review on the game, which has been the latest hit among her gaming neighbors in Second Life.

Read Nydia's review in Other Grids and MMOs.

Steamed Custard

Becky Shaman, or rather her alt Joshua, has been exploring around. Her journeys recently took her to the Custard Developments, a steampunk themed area. Joshua found scenery to explore, as well as a couple near-freebie vehicles to take home to drive.

Read more in Places.

Game Review: Final Fantasy VII Returns on Steam

One of the most popular video games in the late 90's was Final Fantasy 7. FF7 was popular to the point that fans wrote numerous fanfics of it's characters, and even though there were further games in the Final Fantasy series, none were as popular as the seventh. Recently, the game was made available on Steam. Grease Coakes took a look to see what's changed and what hasn't with this classic game.

Read Grease's review in Extra.