Official Manuals for Games on Steam + others ?

Hello

How do you find official Manuals to go with games you own on Steam andin Non-Steam games too (eg far cry had ubisoft client, other games Origin client etc)?

To be clear I'm obviously talking about documents online -eg PDF Manual etc not trying to find a physical printed document.

For example - I'm doing the training for Insurgency on Steam - and I can't find the official manual so I can look up specs on things like Weapons etc?

I've looked at the steam store page etc but most the stuff I saw under guides was random user generated content - not what I'm after?

Surely every decent game has an official Manual with loads of info etc?


Thank you for your help
 
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Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Surely every decent game has an official Manual with loads of info etc?
Those days are long gone—I still have a tattered manual or two from the 90s here somewhere, but none from this millennium. I might have a tech tree poster or two, but that's about it.

As games have become far more difficult to code, most big games need patches and rebalances for months after launch, so a manual printed at launch time would typically be out of date within days.

Some games have built-in manuals of sorts—eg the Civilization franchise has the Civopedia in the game which provides lots of info, but omits lots of useful stuff too.
 
On Steam, you click on the game on the left toolbar, and then on the game's page you'll see below the banner on the right "additional content." If "Manual" isn't there, the game doesn't have a manual. This only really applies to games where a manual was produced though, which only so-called 'AAA' games will have done up until about the last console generation.

Games are nowhere near as notorious as they should be for not having information, let alone correct and readable info. I'm afraid if you want info, you'll have to make the effort to scour forums and theorycrafting videos which are often at best opinion.
 
On Steam, you click on the game on the left toolbar, and then on the game's page you'll see below the banner on the right "additional content." If "Manual" isn't there, the game doesn't have a manual.

Would some of them have Official Manuals on the Game Developers website instead if not on the Steam page?

The only place I saw 'additional content' was in the main part of the page for Community Content... isn't there a more official section for non community stuff that comes with the game (if anything does)?


cheers
 
Its not just games , my last printer , mobile phone , tablet expensive camera , all came without manuals.
As far back as 2002 my first pc was a Packard Bell it came with nothing apart from a card showing how to plug things in. At that time i did not actually know anyone who owned a pc and i got my first virus in less than 10 minutes.
 
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Would some of them have Official Manuals on the Game Developers website instead if not on the Steam page?

Quite possibly, but it's a longshot. Even then, most games from the time of physical manuals will have long shut down their websites. You'd probably get a much more comprehensive breakdown of how the game functions at the beginning of written walkthroughs on GameFAQs and such.

The only place I saw 'additional content' was in the main part of the page for Community Content... isn't there a more official section for non community stuff that comes with the game (if anything does)?

cheers

Not that I know of I'm afraid, and even then it'd vary from game to game, developer to developer. Like I say though, your best bet is to look up walkthroughs. The best ones tend to have (near) full instructions written out. ^^
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
Steam games that have manuals have them on the game's store page. I don't know why there isn't a link somewhere around the place you actually launch the game, but there isn't. (It is nice having them on the Store page, though, so you can read the manual before buying the game!)

For instance, Mechwarrior 5 has a manual. You can see it on this page:

If you look down the right side, you'll find two links for manuals in a box full of links. (The first link is the manual, the second is more for media outlets like PC Gamer or maybe fan clubs.) It's a pretty good manual, too, but you will NOT find stats on every mech in the game. There's simply too many of them, plus they have a good chance of being tweaked for balance purposes, or even by mods! The game itself provides all the detailed stats you need. If you want even more stats, you can look in the guides section where somebody is maintaining a google spreadsheet with every mech's stats.
 

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