Both Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox had a little bit of a rough holiday period. After all, when many users turned on their new PS4s and Xbox Ones they found themselves unable to connect to the online networks for either console thanks to a DDoS attempt taking them both down. However, seems Valve’s Steam had a much better time of it.

At around 11:30 in the morning on January 1st, Steam reached a new record for users online at the same time. According to the Steam Game and Player Statistics page there were 8,466,441 people using Steam simultaneously at that time which is around 400,000 more than the previous record which saw just over 8 million log on around late July 2014.

Dota 2 was obviously the most popular game of the day, drawing around 875,000 players to that record total with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (360,000 players), Rounding out the top five were Team Fortress 2 (89,000 players), Football Manager 2015 (75,000 players), and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (66,000 players) being the next four most played games of the time.

Given that it was only a year before Steam broke 7 million concurrent users, and two years that it made it past 6 million; no one can say that Steam has been anything but successful for Valve as a venture.

If only we knew when to expect news on the Steam Boxes…

Sometimes just when you think a story is over, it suddenly surprises you by developing in a way you didn’t see coming.

Last night I wrote an article talking about Hatred, the controversial mass-murder game, and how its Greenlight campaign had lasted only a few hours before it got taken down by Valve. during that time is managed to gain over 13k up votes and was 7th on the most wanted games for Greenlight and it seems that somehow, in some way it might have made Valve change their mind.

Yes, that’s right. Hatred’s Greenlight page is back up.

Details about exactly why the decision was reversed aren’t currently known, but Destructive Creations’ Facebook has posted up a screenshot of what appears to be an e-mail from Gabe himself.

“Yesterday I heard that we were taking Hatred down from Greenlight. Since I wasn’t up to speed, I asked around internally to find out why we had done that. It turns out that it wasn’t a good decision, and we’ll be putting Hatred back up. My apologies to you and your team. Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers.

Good luck with your game.

Gabe.”

Do you support this decision?

Those of you who follow the gaming community might remember the announcement of a little game called Hatred back in October. The trailer was for a game about mass-murdering innocents and quite rightfully caused controversy. Some said that the developer Destructive Creations should be free to create whatever they wished, while others noted that it probably wouldn’t do much to undo the stereotype of video games being seen as the cause of many a violent incident in the past.

Fast-forward to the 15th of this month and a Greenlight went up on Steam for the game, which within a couple of hours shot up the list of Steam Greenlight’s most wanted games to become seventh. The reason it didn’t get any higher is because Valve took the decision to remove the Greenlight page with Valve’s Doug Lombardi being quoted as saying, “Based on what we’ve seen on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down.”

To their credit Destructive have not thrown a fit about the decision saying that they “fully respect Valve’s decision” and remaining confident that their game has a market. Given that it had over 13k up votes when it was taken down, they have a point. Their full statement is below:

“Dear Hatred Fans,

 

“As you know today we’ve launched our Steam Greenlight campaign for Hatred.

 

“Unfortunately after couple of hours Steam shut it down giving the below as reasons behind their decision:

 

“’We wanted you guys to know that based on what we see on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down.’

 

“Even though games like Manhunt or Postal are still available on Steam we of course fully respect Valve’s decision, as they have the right to do so. In the same time we want to assure you that this won’t in any way impact the game’s development, game’s vision or gameplay features we’re aiming for. The game is still to be released in Q2 2015 as planned.

 

“Moreover we don’t treat this as a failure because yet again this showed us a huge community support we’re totally overwhelmed with. After only a couple of hours Greenlight campaign being live, Hatred gathered 13,148 up votes and ended up on a #7 on Top 100 list.

 

“This is the best proof for us that there are diehard Hatred fans out there, waiting for this game to be released. And that we need to keep going to deliver them a game that offers exciting and challenging gameplay.

 

“The whole situation only pushes us forward to go against any adversity and not to give up. It also makes us want to provide our fans Hatred pre-orders sooner, as many of you have asked for them.

 

“At the end of the day you, gamers will judge if we were able to do a game that’s simply fun to play.”

What do you think? Were Valve right to remove the Greenlight, or should Hatred be allowed within the Steam Store? Tell us below in the comments!

It seems that Valve need to stop trusting Paypal with the dates of their sales if they want to release the dates themselves. After giving a nod to the short sale that ended less than a fortnight ago, they’ve once again sent out an e-mail that lets us know when the Steam Winter Sale is to be taking place.

Paypal Japan have been sending out the e-mail in question which pinpoints the start of the Winter Sale as December 18th, which is just less than a week away. Best hope your wallets are recovered from the last sale.

Close as it might be to the Autumn Sale and Black Friday, the Winter Sale lasts longer and hopefully we’ll get some flash sales, badges and a bunch of other things that were absent from the last sale.

Did you miss any games last time?

Lovers of classic strategy games will be pleased to hear that another classic is due for a polish and re-release on Steam soon.

The game in question is Might & Magic III and its getting an HD remake it’s just been announced. As a strategy game it is not of the real-time genre, relying on turn-based combat but for fans of the original game they’re going to love the remake. There’s not any new content coming, but nothing’s being changed either. The new art is in the same vein as the original art and just serves to give the game a well-needed polish to make it look beautiful, and the music and sound are being fine-tuned to make them crisper and sharper.

Neither of the expansions are getting an upgrade as of yet, but if Might & Magic III HD does well, who knows? If you want to re-live some nostalgia or are just interested in what the fuss is about you can pick up a Steamworks-supported Might & Magic III HD from January 29th.