34 replies to this topic

[spectre51]

^Seems they still have some issues in other areas in regards to searches(several search criteria dont work for me} and people not receiving steam code emails.

All they offered about the above issue was this little statement, that reads as it wasn't really any big deal.

Quote

Steam is back up and running without any known issues. As a result of a configuration change earlier today, a caching issue allowed some users to randomly see pages generated for other users for a period of less than an hour. This issue has since been resolved. We believe no unauthorized actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information and no additional action is required by users. via kotaku

GraphicX, on 24 December 2015 - 04:03 AM, said:

added to the list thanks gc

do you guys review the games you've played on steam at all ?  i prefer reading the reviews of people i know is all, only a couple guys on my friends list seem to do it though.

also caved in & grabbed evil within today lol.

Nope I don't review I never thought any one would look at them so haven't bothered, I might go through the games I have some time and if a few lines come to me easily write something up for them.

[GraphicX]

thanks spec, basically the reviews by people on your friends list appear at the top so you see them above all others.

[Axe99]

Yeah Spec, when it comes to outages I find Steam to be pretty much the same as Sony or Microsoft (or anyone else I've had outages with), tend to be a bit slow to recognise it, apologise like it was not a big deal (unless things are down for a month like Sony, where they couldn't really get away with it) and pretend everything's fine when there's still a few things being worked out.  Hopefully it finishes settling down soon .  That reminds me Graph, I'll do a review now!

[spectre51]

Yay, bigger statement.

Quote

Update on Christmas Issues

- Valve
30 Dec

We'd like to follow up with more information regarding Steam's troubled Christmas.

What happened

On December 25th, a configuration error resulted in some users seeing Steam Store pages generated for other users. Between 11:50 PST and 13:20 PST store page requests for about 34k users, which contained sensitive personal information, may have been returned and seen by other users.

The content of these requests varied by page, but some pages included a Steam user’s billing address, the last four digits of their Steam Guard phone number, their purchase history, the last two digits of their credit card number, and/or their email address. These cached requests did not include full credit card numbers, user passwords, or enough data to allow logging in as or completing a transaction as another user.

If you did not browse a Steam Store page with your personal information (such as your account page or a checkout page) in this time frame, that information could not have been shown to another user.

Valve is currently working with our web caching partner to identify users whose information was served to other users, and will be contacting those affected once they have been identified. As no unauthorized actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information, no additional action is required by users.

How it happened

Early Christmas morning (Pacific Standard Time), the Steam Store was the target of a DoS attack which prevented the serving of store pages to users. Attacks against the Steam Store, and Steam in general, are a regular occurrence that Valve handles both directly and with the help of partner companies, and typically do not impact Steam users. During the Christmas attack, traffic to the Steam store increased 2000% over the average traffic during the Steam Sale.

In response to this specific attack, caching rules managed by a Steam web caching partner were deployed in order to both minimize the impact on Steam Store servers and continue to route legitimate user traffic. During the second wave of this attack, a second caching configuration was deployed that incorrectly cached web traffic for authenticated users. This configuration error resulted in some users seeing Steam Store responses which were generated for other users. Incorrect Store responses varied from users seeing the front page of the Store displayed in the wrong language, to seeing the account page of another user.

Once this error was identified, the Steam Store was shut down and a new caching configuration was deployed. The Steam Store remained down until we had reviewed all caching configurations, and we received confirmation that the latest configurations had been deployed to all partner servers and that all cached data on edge servers had been purged.

We will continue to work with our web caching partner to identify affected users and to improve the process used to set caching rules going forward. We apologize to everyone whose personal information was exposed by this error, and for interruption of Steam Store service.

Source: steam

[Axe99]

More info is good, cheers Super Spec .

[spectre51]

Last day of the sale so a reminder craft or sell any of the holiday cards you may have as they expire 4am tomorrow, also dont bother trying to trade them unless both you and the person you are trading with have have Steam mobile authenticate on for 7 days as it will hold the trade and the cards will expire before it goes through.

I haven't bought anything this sale, many prices have been tempting and would buy otherwise but my unfinished list is too big to add to it still.

Edit: Also if you want the "Red Herring" badge open your net browser on your pc(wont work in the client), found over at reddit.

• Open up Ikaruga in your browser (You have to be logged in to your steam account)
  
• type "SEARCH" (doesn't have to be caps, just type it)
  
• press enter
  
• type "1v7531"

[GasClown]

What are all the badges and gems on Steam for? I haven't really cared or looked into it so just wondering.

[GraphicX]

i tried that red herring thing spec but it doesn't unlock any new badge for me, not sure what's going on, using safari on a mac so maybe that's the issue.

sucks about the trading cards thing, i usually gift my cards out at the end of this kinda thing but now i'll have to reduce them to gems.  i did sell a card early on, was a foil card, think i got around 30¢ for it.

games i bought or had gifted to me;

braveland $1.99
little turn based combat game, apparently it's pretty short but sweet.

farcry 4 $19.98

the evil within $11.99

witcher 3 $29.99
apparently it's popular lol

dead line $2.99
basically breach & clear versus zombies with RPG elements, i'm expecting it to just be a smash through type game

grotesque tactics bundle $2.99
contains 3 turn based combat games with humour, see how that goes i guess

postal 49¢

down to one 59¢
survival fps game still in early access

the orange box $4.99
bundle containing 5 games

star wars knights of the old republic 2 $2.99
fired this up & it doesn't exactly look easy to get in to :S

legend of grimrock $2.99

avadon the black fortress $1.99
old school turn based combat rpg, apparently it's pretty awesome.

portal bundle $4.99
2 games, i now have a spare copy of portal i can gift if anyone would like it

hard reset extended edition $1.49
this looks freaking good & i've just heard they're making a 'redux' version for xbox & ps4

avadon 2 the corruption $1.99

breach & clear $2.24

arma tactics $1.79
it's ported from ios & is pretty average, it's turn based combat again so i'll reply it

--------

so that's 23 games ... adding up ... $US96.47 ... currency conversion off google which is never what paypal slugs you ... $136, so less than $6 a game xD

i still remember having to pay between $79 & $110 a game depending on whether i had to get it from kmart/bigw or eb games, but that was of course for 'new release' games whereas most of these are old, but paying more didn't shield you from buying crap.

[GraphicX]

GasClown, on 04 January 2016 - 12:29 AM, said:

What are all the badges and gems on Steam for? I haven't really cared or looked into it so just wondering.

essentially only to pretty up your profile page & increase your max friends list size.  beyond that they do nothing tbh.  a friend did randomly receive something playing counter strike mind you that he sold for almost $100 in the market, but was an in-game item iirc.

[spectre51]

GasClown, on 04 January 2016 - 12:29 AM, said:

What are all the badges and gems on Steam for? I haven't really cared or looked into it so just wondering.

Short story: they make valve and devs/pubs more money. They, give you another little stream of income(can make a notable amount with neon games with card drops)or something to collect depending if you care about that stuff.

Long story: Badges. Badges are created by crafting it when you have a full set of cards. You will notice that games with cards have drops for half of the set(though you general will get doubles even though odds say otherwise) to force you to use the market place or trading to get the rest.
You craft a badge and you get, a background, a emoticon, a discount coupon(or holiday card if done during the winter sale) and some xp. This increases your level which increases the amount of friends you have, increases the chance of getting a booster pack(really rare, but nice surprise one day to wake up with one in your inventory) and every 10 levels lets you add an additional showcase to your profile.

So gems can be gotten off the market or by turning cards, backgrounds, emoticons into them. Enough gems lets you sell a sack on the market(depends on what you use to convert into gems whether it's worth to sell the items individually or better off making a sack) or if you have enough you can use the gems to create a booster pack which you can then open to get 3 cards or sell on he market.

For the most part things only go for a few cents but for some games some cards(foils), backgrounds and emoticons will sell for several dollars(generally anime girls). Generally I find cards going for between 5c-20c range depending on the game.

My story: I do participate in the crafting of the badges but I have a golden rule and that is not to spend any of my own money, and two sub rules, I will only craft badges for games I have and only to level 1 so I get half the set from drops to make them not cost so much.
Originally I had no interest in cards and sold all mine when they were still somewhat new.  This enabled me to later on buy full sets of cards with the money o made off of selling half a set, then I use to make sets of cards to craft during the winter sale to get holiday cards, in past years at e start holiday cards would go for up to 40c it's slowly dropped so it isn't that good anymore with people realising why spend 40c on a card that in a week will be around 10c so this year they started off low so it isn't that viable anymore.

For interest my total purchases on the steam market are $8.65 while I have sold a total of $17.43 so I have a nice profit of near $9, if that profit ever got too low I'd just stop buying cards to craft.

[GasClown]

My Story: Don't really care (for them then).

[GraphicX]

i usually craft a badge for games i complete.  think i've received 3 booster packs now.

not sure i'll be doing it too much now though as i can't trade cards with mates due to that stuff spec wrote earlier about the steam guard mobile app needing to be on.

[spectre51]

^That trade thing I am referring specifically to the holiday cards since they expire in under 24 hours at my time of post  and if you don't have that authenticator thing on they hold the trade for 24*hours, so they would expire before the trade went through.

(*If you've been friends for a year but can hold for up to 3 days otherwise)

Heres some info on trade holds

Also with the red herring badge I have seen some say it doesnt work for some browsers, Chrome or IS/Edge is your best bet if you want it.

[GraphicX]

just tried that badge from edge & it worked, thanks again.

[Axe99]

That's a lot of games there Graph, should keep you going for a while .  I picked up a couple of strategy titles (War in the East and PanzerCorps, both the 'game and all DLC bundles'), was around $80US for them combined, but costs twice that otherwise, and Matrix/Slitherine generally don't discount harder than 50 per cent, and don't do it often, so worth grabbing while they were on sale.  There's a fair chance they may keep me busy almost as long as your haul as well - old person games, expensive but they go the distance (unlike old people?) .

Good luck with all those badges as well.  I'm still not a badge/card/gem person, so if either of you see something in my inventory that could ever be of interest, just pipe up and I'll send it over .