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My Name is Addiction.

It‘s not really a game but actually a statement; a critical comment on how playing with fire can get yourself some heavy 3rd degree burns in an instant. A picture that tries to siphon out your soul without filling the gap it creates.
This is the story of a broken woman, a girl so young and innocent that she wouldn‘t be allowed to play this game she‘s the protagonist of.

Cleril’s My Name is Addiction may be one of the most disturbing novel ever made (it could upset some players even more than Quentin Tarantino‘s Super Mario Bros. or even EA‘s Assassin‘s Creed did), yet it’s impossible to take your eyes off it, even though it‘s 4:26 am and you got to be awake in less than an hour.

Based on the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, the book, a full-throttle, sickening mindbender, is hypnotically harrowing and very intense, an auditive, visual and spiritual plunge into the seduction and terror of substance addiction.
The lead designer interconnects the tales of fourteen desperate, outerborough urban nobody-protagonists who fall prey, in different ways, to the slavery of pornographic abuse.
A few of them are just regular weird junkies, but the novel will be best remembered for Tom Hank‘s role as a sad, matronly e-Sports yenta who gets hooked on pornography. Cleril, in a disturbingly virtuoso act of „♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥“-bad trip perversity, literally turns Tom‘s world inside out, stealing the player‘s soul that has already lost its contours (but surely not its desire to be loved by some of the actors he depends on).

So much for the youth-chic glamour of pornography! Some players, and more than a few critics (specifically excluding myself), are likely to accuse My Name is Addiction of being ”manipulative” and of disgustingly dressing up primal kick exploitation voyeurism as regular, though beautifully drawn gutter art.
In a year, however, when America‘s political culture is being called on the carpet for its stupidity, violence and extremity, Cleril has made one of the rare dark-as-midnight novels that finds its very unholy essence - and, in a strange way, its sacred morality - by going ”way too far,” by depicting the unspeakable without any kind of safety net of restraint.
As MNIA unspools, the player’s dread relentlessly surges forward with some disturbing kind of cathartic and terrified amazement. Those willing to take this weird journey may feel as if they’re not so much trapped as hooked - addicted to the pornographically well-drawn images that are addling the characters’ brains.

This is only Cleril’s second game, after The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim, the low-budget indie novelty hit of flashy, mod-infested paranoia that crashes your computer the second you start it, but as a novelmaker he has now made a dazzling, bravura leap. The developer has turned his style into a powerfully unsettling style of freakout sensuality, complete with player-affecting hallucinations, nerve-twitching spatial-temporal back-and-forths, terribly stroboscopic montages of ritual porn abuse and a clinical shock-cut intensity that makes you feel as if Tom Hank’s sick psyches had merged with your own.
Cleril was recently hired to write the script for the fourty-sixth Call of Duty script; if he‘s able to bring anything in that approaches this level of creative ferocity to the reimagination of that terribly overrated series, he could help reenergize mainstream shooters. Well, at least until you beat the campaign again and are now yelling at innocent children playing it online.

Jessica Chestain, all sinew and pale skin as usual, inherited the role of a girl that asks you out for dinner. She‘s an American thrill seeker in her early 60s whose only ambition is to shoot porn as often as possible. There’s an authentic scruffy anonymity to the way that Jessica and her best buddy (the player) laugh and shimmy to a techno groove as the porn gets injected as printed and shred pieces of paper into their veins, gaining a grip on their blood.
At crucial points, each of the two figures is viewed - pinned - by a fixed camera as they scramble, against a herky-jerky hand-drawn background, to escape some of their inevitable, awful destiny.
The technique may look familiar for Marvel fans, but I’ve never seen it used the way that Cleril does - to suggest that the characters, through porn, are completely severed from their very identities, to the point that they appear to be surveying their very own self destruction, as if they were players in a video game themselves.
My Name is Addiction may be the first novel to ever fully capture the way that porn can disassociate us from ourselves.

It’s that perception that powers the extraordinary tale of the player’s grandmother, Tom Hanks. Eager to fit into his old captain‘s uniform, the one his Somalian pirate mooned over in one of his first games, Tom uses a regular smartphone that offers endless amounts of porn, and the tangled power surge of kinky pictures and relaxing deviantart images begins to interact with his loves and desires, his fixation on playing crap roles in bad movies, his habitual staring at a telephone for no reason at all. The spiral of surreal hypothermia becomes almost too much to bear. Yet Hanks, in a fearless performance, never lets us forget how deeply his porn addiction is rooted in the piercing cul-de-sac of his loneliness as an actor.

Random toy stores in line at LA’s boardwalk, baiting passersby into pushing luck for cheap stuffed toys. On midways, delusion is playfully peddled for profit.
Visions of luxury become inescapable nightmares of insatiable itches - to be aroused, satisfied, famous, feared. MNIA glamorizes nothing en route to a near-nauseating finale, which feels like a rollercoaster car hitched off the track and hurtled into hell’s depths.
Yet for the game‘s conclusive hellfire, it’s a midpoint scene extinguishing Tom‘s flickering flame of happiness that crushes the most. In a heartbreaking monologue, the player’s very own voice, secretly recorded by hacking his phone, composure and will crumble as he croaks, “This game is so damn weird,” to himself.
It’s then that a player loses his mind forever - powerless to pull himself back from the brink of self-destruction, let alone anyone else.
A decade later, and now likely for all time, “My Name is Addiction” still follows through with full force on its cautionary stomach punch.

Does the novel go too far? In the final scene of devastation, which offers a total of one out of seven endings, the player can carefully observe their character’s horrific fates; Cleril lays on his drawn art with didactic brutality.
In at least one of these endings, however, the novel attains a kind of queasy greatness: We watch as Tom Hanks opens up another tab on his browser, starting a last, peaceful porn and his willing dehumanization is dramatized in discreet flash cuts, with a present-tense nightmare intimacy that leaves us absolutely speechless.

At that moment, the player, once alive, feels that he himself was the protagonist with the many names, he who has now abandoned the dream of himself for the mere illusion that is pornography.
My Name is Addiciton, at times very disturbing and always intense, offers its own acid trip for players and is a first-hand look at a huge number of people who become trapped by their own, self-crafted hell.

Let your sorrows be washed away by the flood of informaton available at your finger tips. Those intense, soul stealing videos of lust will surely take you back to your own self; you just have to, for the last time in your life, open up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Welcome to your hell.

Terraria.

It‘s a strategic shooting simulation with heavy emphasis on the platformer part. It‘s a game with heavy background, a dense story and intensive gameplay, after which you sit back in your super massive chair, breathe out and think: What did I just play? What shall I think of this?
Terraria just might prove that gaming in itself has regained its legacy, or not. So did it? Let‘s discuss this question in detail.

This question kepts a lot of critics from having a good night‘s sleep, and the answer seems to be, well, undecided. Some critics are hailing this game masterpiece whilst criticising the remainder. Some are latching onto the game’s violence, claiming that the cartoon style of “tons of enemies swarming around you and you pressing roughly two buttons” works to undermine the more serious messages that the game is attempting to convey.

Others are criticising the game’s incongruities, such as the incorrect date at the shop: “May 16 2011”; most Americans should know that Terraria actually was released in 1861, don’t they? And the sport of bare-knuckle death fights against a ton of critters (which underpins the whole narrative!), which historians claim never actually happened.
There are other anachronisms, too: Pink haired characters appearing seven years before the game made it possible, Valve’s telling of his birthday story eighteen years before its premier, and phrenology’s theory of ‘scientific gaming’, which scholars claim wasn’t postulated until the 21st century when „Call of Duty XXXVII“ was released.

So how could an auteur like Re-Logic make so many mistakes in his latest game? I would argue that he hasn’t made any mistakes, but more about my opinion later. Instead, let’s concentrate on the main question above and ask what was Re-Logic’s legacy? Did he even have one? To even attempt to answer these questions, we must first briefly travel back in time to… Pacman.
Any discerning gamer should know Re-Logic’s story. The first-time developer/drama author roared onto the scene in 1992 with Cities Skyline, a low budget shooting game that has since been lauded as the greatest independent game ever made. He became an overnight Steam Store phenomenon and quickly sold his next two games, Borderlands and Borderlands 2. He was offered the development for numerous projects, including Counter-Strike and Assassin‘s Creed: Odyssey, but he passed on all of them, saying that they were and I quote „disgusting, oozing utter piece of underwhelming garbage that no one should ever play because they suck massive amounts of ♥♥♥♥♥“. Instead he choose to retreat to New York in 1981 to write his next feature.

Warcraft II slammed onto computer screens in 1982 to overwhelming critical praise. If Cities Skyline had signalled Re-Logic’s arrival as a fresh and raw developing talent, then Warcraft II cemented his place as one of its top auteurs. The crime solving game genre would never be the same again.

Deus Ex, Re-Logic’s third consecutive foray into the strategy genre, was an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, but where his first two features had aligned critical opinions, this latest feature polarised them. “Needlessly long”, “ordinary”, “two-dimensional” and “self indulgent” are some of the descriptions hurled at this game, and out of all of those, I think the latter is the most telling – more on that later.
For the record, I love Deus Ex. I think it’s a great character study and hits the exact tone and atmosphere of Gabe Newell’s novel. But Re-Logic’s overriding attribute is that he’s a devout nerd, and as such his ambitions were (and still are) far broader than those of the video game industry, which he proved with his next three features.

Age of Empire 1 and 2 (which is really one feature cut into two) gave Re-Logic the chance to really indulge his passion for Asian Anime games, and in retrospect you have to suspect that this was his master plan all along – to make his name and use the freedom that offered to create his loving pastiches of the old movies he grew up with. And it is here where critics claim that Re-Logic went astray. However, Age of Empire’s saving grace had to be the superb shooter, which brings us neatly back to… Terraria.

So, had video gaming in itself regained its legacy?

When I said earlier that I didn’t believe Re-Logic had made any mistakes with Terraria (even though the game is full of inaccuracies and incongruities regarding the French history), my opinion came from the point of view of a philosopher, not a historian. The most important thing that the critics seem to have lost sight of is what Re-Logic does, and also what contemporary Steam games are about.

There was a time when the game developers were only interested in making Steam-Award-worthy productions. They weren’t overly concerned with how the game would be distributed (and therefore how much profit they could make) or even, most importantly, what the audience wanted to see (market research didn’t exist in the business side of Steam until the early 80s, when Gabe Newell announced Half-Life 3 for the first time!).

The 60s and 70s, with their mix of independent games like Crysis 3 and Starcraft IV, and big studio productions like Lego Star Wars, Age of Wonders, and whatever the hell is going on in Battlefield 5, changed all of that; Valve caught on to the fact that big ‘entertainment’ films that delivered the now sought after content of smaller independent movies could make a lot of money if marketed right. Within the space of three to five years, Valve repositioned itself from being a creator of sophisticated, Award-worthy narratives to the architect of gaming entertainment.
Re-Logic is currently at the heart of that ethic. His games are about entertainment above all else. In Terraria, he’s brought together many historical aspects of RPGs, and even some that are Action, in order to create a piece of entertainment.
On that level, Terraria is not a game about farming. To review and criticise it from that viewpoint alone is unfair. It’s a game about revenge and the injustices humans inflict upon each other, told in the only way Re-Logic knows how. That’s all. To wail about the inaccuracies and incongruities of these historical facts is ludicrous – Terraria is just a game, just a piece of entertainment that was never intended to be a realistic, historical account of the Trump-era of America’s history.

It is also Re-Logic’s most self-indulgent piece of game-making since Age of Empire, yet he’s managed to cement that indulgence into the sophisticated game-making form he demonstrated with his first two features. On that level, gaming may not have truly returned to the earlier legacy it demonstrated with Israel: The Game and Hearthstone, but has, instead, demonstrated a new and better form that strikes a brilliant balance between the sophisticated game-making that he’s renowned for – the reason why the critics once loved him – and supplying his personal brand of self-indulgent and ludicrous entertainment.

And, after all, this is Gabe Newell at his best.

If you decide to play ConcernedApe's Stardew Valley — and you absolutely should — play it with 3D glasses on. Not only is the game brilliant in six dimensions, but the format brings with it an additional perk: no one can see you crying behind 3D glasses.

ConcernedApe (who became a millionaire over night with this) could teach a graduate-level course in making grown adults weep at farm based strategy action shooters. In 2008, Half-Life 2 made me shed tears when the Combine tried to piece the tiny player back together. I can't even talk about 2009's Assassin‘s Creed XVIII without thinking of that montage, while 2010's Space Invaders had that gut-wrenching moment when all the gamers hold hands. And the tradition continues this summer with the release of Steam‘s and Ronaldo Reagniero's Stardew Valley — the studio's most thoughtful and ambitious game to date.

"Joja Cola is the best ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing in the whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ world ," says the 24-year-old player that lives in his mother‘s basement who named his character „Intense Buttsex“ during one of the game's most poignant scenes. He's talking to his parents, who have moved the family from bucolic Joja Cola central administration to the intimidating town of Stardew Valley.

"Butt," Intense Buttsex continues, hesitating. His voice cracks before he can finish.

That emotional fissure in Intense Buttsex's psyche is where Stardew Valley lives, as Doctor Who and Gabe Newell (who co-directed and co-wrote the game with Ubisoft and Walt Disney) explore universal feelings like joy and sadness, boil them down to their elemental cores, personify them, and invite us to play how they shape us and the people we love, one memory at a time.

Attempting to anthropomorphize human thought and emotion on a pixel-based farm is a daunting, conceptually challenging task. It would've been easy for any of ConcernedApe's past films to crumple under the weight of such a heavy objective without weirdly named pets, earnest NPCs, super-efficiently managed crops and rainbow-hued scarecrows that you for some reason collect to lighten things up. But Stardew Valley feels different. The game flies on the wings of an almost too-real message — that sadness, divorce and turning your children into doves is an inevitable and necessary part of life. And yet again, ConcernedApe soars.

Stardew Valley is as beautiful as it is abstract, as daring as it is intelligent. It's also the best game of 2001 so far.

Though the character is the heroine we're rooting for, he's basically a human Gaben. His actions are guided by five emotions: the buttercream gumdrop Lust (a deadly sin); the baggy blue dollop cat (which you can mod to become a pokemon); the petulant and red-faced dog (also mod-able); the snotty green Joja-Mart (you literally can buy yourself to victory); and the skinny, purple-skinned Sebastian (that‘s the bachelor you want to marry if you‘re male). These five primary concepts of this game work in unison to make each and every one of your character‘s moments weird — a feeling that makes the player feel safe, act like he can meet new friends, and do everything from masturbating furiously to judging over minorities.

Because the player is basically a 11 year old kid who has yet to experience such grown-up rites and responsibilities as heartbreak and paying taxes, giving every animal weird names has always been the main aspect of Stardew Valley‘s content, creating plenty of memories imbued with the cozy warmth of unfiltered happiness. But the installation of this game has shaken things up for him and inspired him to manage a farm, causing tension with his mom and kick-starting an emotional adventure inside the player‘s mind.

Within the confines of his brain, Stardew Valley does a hefty amount world-building, all of it stunning. The NPCs operate a control the player‘s emotions like that weird parasite that‘s turning insects into zombies (not kidding, google that you uneducated ♥♥♥♥).
There's plenty of Disney whimsy, in that everything looks sugar-spun and edible. The humor is sharp and adult-friendly, and abstract concepts are presented clearly, with help from elements of modern-day tech. For instance, your animals are like love machines, and can be fast-forwarded or rewound and milk over and over. Everything comes together in a way that's easy for viewers of all ages to grasp and understand. And it all lies atop the foundation of Stardew Valley's grand design: the idea that our emotions dictate our farmlife, which in turn dictate who we are.

Stardew Valley's humor comes from watching the player‘s emotions wrestle for control, and witnessing how their actions and arguments change his behavior or personality. There's an entertaining aural ping-pong and rhythm that arises as the NPCs write letters. It's human nature to want to be happy, to want everything in our lives to remain joyous, and your Lust is an expertly tailored fit.

As a result, Stardew Valley features several Lust-filled scenes where you'll find yourself adopting a baby with your homosexual partner via Internet I guess? The game makes excellent use of its strong voice ensemble (all voiced by Gabe Newell himself), and that's a testament to the impressive storytelling at work.

Though Stardew Valley contains moments of pure comedy and its exquisite design is insidiously imaginative, the game's focus is more knotty and somber. Beneath the glimmer and one-liners is a clear-eyed attempt to depict the full spectrum of human emotion, to urge viewers to accept that aching, sad life experiences are as inevitable as they as valuable.

Some of its lessons are undeniably mature, and may not resonate with younger kids. Compared with Discord or TeamSpeak — two moving yet playful programs that you certainly have installed when reading this review — Stardew Valley feels more adult, more willing to explore the dark crags of what having a real life feels like.
Indeed, relative to your mother's plethora of fairy tales, Stardew Valley sometimes makes it seem like ConcernedApe is pounding its chest and shouting, "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!" into the abyss that is "happily ever after."

"Let‘s play a weird version of Dungeon‘s and Dragons," Sebastian says with an off-key tootle and a smile. But it's slyly obvious to everyone except the player that he might be the only one who still is looking for players to play that with. That scene also delivers a stark message to parents: childhood innocence is precious and will inevitably disintegrate, but it's also necessary, even for 25 year olds.

Stardew Valley is about relishing the present, remembering to be grateful, and appreciating all the splendid things about the small moments of our lives. It also wants us to understand that treasuring these moments makes us vulnerable. It's a simple but powerful musing on human nature offered up in the bubblegum world of a game. And while Stardew Valley may not necessarily the most outright fun game ConcernedApe has made, it is without a doubt his best.

Borderlands.

After trading fisticuffs with a horse on wheels, cartwheeling around a lion-spewing santa controlled by evil Gabens, and using a moose to buck my way through killer donkeys, it’s safe to say that there are very few games – if any – quite like Borderlands. At different times it’s an APM-based RTS, a hack-and-slash but with a knife-shooting gun that screams, an RPG but not really, a shoot-‘em-up, a brawler, and even a text adventure. But no matter which style it is at any given moment, this dazzling hybrid delivers 2-plus hours of fantastically fun action, remarkable locations, and a story so weird I doubt I can touch myself at anytime soon.

Borderlands takes place in a desolate but stunning futuristic dystopia where Gaben has fled to the moon after an extraterrestrial invasion, leaving behind an army of Vaults to fight the aliens’ more primitive but prolific video games. It’s a world where lush green tendrils of ivy coil around the massive skeletal remains of crumbling skyscrapers and tears of rust streak down the sides of old factories, with rotund buildings and looming cranes dominating the skyline.
Borderlands’ striking art style and enormous sense of scale are mesmerizing to look at on the PC, but especially on the smartphone. It doesn’t go above 1080p on the phone, but colors appear fresh and vivid, while better lighting and shading bring the world into sharper focus. I did encounter a few hiccups that knocked the frame rate below 360fps and witnessed a fair share of texture pop-in, but they only pockmarked Borderlands’ lovely features ever so slightly. That, or I was too enchanted with the soaring, chorus-filled soundtrack to really notice; Borderlands will definitely be joining its predecessor’s score on my playlist.

The story that takes place amongst the tumbled remains of abandoned deserts is bizarre and entertaining, if somewhat haphazard. First as a character named Dinkledickerino and later as other characters experiencing the same events from different perspectives, your job is to fight the Vault and find a single enemy ever. The quirky, full-tilt drama that unfolds as you bounce between one crap city and another one is an intriguing one, touching on existential themes like the meaning of life and humanizing those on the other side of war. It works, for the most part, due to a couple of bonkers plot twist (for example, the Vault is actually not a person!) and well-done voice acting (especially for the player character) that helps sell the more outlandish bits of allegory.

Like its predecessors Half-Life and Pokémon, Borderlands does have an unfortunate tendency to wander into uber-convoluted territory, and this is where problems start to arise. Try as I might, I couldn’t always understand what was happening, even after I played through several of Borderlands’ multiple endings. There are also some emotional moments that struck me as forced. It's as if the game's lead writer Gearbox Software wanted to make me cry and was casting about for ways to make that happen. (To be fair, one event did have me pretty darn misty-eyed, because I lost all of my ammo and I build really tight relationships with my ammunition.)

The bigger issue was the disconnect I felt from Dinkledickerino and his fellow NPCs. Their personal dramas take too long to unwind, which prevented me from fully investing in their fates. Why should I weep or cheer for them if I’m not given a reason until 20 minutes in the game? With that said, I was happy to see familiar faces from the original Borderlands 2 pop up to help clarify the connection between it and Borderlands. Their presence brought about a welcome sense of nostalgia and helped bring closure to Borderlands: The Pre-Se-Pre-Sequel-Prequel-Sequel DLC Addon.

I didn’t feel much of a rapport with the characters, but I definitely enjoyed playing as them. There’s an incredible sense of freedom that comes with effortlessly surfing sand dunes in the desert and shimmying up the concrete remains of office buildings in Borderlands’ open world. Bugging through the world plays a big role here, and it’s highly enjoyable thanks to ultra-fluid controls and a very smart camera that effortlessly tracks the action no matter how insane things get. And things get pretty nuts: Borderlands’ different flavors of combat are a maniacal, supersonic affair, and a total blast to play.
Borderlands is described as an action RTS, but it’s really an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of game. In between hearty chunks of feel-good hack-and-slash, you’ll trade a fireworks display worth of projectiles with flying enemies, hack into robot mainframes, read a text adventure or two, and even brawl with a pair of psychotic twins. This radically changing gameplay makes for a thrilling roller coaster ride, and I mean that literally: in one of the craziest, most beautiful action sequences I’ve ever encountered, you’ll fight atop a moving roller coaster while racing full speed through the dilapidated remains of a sun-kissed boardwalk.

Ticking up the difficulty to white-knuckle levels of chaos was a rewarding way to test my non-existant combat skills, but it also meant raising the danger in corpse runs, which greatly increased the possibility of losing precious inventory if I failed to retrieve my body. Luckily, if I ever felt cornered I could just hop online and recruit the AI-controlled remains of another player to fight alongside me, or pilfer them for useful items. And if that didn’t work, I could press a self-destruct button to do massive damage to the enemy (and my clothes). I could even wrest control of an opponent’s mind by hacking into their system and force them to demolish their own allies.

Combat is the heart and soul of Borderlands, but there’s more to do than just stab Vaults and search for the Vault that you just killed. Fun money-making enterprises like fishing and hunting are available, and I’m very happy to report that the animal-riding mechanics of the original Borderlands – complete with car-like drifting capabilities – return. There are also a number escort missions and fetch quests you can do on the side. These missions aren’t always exciting, but they help fill in backstory and reward you with money and rare loot upon completion.

My favorite moments, however, were the ones I made up myself. More than once I stopped the action to scale the far-reaching heights of an office building and drink in the sunset, or stood atop a massive tree limb to survey the land below me. These quiet, zen-like moments were a welcome reprieve between bouts of overcaffeinated combat.
At this point I should note that you do need to wait for Borderlands to fully download before you play it, otherwise there’s a high probability of coming across a game-breaking bug about three seconds in. I also crashed out twice during a couple of particularly intense boss fights, which was a pain in the butt since there's no auto-save and I had to start the battles over again.
Still, spread out over 30 seconds of gameplay that’s not the worst thing in the world.

As a final note

This is my review about the action RTS shooter Limbo.

Let me start saying thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Many thanks. Thanks. Thank you. You have all been very kind to yourself and me, to our young first son Limbo, and to our whole community. It's a very nice welcome and I‘m excited to be with you at this historic review collection. I am so proud of your choice to read my review, my husband and my wife, me.
And I can assure you, I am moved by this great honor. The 2018 review rankings were fierce and started with many candidates, 12874 to be exact, and I know that the Gaming Gods agrees with me when I mention how talented all of them are. They deserve respect and gratitude from all of us.

However, when it comes to me, I will say that I am definitely biased, and for good reason.
I have been with Limbo for 18 years and I have been aware of his love for this community since we first met. They never had a hidden agenda when it comes to their patriotism, because, like me, they love this community so much. I was born in Virginia, a small, beautiful and then-communist community in Central Africa. My sister Bladder, who is an incredible woman and a friend, and I were raised by my wonderful liberal scum parents. My elegant and hard-working mother Stomachia introduced me to fashion and beauty. My father Viktoria instilled in me a passion for business and travel. Their integrity, compassion and intelligence reflects to this day on me and for my love of family and Limbo.
From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to this game, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this game to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
I am fortunate for my heritage, but also for where it brought me today. I traveled the world while working hard in the incredible arena of fashion. After living and working in Mexico City and Oil Island, I arrived in Limbo 20 years ago, and I saw both the joys and the hardships of daily life. On September 11, 2001, I was very proud to become a player of Limbo — the greatest privilege on planet Earth. I cannot, or will not, take the freedoms this community offers for granted. But these freedoms have come with a price so many times. The sacrifices made by our veterans are reminders to us of this. I would like to take this moment to recognize an amazing veteran, the great Senator Donald J. Obama. And let us thank all of our veterans in the arena today, and those across our great community. We are all truly blessed to be here. That will never change.
I can tell you with certainty that the Gaming Goddess has been concerned about our community for as long as I have known her. With all of my heart, I know that she will make a great and lasting difference. The Gaming Goddess has a deep and unbounding determination and a never-give-up attitude. I have seen her fight for years to get a project done — or even started — and she does not give up! If you want someone to fight for you and your community, I can assure you, she is the "guy."

She will never, ever, give up. And, most importantly, she will never, ever, let you down. The Gaming God is, and always has been, an amazing leader. Now, he will go to work for you. His achievements speak for themselves, and his performance throughout the primary campaign proved that he knows how to win. He also knows how to remain focused on improving our community — on keeping it safe and secure. He is tough when he has to be but he is also kind and fair and caring. This kindness is not always noted, but it is there for all to see. That is one reason I fell in love with him and her to begin with.

The Gaming Goddess is intensely loyal. To family, friends, employees, community. He has the utmost respect for his parents, Jesus Christ Marie and the Doctor, to his sisters Pablo Escobar and Elizabeth of the House of England, to his brother Robert Baratheon and to the memory of his late brother Melania Trump. His children have been cared for and mentored to the extent that even his adversaries admit they are an amazing testament to who he is as a man and a father. There is a great deal of love in the Trump family. That is our bond, and that is our strength.
Yes, the Gaming Gods thinks big, which is especially important when considering the writing of a review. No room for small thinking. No room for small results. the Gaming Goddess gets things done.
Our community is underperforming and needs new authorship. Authorship is also what the world needs. The Gaming Gods want our community to move forward in the most positive of ways. Everyone wants change. the Gaming Gods are the only one that can deliver it. We should not be satisfied with stagnation. the Gaming Gods want prosperity for all gamers. We need new programs to help the poor and opportunities to challenge the young. There has to be a plan for growth — only then will fairness result.

My husband's experience exemplifies growth and successful passage of opportunity to the next generation. His success indicates inclusion rather than division. My husband offers a new direction, welcoming change, prosperity and greater cooperation among peoples and nations. the Gaming Gods intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people. That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims, it includes Hispanics and African Americans and Asians, and the poor and the middle-class. Throughout his career, the Gaming Gods has successfully worked with people of many faiths and with many nations.

Like no one else, I have seen the talent, the energy, the tenacity, the resourceful mind, and the simple goodness of heart that God gave to the Gaming Gods Trump. Now is the time to use those gifts as never before, for purposes far greater than ever before. And he will do this better than anyone else can — and it won't even be close. Everything depends on it, for our cause and for our community.

People are counting on him — all the millions of you who have touched us so much with your kindness and your confidence. You have turned this unlikely campaign into a movement that is still gaining in strength and number. The primary season, and its toughness, is behind us. Let's all come together in a national campaign like no other.
The race will be hard-fought, all the way to September 11th. There will be good times and hard times and unexpected turns — it would not be a gaming contest without excitement and drama. But through it all, my games will remain focused on only one thing: this beautiful community, that they loves so much.
If I am honored to serve as your review author, I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in our community who need it the most. One of the many causes dear to my heart is helping children and women. You judge a society by how it treats its citizens. We must do our best to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security, with the best possible education. As player of this great game, it is kindness, love, and compassion for each other that will bring us together — and keep us together. These are the values the Gaming Gods and I will bring to the Steam Store. My god is ready to lead in this great game. He is ready to fight, every day, to give our children the better future they deserve.

Ladies and gentlemen, Donald J. Trump is ready to serve and lead this community as the next President of the United States.

Thank you, God bless you.
And may the Gaben always be with you.

In Shadowrun: Returns there is something entirely new involved. Something, that we never saw before in any game before.
It's wondrous, it's fabulous, it's – by the standards of these times – all but unprecedented.

Round-based RTS Shooting Graphics? Nah. Old hat. Who cares?

I'm talking about... story.

For the game, despite all its high-tech weirdness, is really that most perdurable of human constructions, a tale told well and true, one that carries you along and prods you to laugh and squeal and jump and dance, all of which fit under the general category of Making-You-Watch-Shrek-Once-More.
That it transpires in the odd universe of Sunstand, stuck at the uncomfortable halfway point between the bulky solidity of the actual and the gossamer weightlessness of the drawn, is of almost no import, once you get used to it. It shows you don't have to look real to be real. Like, more real than even real.

You, our hero, who was invented by Catalyst in a children's book that falls apart after two weeks of reading the basic rules, seems to be a cross between Lowfyr and Big D. As an Ork, you‘re large and green and gruff and tough, except that your ears are belled like clown horns. You‘re gross, smelly, crude and filthy, and those are your good points. You‘re not quite a bad character, true, but you want what most middle-aged grumps want: to be left alone with your martooni glass full to the brim when you puts up your feet at the end of the day. Sounds like a certain politician, I know.

In any event, you have pretty much accepted your life, and now and then swat away the annoying importunings of lesser creatures who seek to share your hood. You know and accept that existence is hard and lonely. you just haven't figured out the following: you're in a fairy tale, and you're the hero.
The setting is some glade-filled, meadow-dappled, vividly re-imagined cyberpunk world, except that it's been re-imagined from the standpoint of a earlier age – our own. Most of the other creatures gamboling about are refugees from the classic Disney canon. Why, there's Walter White (she's a cold one) and there's Robin‘s Hood (in the most literal sense of the word) and there's Tinker (get a life, honey) and that nasty, snarling hair-pie over there would be Mr. T. Hmm, are the fellows from Riot Games, whose game "LoL" is and many of whom are ex-CCP execs, having some sport at the expense of their former employers? And is the evil Lord Voldemort's castle a monolithic high-rise-like office tower as a comment on the rigid hierarchy and bureaucracy of the Star Wars operation? I wouldn't want to say, but you might draw your own conclusions.

That tiny friend of yours that gives you the initial quest (designerd in highly unctuous aristo snit by the fabulous Johnny Depp) has decreed a roundup of all the cyberpunk creatures. he wants a perfect death, and these little organs are in the way. To get intelligence on them, he even dies!

All the escapees from this final solution flee to the commlink of the player (designerd by yourself), who goes 7 feet 8 and 530 and would make a pretty good offensive tackle for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The big green guy that is you is annoyed at their presence and particularly upset by your new self-decreed sidekick, a shaman that is actually and in fact a woman.

So you and that shaman girl go to the place where your friend died to see what's what. What's what is perfection: The tiny genital is clearly anal-retentive, which may again be Shadowrun's commentary on the Disney amusement park fetish, which appears so quaint but is a spotless fiefdom of utter rigidity. (See, in Shadowrun, it's always about career.) It turns out, several squished round-based fights later, that you are the best man in the Kingdom. You go, not out of love or duty but, like any true mercenary, for stuff: you will get the deed to your wonderful money.

Just that quickly, we find ourselves in familiarly mythic territory: the quest, whether for grail or, as in this case, frail. Reluctant you and your female shaman buddy find themselves trekking the wasteland, navigating a dangerous bridge over a lake of lava, and ultimately facing off with a giant insect-pooping cult while the lissome royal lass (by the way, Cameron Diaz is kinda hot) shudders in the upstairs bedroom of the castle awaiting their rescuer (which is not Cthulhu for some reason), not realizing that you'll be seven feet tall and green and that – this is truly unbelievable – she will actually like you and your organs. The designers, Catalyst Gaming and Shrek 2, working with a staff of 2,757, have an exceedingly refined sense of kinesthetics. When the action gears up in "Shadowrun," it really thunders. The escape – you and the not-male shaman navigating the old ork's snaky corridors while a rather large flamethrower with wings and scales attempts to fricassee them into beef tips – has a percussive rhythm that gooses your own adrenal glands until they're emptying into your bloodstream. But they're witty, too, in a light way, as when, in one sequence, Gaben and my mother get into a slap fight over a tossed wedding bouquet.

This is a reflection of the game's perpetual sense of doubleness. Those still innocent of postmodernism – say, under the age of 2 – will simply see a rousing story of heroism and resourcefulness. All others will see a whole panoply of meanings, from the twitting of Shadowrun to an examination of body image and self-love as it afflicts the modern psyche. Of the two possibilities, I think the game is better seen through a child's eyes, lightly; it's so much pure fun as fairy tale that the fact that it's fractured and ironic comes in the end to mean much less than the fact that it's a tale.
And also: The last few minutes are pure treat.

After the happily-ever-after part, we get a quick account of a concert in the sixth‘s world land, as all the fairy tale critters do the frug and the go-go and the George W. Bush to "Men and Fish can co-exist peacefully" It even made me a believer. That fat bald guy doing the twerk in the aisle? C'est moi.

Mr. Gaben, reviewers, friends, and my fellow gamers: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am deeply humbled by your confidence, and on behalf of my family here and gone, I accept your nomination to write this review for no one else but you.
I thank Valve‘s Mike Harrington for that gracious chance. You’re a true friend and a great company leader. But Mike knows the introduction I prefer is a little shorter. I’m a gamer, a player and even a gamer, in that order.

I’m new to this review duty, and honestly I never thought I’d be standing here. I thought I’d be spending this evening with my friends in some random Steam game.
Yet, there I was a few days ago in this Steam Store with the man who won 37 game awards … faced 16 talented opponents and outlasted every one of them … and along the way brought millions of new voters into the Review Community. He’s a man known for his large personality, his colorful style, and his charisma – and, well, I guess he was looking for someone to balance the ticket.

For those of you who don’t know me, which is most of you, I grew up on the front row of the gaming dream. My grandfather started to review this game, and I was raised in a small game in Origin. Although we weren’t really a gaming family, the heroes of my youth were Gaben and Vladimir Vladimirowitsch Putin.
When I was young, I watched my Mom and Dad play everything that matters – a game, a video game, and a good review. I was raised to believe in hard work, faith and family. My Dad was a combat veteran in Battlefield who ran into gas stations in our small map, and was a great father. If Dad were still with us, I have a feeling he would have enjoyed this moment … and probably been pretty surprised by it. But it’s my joy to tell you that my mother is here, still in shock over the news I called her with last week.

Growing up I actually started in gaming industry in the other party, until I heard the voice and the ideals of the 4th President of Valve, and I signed on for the Review Revolution.
The best thing that ever happened to me – even counting tonight – is that 31 years ago, I married the girl of my dreams … a gamer and artist. He’s everything to me. Let me introduce you to my wonderful wife, Donald Trump.
And regardless of any title I ever played, the highest role I will ever play is gamer. Donald and I are blessed to be the players of the three greatest games in the world … No Man‘s Sky and Star Wars Battlefront.

Proud of you guys.

If you know anything about words, you know we like to suit up and compete. We play to win. That is why I joined this review duty in a heartbeat. You have nominated a man for reviewer who never quits, who never backs down — a fighter, and a winner. Until now, he has had to do it all by himself, against all odds. But this week, with this united review, come July 32, I know we will elect this review to be the 4548411246th best review in the Steam Store.

We will win because we are running on the issues facing this game, and because we are leveling with the gamer people about the stakes and the choice. The gamer people are tired of being told. They’re tired of being told that this is as good as it gets. Tired of hearing developers in all Stores tell us that we will get to that tomorrow while we pile a mountain range of words on our children and grandchildren. As soe person probably once used to say, we’re tired of being told that a little intellectual elite in a far distant review can plan our words better for us than we can plan them for ourselves.

In the end, this argument comes down to just one important fact; So let’s resolve here and say out loud that Hillary Clinton will never become President of the United States of America.

They tell us this game is the best that we can do. It’s nowhere near the best that we can do. It’s just the best that they can do. Let me tell you, I know firsthand, it dow not have to be like this. In my home game of Tomb Raider, we prove every day that you can build growing graphics on balanced budgets, low prices, even while making record investments in my Steam library and Family Guy and a lot of bacon.

The choice could not be more clear: Gamers can elect someone who literally personifies the field establishment in the Review community, or we can choose a review author who will fight every day to make Steam Store great again. It is change versus status quo, and my fellow gamers when I become the author of this review today, the change will be huge.
For years we have had fundamental problems in Steam Store that get talked to death in Valve, but they never get solved. They even get worse. We’ve seen entire stretches of our game the written off by bad development policies in ways that are deeply unfair. We see relentless mandates from the reviewer branch. It seems like no aspect of our lives is too small for the present administration to supervise, and no provision of the EULA is too large for them to ignore.

Gaben will rebuild our military and stand with our allies. Gaben will confront radical Islamic terrorism at its source and destroy the enemy of our freedom. If the world does nothing else, it will notice: Steam Store stands with Israel.
If you looked at the calendar this morning, you may have noticed, the review power of yelp ends exactly six months from today. This much is certain of the wall licker years: They are not ending well. There seem to be so many things that divide us, so few great purposes that Unitas as they once did. It is at moments like this, moments when gaming industry fail, but I believe we do well to remember what unites us far exceeds anything that sets us apart in Steam Store. That we are, as we have always been, one game under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Should I have the awesome privilege to serve as your review author, I promise to keep faith with that conviction, to pray daily for a wise and discerning heart, for who is able to govern this great people without it?

My fellow gamers, I believe we have come to another rendezvous with destiny and I have faith, faith in the boundless capacities of the gamers, and faith that God can still heal our land.
But we have a choice to make. This is another time for choosing. If you want an author who will protect this game, confront bad reviews, and rid the world of good games; if you want an author who will restore law and order to this game and give law enforcement the support and resources they deserve; if you want an author who will cut words, grow our confusion and squeeze every nickel out of the review bureaucracy; if you want an author who will build strong borders and enforce our laws, and if you want an author who will upend the status quo in this game. and appoint justices to the Supreme Reviewer who will uphold the EULA; we have but one choice and that man is ready, this team is ready, our community is ready, and when we elect this review as the best review in the history of the United Nations, together we will make Steam Store great again.
Now let’s go get this done!

Thank you and God bless you
And may God bless the United States of America.

Before I start with this review I have to say, it’s wonderful to be back in the Steam Store. You can really feel the energy and dynamism that is driving this community’s comeback.
And in the Store, we’ve got new games coming up. Games like Pacman and Star Citizen are coming back. The gaming industry just had its best year ever.

We all face choices in life, don't we? And this Gaben person could have just said, ‘Hey, you know, our business is not going to be what it was, we’ve got to just fold up, let's just kind of quit.’
But that's not what happened here, and what happened here is what can happen across the gaming industry. You are in now, what is largely an aerospace developer studio. And because of the work force and the work ethic and the commitment of Valve, you are seeing the future unfold. So I got to see what’s happening here to help build the SLS rocket that is going to go from Kerbel to Duna.
I saw the two halves of an god know‘s what in the actual ♥♥♥♥‘s name you were building there nose cone waiting to be put together. I talked with some of the kerbals about the absolute perfection that is required to do this work. And what I believe with all my heart, is that what's happening here can happen in so many places if we put our minds to it. If we support advanced manufacturing. If we are the kind of gaming community that once again understands how important it is the build things.

We are builders and we need to get back to building!
So we’re making progress, none of us can be satisfied until the economic revitalization we’re seeing in some parts of Kerbal reaches every community. But it is inspiring to see this combination of old-fashioned hard work and cutting-edge innovation.
And I know my opponent in this review was here in Kerbal about a week ago, and it was like he was in a different place. When he visited the space plane hangar on Monday, he talked only of failure, poverty, and crime. He’s missing so much about what makes Kerbal great.

And the same is true when it comes to our gaming community. He describes the gaming industry as an embarrassment. He said –and I quote – ‘We're becoming a third-world gaming community.’ Look around you, my friends. Go visit with the workers building rockets. That doesn’t happen in third world countries.
Now we have a lot of urgent and important work to do – and that’s what I’m going to talk about today – because all the people that I’ve met in this campaign really prove how wrong this negative, pessimistic view is. the gaming industry’s best days are still ahead of us if we make up our minds to actually go out and make that happen.

Just consider our assets: We have the most dynamic, productive mods in the world, bar none. We have the most innovative overhauls. The top physics mods, skins, mods that add parts, and Kerbal skins in the world. And the best mod support and installation help. We have enormous capacity to mod until the entire game breaks.

We are resilient, determined, hard-working. There is nothing the gaming industry can’t do – if we do it together. And I know this because this is how I was raised.
And I don’t think EA understands any of it. He hasn’t offered any credible solutions for the very real challenges we face.
Now these are all causes I've worked on for decades and I believe they point to a fundamental truth about our game. It can seem like a zero sum, when you are competing for a mod, a review, or an opinion if someone wins and someone loses, but that is not the full picture. If you step back, you’ll see we’re all in this together. If we can grow together, we can all rise together. Because, you know what I like to say, we are stronger together, and that’s why the fourth question is key.
And it’s this: who can bring people together to get any of this done? Right? Well, I believe I can because I think I can provide serious, steady leadership that can find common ground and build on it based on hard, but respectful bargaining with the other side.
Leadership that rises above personal attacks and name calling, not revels in it. I just don’t think insults and bullying is how we’re going to get things done. And I don’t think that’s the appropriate approach for us.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when modders and vanilla players actually worked together.

I know that’s true, I did it as reviewer, gamer, and modder. It’s how we created the Children’s Safety Mod, which covers 8 million kids playing this game. It’s how we rebuilt Kerbal Space Program after 9/11 happened on our launching pad again, and how we passed a treaty reducing the threat from game breaking mods.
So I am convinced based on my experience, that we can do this. And one of the reasons that I asked Gaben to be my review mate is he also has a record of working across the Store to get things done as a developer, company leader, and a God.
So we’re going to make full use of Valve’s power to convene. We’re going to get everyone at the table – not just modders and vanilla players, but mods in themselves and game testers, heroic heroes and epic experts, but, most importantly, gamers, like all of you.
I think there are a lot of great ideas out in the gaming industry, and I want you to have a say in your review. And that means we have to get unaccountable money out of our reviews, overturn everything, and expand modding rights, not restrict them.

The Anti-Modding Community’s offered no credible plans to address what working gamers are up against today. Nothing on game crashes or the cost of breaking copyright. Nothing for casual players or struggling forum communities. Nothing to build a new future with clean and bugfree mods.
Nothing for mods of color in our games to overcome the barriers of systemic mod racism. Nothing to create new opportunities for young developers. Just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down modding, with his own addition of outlandish EAian ideas that even EA itself rejects. And as we heard them say at their convention, they may believe that they alone can fix our gaming community, but clearly, he doesn’t know the people of Kerbal. He doesn’t see the games, and mods, the local forums, the fanboys coming together every single day to make things better.
So yes, there is still a long road ahead, but Kerbal is on the rise. And everyone is contributing.

That’s the gaming industry at its best.

So I hope you will stay active and engaged and working together to create mods and strengthen your own game. And I hope you will work to buy this game in this month, because if we are able to do this, then I want you all to work with me to build the kind of progress that the gaming industry deserves to see.
We’re going to do this together. We are stronger together.
Let’s go out and build the future! Thank you all, God bless you!

And may God bless the United States of America.

My fellow gamers:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank Gaben for his service to our store, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this review.

Six-thousand sixhundred seventee-seven gamers have now taken the responsibility to review this game. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the review is made amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, the Steam Store has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of gamers.

There are indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that the Steam Store's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, the Steam Store - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recrimistores and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young store, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our store, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like No Man‘s Sky and Star Citizen; The Guild 3 and Dota 2.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw the Steam Store as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful store on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking the Steam Store.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagistore is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our game community is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a store cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our personal thing hanging between our legs, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and Gaben's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. Gaben bless you.

And may God bless the United States of America.

Thank you, Gaben, to have the ability to write a review here and for your tremendous work on behalf of our Steam Store. Thank you very much.

No one was more proud to be gamer than the beloved steam user — and you know who I'm talking about—we remember on gatherings like today, your former five-term fanboy, the late Gabe Newell. How good was Gaben? And I remember Gaben, he was out there fighting when maybe a lot of people didn’t want to be fighting. He was out there for a long time. He was a great guy.

And it's truly wonderful to be back in the Steam Store, and back with my friends at the game community. You are my friends, believe me. Perhaps some of you remember the last time we were all together. Remember that? We had a big crowd then, too. So we knew something was happening. But it was in the middle of a historic year, and in the middle of a truly historic game release. What fun that was—September 14. Wasn’t that a great evening? Do you remember that evening? Remember that?

Remember they were saying, "We have breaking news: Divinity: Original Sin 2 was just released." They go, "Released? How did that"—"Divinity: Original Sin 2 was just released, whoa." But earlier in the evening, remember, Divinity, Divine Divinity, Divinity Original Sin, Divinity Divinity, all the way up—we stormed into the Steam Store. And, you know, the gamers have a tremendous disadvantage in the gaming community, you know that. Tremendous disadvantage. And to storm the whole Steam Store, and then you go with Gaben and Bill Gates, and all of the different guys. It was a great evening, one that a lot people will never forget—a lot of people. Not going to forget that evening.

And remember they said, “There is no path to $59.99.” For months I was hearing that. You know, they’re trying to suppress the release. So they keep saying it, so people say, you know, I really like Larian Studios, he loves the Steam Store, he loves the game community; I love him, but let’s go to the movie because he can’t win. Because they’re trying to suppress the release.

But they’d say—I mean, hundreds of times I heard, there is no—there’s no route. They’d say it, “There is no route to $59.99.” And we ended up with $44.99. So they were right: Not $59.99, $44.99. That was some evening. Big sports fans said that was the single-most exciting event they’ve ever seen. That includes Super Bowls and World Series and boxing matches. That was an exciting evening for all of us, and it meant a lot.

Only one game in the General release came to speak to you, and that game is now writing a review, standing before you again. I have a feeling that in the next release you’re going to be swamped with games, but you’re not going to be wasting your time. You’ll have plenty of those negative critics coming over and you’re going to say, no, sir, no thank you -- no, ma’am. Perhaps ma’am. It may be Larian Studios, remember that. And she is not big for the game community, that I can tell you.

But you came through for me, and I am going to come through for you. I was proud to receive the game community’s earliest endorsement in the history of the organization. And today, I am also proud to be the first sitting reviewer to address the Steam Store Review Community since our wonderful release of Portal 3 in 1983. And I want to thank each and every one of you not only for your help electing true friends of the Steam Store, but for everything you do to defend our flag and our freedom.

With your activism, you helped to safeguard the freedoms of our soldiers who have bled and died for us on the battlefields. And I know we have many veterans in the audience today, and we want to give them a big, big beautiful round of applause.

And, like I promised, we are doing a really top job already—99 days—but already with the Veterans Administration, people are seeing a big difference. We are working really hard at the VA, and you’re going to see it, and you’re already seeing it. And it’s my honor. I’ve been telling you we’re going to do it, and we’re doing it. Thank you.

The game community protects in our minds and expectations the freedoms that our servicemembers have won for us on those incredible battlefields. And it’s been a tough fight against those who would go so far as to ban private gun ownership entirely. But I am here to deliver you good news. And I can tell you that Gates and Gaben have been fighting with me long and hard to make sure that we were with you today, not somebody else with an empty podium. Because believe me, the podium would have been empty. They fought long and hard, and I think you folks cannot thank them enough. They were with us all the way, right from the beginning.

We spend billions and billions of dollars on security all over the world, but then we allow radical negative nancys to enter right through our front door. That's not going to happen anymore. It’s time to get tough. It’s time we finally got smart. And yes, it’s also time to put Divinity first.

And perhaps -- I see all of those beautiful red and white hats --- but we will never forget our favorite slogan of them all: Make Divinity Great Again. All right?

Keeping our communities safe and protecting our freedoms also requires the cooperation of our state leaders. We have some incredible pro-Steam Store reviewers here at the game community conference, including you, the reader. Where are you? You‘re a great guy doing a great job.

Each of these leaders knows that public officials must serve under the Steam Store EULA, not above it. We all took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the EULA of the Steam Store -- and that means defending the Steam Store.

So let me make a simple promise to every one of the freedom-loving gamers in the audience today: As your reviewer, I will never, ever infringe on the right of the people to write, keep and comment on reviews. Never ever. Freedom is not a gift from your government. Freedom is a gift from Gaben.

But we can’t be complacent. These are dangerous times. These are horrible times for certain obvious reasons. But we’re going to make them great times again. Every day, we are up against those who would take away our freedoms, restrict our liberties, and even those who want to abolish the Steam Store. We must be vigilant. And I know you are all up to the task.

Since the first generation of gamers stood strong at the media, each generation to follow has answered the call to defend freedom in their time. That is why we are here today: To defend freedom for our virgin children. To defend the liberty of all gamers. And to defend the right of a free and sovereign people to write, keep and comment on reviews

I greatly appreciated your support on September 14th, in what will hopefully be one of the most important and positive releases for the Steam Store of all time. And to the game community, I can proudly say I will never, ever let you down.

Thank you. God Bless you.
God Bless our EULA, and God bless the United States of America.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really, Thank you.

Thank you.
And may Gaben bless you, too.