This year’s Grand Prix-themed Steam summer sale was a bumpy ride, to say the least. Two weeks ago, Valve apologized and altered the sale’s meta game—in which players join teams and “race” against each other for prizes—after players found it unbalanced and confusing, and developers suffered a bloodbath of sudden wishlist deletions. Now, with the sale winding down, it seems that Valve’s efforts weren’t enough to undo the damage the confusing sale structure did to indie developers.

Small video games studios are asking the public to stop buying their titles from "unauthorised" markets, saying the sales cost them more than they earn. Several have said it would even be better if consumers pirated their games rather than purchased discounted unlock codes from the "key resellers". One label is running a petition calling on the biggest such market - G2A - to halt sales of indie games outright.

But, the gaming company isn't happy with Canonical and will try to work closer with other Linux distributors.

32-bit software should be functionally obsolete, but it turns out to live on in a 64-bit computing world. So, Canonical is putting 32-bit libraries back in to its next Ubuntu Linux releases.

Steam is dropping official support for Ubuntu, which is currently the world's most popular desktop Linux distribution. The bombshell news was delivered by

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is an amazing experience. The title focuses on historic armies and significant conflicts that have occurred in the past. The first game spawned a couple of sequels, but there's something about the original that stands the test of time. In our review, we said, "If you somehow managed to miss out on trying the original Age of Empires, this is your time to get stuck in. The Definitive Edition is an excellent nod to the classic title that made the series what it is today."

In a big move for its approach to PC gaming, Microsoft has announced that it's planning to bring more Xbox Game Studios games to Steam, freeing them from the confines of the Microsoft Store. That store itself isn't dead and gone—it's part of Microsoft's plans for bringing the Xbox Game Pass subscription service to PC, which it also announced today. But it will no longer be the only way to play those first-party games on PC.

While it’s ostensibly pretty amazing that Steam’s population now equals almost a seventh of that of the entire world, a significant number of these are undoubtedly spam, scam, alt, and bot accounts. Probably tens, maybe hundreds of millions. One in seven people on the planet are not PC gamers.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been making some bold claims on Twitter, which is always fun for spectators and perhaps terrifying for investors. Once again, the subject is the Epic Games Store's divisive exclusivity strategy, which has ruffled feathers while taking a fair number of prominent games off Steam. Sweeney claims all of that will end if Steam commits to an 88 percent revenue share for developers.

At this point, we're actually a little tired of stories about "review bombing," where various put-upon groups of gamers gather together to leave a flood a negative user reviews, often for issues that have nothing to do with the game itself. But this week's flood of positive reviews for Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Unity on Steam is a different (and much rarer) story altogether.

Black Mesa is a fan-made remake of the original Half-Life which was excellent enough to be approved for sale on Steam. It’s been in Early Access since it hit Steam in 2015, and we’ve spent most of that time waiting for the frequently-delayed Xen release. Black Mesa has been in various stages of development for over 14 years now, and this month its development time has surpassed that of Duke Nukem Forever.

Borderlands 2 has seen a huge increase in concurrent players on Steam in the last week, no doubt a result of escalating interest in the series following the reveal of Borderlands 3. The game peaked just shy of 60K players last weekend—59,033 according to Steam Charts (highlighted here on GitHype). The review scores remain Very Positive on both Borderlands 2 and the original game, though closer inspection will show that both games have seen recent 'off-topic review activity'—read more about those review bombing efforts here.

"We've just been assuming this risk [by making Dwarf Fortress] ever since I quit my math job. Let it go, let it go. Just run the rubber off the tires and who cares what happens," says Tarn Adams. We're talking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, just a week after he announced that Dwarf Fortress, the Adams' brothers decade-in-the-making ASCII sim, is coming to Steam with graphics and sound and a polished up user interface.

Valve today announced an expansion of its game-streaming app Steam Link, now named Steam Link Anywhere (via The Verge). The original Steam Link app let users stream PC games on Steam to a mobile device within their home, but Steam Link Anywhere lets users stream games from their PC to any compatible device with internet service, excluding Apple devices. Apple rejected the original Steam Link app due to "business conflicts," while the app went on to see a release on Android.

After years of rumors and leaked mockup images, it's finally happening: Steam's library is getting a new look. This isn't a full-on redesign of Steam in its entirety, so the store and other parts of the interface aren't changing as far as we know. In its keynote at GDC on Thursday, Valve showed off the new library view, highlighting a redesigned page with large game thumbnails and more categorization around what's going on with your games.

During its GDC 2019 Unreal keynote this morning, Epic announced that it has partnered with 2K's Private Division label to distribute The Outer Worlds and Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey on the Epic Games Store. PC Gamer has learned that The Outer Worlds will also release on the Microsoft Store, but will not appear on other stores on PC for at least a year—that includes Steam.

Dwarf Fortress is a fascinating concept, but if you’ve ever laid your eyes on the subterranean simulation, you’ll know it’s not been the easiest thing to actually look at. That’s set to change very soon, however, as the game’s developers have announced that the game is expanding on its current Patreon pricing model with an official Steam and Itch.io release, which will accompany a massive graphical overhaul.

Did you know it 's possible to earn free Steam wallet codes by watching videos and completing short surveys? Learn about 5 websites where you can do just that.

Has the digital distribution giant finally met its match?

Just weeks prior to the release of Metro Exodus, publisher Deep Silver made a very controversial decision; to make the game exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC. The game had already been available to pre-order on Steam, and so the decision prompted widespread anger from PC gamers. The Metro series was review-bombed on Steam, and although Deep Silver did honour existing Steam pre-orders, it is no longer possible to purchase the game on the platform; only those who pre-ordered are able to play Metro Exodus on Steam.