wait, it got removed? It was just on sale last week makes total sense
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It looks like they disabled it for purchase so that's why.
the GA that I made with my steam wallet becomes pointless
That's really sad to read.
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Did Steam ever make any sorts of notification concerning the matter?
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I have no idea why the thread is bumped, but happy cakeday mate! :D
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lol, here of all places.. why not...
Happy Cakeday!!! =)
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Game is disabled from purchase because there are problems with the CD keys Steam assigned to owners, preventing them from starting up the game. When a game is not available for purchase, Steam API reports it costing 0 dollars, and this site uses data from there.
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Problems with keys? Are we sure EA didn't do that on purpose?
If there were just issues with the keys, they should've just disabled the purchase, removing the price was unnecessary.
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Disabling purchase means Steam reports it for no dollars, as the store page officially has no price displayed.
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So the two things are connected? I was under the wrong assumption that the price was independent from anything else.
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No, it is not. It is a very weird system. I assume it is like that because Steam was originally meant to be nothing more than a DRM and a possible developer storefront for Valve games. Then it expanded, yet they never really adjusted the core design of the database that serves it. This is why you see such things as subIDs not really knowing ownership or not having the possibility to actually remove an item from your account (it just gets disabled in the database, but that's it).
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Steam is one gigantic spaghetti code and without ground rewrite of everything it's not possible to fix majority of things. Thing is, Valve understands how important Steam is to both them (as $$$) and us (as gaming platform) and it's too risky to try to fix it today.
It's like fixing half-broken device in your house with no prior knowledge - like a TV. There is too big chance that you'll break it for good and it won't work at all, while right now it's working at least partially.
That's why everything considering Steam is working so poorly, and making any reliable system is nearly impossible, as you need to take in account every single Steam quirk that might happen. Even in ASF, which doesn't do pretty much steam-wise, the amount of fuckups I had to deal with is just over any acceptable software bug level, and you're working around Steam bugs more often than you write actual general program code.
Steam is still cool, and I love it and hate it at the same time, because what is currently happening is the result of writing spaghetti code for last 10 or more years - very likely developers working on Steam today are too scared to touch that obsolete code written 10 years ago, while at the same time still needing to satisfy today's needs.
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But we both know that unless it breaks down completely, Valve will never invest the time and money to create a new system and new database and migrate everything there. It would cost money with no immediate 30-200% returns margin. :)
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Every major business operates like this. Look at it this way:
Now they have something that works. Yes, it's inefficient and it costs money to patch it over and over again, but it'll keep working.
If they write new code from scratch, (1) it'll be very expensive, (2) it'll take a very long time, (3) once completed, migration is costly and time-consuming, (4) if it's not perfect, and it never is, launch issues will be very disruptive, and (5) within a few years it'll be obsolete/outdated again anyway
This is why there are companies that still use COBOL. New systems are layered on top of old systems, patches are brought out regularly, but the core remains untouched.
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Something like that happened IRL here on Peru.
A big bank did a big update on the homebanking system. They migrated and everything was fine ... Until the end of June .
On June most employees get a bonus , but the bank decided to charge on about 98% of the accounts an amount equals to the whole account balance . Meaning , end of the month , when people wanted to use the bonus (and it was a weekend!!) , most people had no money on their account .
It was a big mess.
Upgrading a working system is a big risk , even if their code is prone to bugs
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This is the first one I saw, then followed to the end.
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yup, i bought a copy from steam for my wifes account and it would not launch of steam,had to poull the key off steam and activate it on origin for her to play it and even then it stops running 20 minutes into the game and she has to re-launch it for another 20 minutes..rinse and repeat she gave up after awhile.
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Apparently, the game got purchase disabled... just after the sale ended. So the API reports its price as $0 to Steam Gifts.
I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to the few other EA games on Steam in the future.
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Would like to have a note from STeam when they do that!
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Exactly. This way making GA for the effort of leveling up will not feel like gambling
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also think about those who gather deleted games!
Or those players who feel the need to get the game before u cant get it anymore
also rare to have 1, so I think it could get the selling raise up for steam aswell ;)
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But now he can cancel the giveaway and sit it in his inventory to sell for good money later to buy more games to giveaway:)
Ohh wait he already gave it...welp :P
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I canceled one of my GA for it just in case it never comes back :o
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If someone can win and play the game, then the giveaway isn't pointless.
I hope that this gets manually fixed, so that people who can still gift this game have more incentive to do so.
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Yup I guess that's one way to see it. If I knew it would be like this, I prefer to redeem the game myself :(
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game is unplayable currently even if you own it,i got it for my wife and wont launch from steam so we activated it directly on origin and only lets her play for 20 minutes before deactivating and shutting itself down,so til thats fixed im guessing it wont come back to steam.
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I wonder if that applies to all Steam copies of the game, or only some of the recently ones sold. Hmm. I purchased mine many months ago...but haven't even installed it yet on either client.
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just tested this license
Mar 9, 2015 Alice Madness Returns Gift/Guest Pass
tested steam version and it worked perfectly fine for me, however it did on first time launch as me to "register my product" at which point i logged into my EA/Origin account inside that register box (which already does have Alice registered there as well).
testing launch thru origin as well, though i very much assume the same results.. will only postback if failure, otherwise assume success..
UPDATE: i did not however play that test thru for 20mins, didnt even think of that during test till rereading above...... will test that too.
UPDATE2: forget me testing thru origin, i assumed it was similar to the NFS games and would still launch the steams version, but im not downloading the 8gb install over again for this test.. sry.. will finish testing above 20min mark in steam and make final update3 in bit though.
UPDATE3: steam version seems fine for me entirely.. played 35min (44min steam timer) and got a decent ways into it.. will continue it even further cause its pretty decent imo :D - steam testing complete imo
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/261595156264785254/122E24004BEF55C997072788A8E8CFCB833A2ED7/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/261595156264785686/F9B9B9023FFD3A907852402A1E96B1EF6FCA6B6B/
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Very nice to hear, thanks for testing d3m4n d-(^‿^)s
Btw there are some configuration tweaks which are reported to help the game a lot on modern hardware...
http://steamcommunity.com/app/19680/discussions/0/620700960697826702/
PhysXGpuHeapSize=64 to PhysXGpuHeapSize=256
PhysXMeshCacheSize=8 to PhysXMeshCacheSize=16
MinSmoothedFrameRate=22 to MinSmoothedFrameRate=30
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=31 to MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60
PoolSize=140 to PoolSize=560
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The full guide is here btw...
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1963500
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np on testing, its one ive been meaning to get to anyways (and not all to bad on controller even since it autolooks for most aiming situations)
& tyvm for the tweaks, made those changes =)
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Alright I just played it for a couple hours myself now and it too ran flawless for me the entire time. So perhaps the issue was only confined to the most recent CD-Keys issued.
Anyhow phenomenal art in this one...amazing game tbh...a definite must-own here ツ
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haha yeah, i played a few more hours today. it really is good, can't believe i took this long to get around to this one :D
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I got this as a gift a few years ago, only recently played it like a month or two ago. It ran fine on Win10, no problems.
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must be just newer copys as hers would not even activate through steam on origin she has to enter the key on origin separately and download from them for it to run at all.
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Bough the game when it was 2.49 euros on sale before getting purchase disabled, i didnt install the game, just activated the key on the origin client, worked fine.
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yea we had no problem activating the key directly on origin or on steam,problem was when you install it via steam it takes you to origin to activate the key again and dont work there so you cant play it with steam
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yes i bought one for a gib and is now in my Inventory. hope i can trade it for a good Game :)
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Same thing happened to me with Evolve and Letter Quest.
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Except those actually went free-to-play, they didn't get removed or purchase disabled.
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Letter Quest got removed for making way to Letter Quest: Remastered.
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Nope, LQ didn't get removed, it got updated into a combined version with both games. Something got screwed up in the process, and both versions of the game now report $0.
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Yeah, it went F2P two months ago, and its name was changed to "Evolve Stage 2".
Under the hood, t's the same game as before, although I don't know what happened with the DLCs.
It stirred a big shitstorm, as those who paid for it got really angry, because they didn't get anything back.
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All previous owners received the newly-converted P2W packages according to their ownership levels, at least this was the original setup/promise.
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They got next to nothing. Some of those silver coins with which you buy perks and monsters/hunters, in amount of not-being-able-to-buy-a-single-character! -_-
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p2w? just wrong. there where never any p2w thing in evolve. not in f2p and not before...
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they changed a lot in the game and the shitstorm was not that big. most players that where left where happy to find new people to play with because game was death anyways
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Letter Quest in't F2P. A remaster was released, which also includes the original, which can no longer be purchased.
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you can sell your evolve key on g2a/kinguin. people pay more now than in the last days of the non f2p time because they will get all the stuff in the game without grinding
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Thanks for the tip but I gave the game away a long while back.
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Is that why I'm level 4 now? That is some bullshit. I gave it away a while a too as while.
The fact you can lose levels is nonsense. What purpose does it serve?
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You can check the value of your sent GA here:
http://www.sgtools.info/real-cv
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I know that. I'm not asking about CV, I'm asking why losing levels is even a thing.
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Why is gaining levels even a thing ? All it does is make people whine.
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So ? Do you think you are entitled to any level ? It's just a feature, the admin might decide to completely remove them at any time. What are you going to do then, ask us for a refund ?
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As a more constructive answer:
The only efficient way to run the site was to have it directly connect to the Steam database, which reports the current retail price of a game. There's certain mishaps that arise from that, especially given Valve's perpetually low-quality approach to things.
Even if you could make an argument for SG manually setting the prices whenever they changed [much like the Bundle list], the fact is that the site simply doesn't have the manpower for doing such. And, much like the bundle list, it'd only cause frustrations in the long run. Here, it's a consistent system. Moreover, it's not Steamgift's fault or responsibility if a game's price changes.
If we buy a game for ourselves or a friend, and it then goes free and the dev doesn't offer refunds, then that's us getting screwed over for our purchase. That's no different then, than if we put the game up for giveaway.
The fault/responsibility lies solely with the developer and publisher, and putting their choice to make price changes on Steamgifts is absurd.
You're making an investment in the game itself, and then basing your contribution on Steamgifts based on that investment. If that investment changes, then that change was based on your judgement of the purchase, not off anything Steamgifts did.
In other words, it's like buying stocks, and then using those as collateral for determining your status on this site. If the value of those stocks changes, obviously their value as collateral would as well.
Whether it's an intuitive system or not depends on your perspective; and where that falters, the fact that a system different than the current one is unsustainable is going to be the deciding factor.
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just to play devil's advocate, this site could record the retail price of the game at the time the GA is created, and use that value rather than look up the current retail price on steam at any given time. Unless I'm mistaken, it'd just be one extra field in the database, and while it would increase the storage needs, it could decrease bandwidth requirements due to not needing to look up the current steam price for every game ever given away.
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That would mean having to manually correct hundreds of giveaways because of API bugs
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I'm not advocating changing it now, nor do I particularly care. Had it been set up like that, it'd be easy. After conversion, it'd be easy. implementing would be a bitch (and I think we'd be talking thousands of giveaways)
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I mean constantly having to correct giveaways, not just to implement this. For example giveaways for a game that have a higher value because a package including this game is on sale, at the moment they just return to their correct value once the sale ended, but we would have to look them up and change the value for all the giveaways instead. Then you have the API sometimes randomly returning no value for a bunch of games that are still available for purchase, it usually lasts a couple days and during that time the concerned games have a $0 value. So we would have to fix all these manually too.
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My understanding is that CV is dynamic based on current Steam prices - so when (if?) the game is made available again, in theory everyone who gave it away should see their CV go back up.
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On a sidenote, it should be noted that the Steam CD-Key for it can also activate on the Origin client...I just did so a couple days ago.
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This applies to a number of other games available on Origin as well.
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True, althought not all.
Others that I was able to activate there include:
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
- Bulletstorm
- Dragon Age Origins
- Crysis 2 (I think works as well, already had it activated there)
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
- Mass Effect 2 (but the Cerberus key for it couldn't transfer)
- Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
- Shift 2 Unleashed
You basically have to test each one in your Steam library :-)
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Can we still activate the key on Steam after it is activated on Origin?
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side note -- NFS Shift & Undercover (and a few others) -- cdkeys are not found inside steam client, but after installed thru steam client they can be found in the windows registry to activate the product over on origin as well.
and for an even more complete list
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Just did Mass Effect 2 and the Cerebus key worked for me, not sure why there would be a difference.
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That's interesting...I receive the red "This code has already been used" error when I try.
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Hey there! Keep an eye on it maybe they'll fix the problem :)
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Still a few copies to be found among traders. The game will probably go up the longer the purchase disbaling continues, but I don't expect it to surpass the msrp until it is officially pulled.
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Thank god i got another copy recently. Hope it won't come back so i can make a profit for once :P
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Then it would be doom for us who made the GA :(
Ok try to make profit, just beware of scammers :d
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So I guess u bought Alice Madness Returns for 2,50 euros last sale.
Prices went up again and gave you 10,00 euros CV here on Steamgifts.
All you REALLY "lost" is 2,50. Thats nothing to be mad about.
"I feel very disappointed bcos the GA that I made with my steam wallet becomes pointless."
Ah, you have no problems getting extra CV but when u lose a little it all becomes pointless.
take a look at your CV and CV level. Did you REALLY spent $1000 on giveaways? No, way less.
Prices decrease, games get removed, games get bundled. It all affects your CV in a negative way. Thats how it works, no need to complain.
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You get full CV regardless of current price, if the game is unbundled. That's not considered extra CV and almost everything is bought on sales.
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The main point is that we all get more CV than what we actually pay for most of the time, but the few times something happens and it goes the other way, people get mad about it.
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If almost every game is bought on sale, people don't view 1$ spent = 1 $ CV anymore. And it's just human nature to be unhappy when something negative happens, even if everything was good before :P
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All I was saying that the OP complains about a 10$ CV loss when he really only spent 2,50$. While many other giveaways he might have spent $2,50 and is still getting 10$ in CV. Thats just smart levelling but no reason to complain if it doesnt work out all the time in your favour.
I paid 20 bucks for a giveaway this week and got 20 bucks in CV. If youre getting more than what paid imo its an extra. And yes I do understand that goes for 99% of the ga's here.
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If almost every game is bought on sale, people don't view 1$ spent = 1 $ CV anymore. There is also a matter of expectations: you think you bought 10$ CV (regardless of how much you spent) and if you end up getting less you are disappointed. Now, if you ended up getting more for some reason (and not just a bug), then you would be happy.
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Aw, I was planning on buying it at some point. Guess I'll need to get it from origin during the next sale :(
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I don't buy from g2a or kinguin, but thanks for the info anyway :)
Also, I'm pretty sure it was at 3 or 4 dollars on the last origin sale.
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Time to SG stop to be a dick too, if one user make a GA then the game is removed, why the fuck SG can't let this user with these $contribuition. Like after a game who entered in bundle
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Yesterday I made a GA of the game and today my SG points drop. I checked Sgtools and found out the real value has dropped to $0.
What happened here? Is there a chance that the value will climb back up?
I feel very disappointed bcos the GA that I made with my steam wallet becomes pointless.
Thanks for stopping by! Sorry no GA for now.
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