Several hours of Steam downtime on Sunday left poor PC gamers unable to play their Steam games, caused by a power failure at Valve's data center. Initial reports suggest some of the desperate afflicted resorted to archaic and torturous forms of Sunday afternoon entertainment, including taking a stroll in the countryside, imbibing ale in a pub, and conversing with loved ones.

Read more: Valve apologizes »

Steam switched to the SILK audio codec, as used by Skype, in an update launched today. This brings "a significant improvement to Steam's voice chat quality," according to Valve.

While the old codec used a fixed 15kbps of bandwidth, SILK uses a dynamic bitrate which takes up between 8 and 30kbps, "depending on the range of data in the voice signal and current network conditions." Read more »

Since the launch of Steam for the Mac and the release of Valve's back-catalog of Source-engine titles, Valve has been "working with Apple and their GPU vendors to close the performance gap with Windows." It has paid off!

The latest Mac OSX update, released yesterday for Snow Leopard implemented changes that led Valve to see, "depending on the game, video settings and the hardware.. measured frame rate improvements from 15% to 120%." Read more »

As promised, Valve has released Counter-Strike: Source for Mac via its digital distribution platform Steam alongside that hefty update for the PC version it's been testing.

In commemoration of Mac owners getting the game and PC owners getting the update, Valve has briefly discounted the multiplayer shooter by 66%, making it $6.80. Read more »

Valve Software has announced that while there's no Mac release this week due to E3 2010--where it's been showing off showing off Portal 2 and announcing that it'll also be released on PlayStation 3--it will bring Counter-Strike: Source to Mac next week.

Read more »

San Diego-based comic Christian Spicer joins Garnett, Brian, and Jeff on this week's show and he couldn't have come at a better time. The release list is heating up again and fuels Whatcha Been Playin with big games including Lost Planet 2, Skate 3, Nier, and Blur. Christian brings some portable love with a pair of titles for Cannata-ford a New Game. By the time Four Minute hits he's not holding back his opinion on the best sandbox games, the console war, or the spectacle of E3. Brian caps things off at top speed in the Front Page with more on the 3DS, EA's planned Sports Online Pass, new info on Call of Duty: Black Ops, and more.

Weekend Confirmed Ep. 08 - 05/14/2010 Read more »

An "extensive update" for Counter-Strike: Source (PC) is now available to owners of the multiplayer shooter by way of a limited beta, Valve Software has announced.

"The update includes a host of new features and functionality developed in collaboration with Hidden Path Studios," explained Valve. "This beta will run for a limited time, and once complete, the update will be deployed to all Counter-Strike: Source owners for free." Read more »

Along with its list of the most-played consoles in 2008, research group The Nielsen Company has provided its list of the past year's most popular PC games in the US.

Of the ten titles, none were released in 2008, and only 2 debuted in 2007. The list is based off data from January through October 2008, meaning that the impact of the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was not taken into account. Read more »

Beloved developer Valve has released lifetime retail sales figures for some of its more popular games, including the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series, revealing that the studio has sold over 32.8 million games since the 1998 release of the first Half-Life.

Sales from Valve's digital distribution client are not factored in, with the figures only accounting for worldwide retail sales. With Half-Life 2, Valve began simultaneously releasing all of its PC games at retail and via Steam. The numbers were originally printed in the November issue of Game Informer, then republished by Gamasutra. Read more »

With Valve's wit-driven action-puzzler Portal hitting Xbox Live Arcade this fall, marketing VP Doug Lombardi has expressed interest in releasing more of the studio's catalog, which includes shooters Half-Life and Counter-Strike, as Xbox 360 downloads.

"We'll certainly consider [bringing old games like Counter-Strike to XBLA]," Lombardi told OXM UK. "If you look at what we've done on Steam, we try to make all our games available and we're always reviewing the prices to keep them current. We'd love to do that, but this is our first step at doing that beyond the PC." Read more »

Valve let us know that guest passes are now available for Counter-Strike: Source owners. Should you have friends who don't have the game, you can now invite them to play the full game for 3 days. Obviously they will need to install Steam to use their guest pass.

As expected, an update for Counter-Strike: Source is now available. Here are the changes: "Increased ES57, Compact 228 and Dual Elites damage by 25%", "Lowered allowed number of dropped weapons in a level to prevent gun spamming" and "Updated foliage quality in cs_militia".

According to the latest Valve news update, available through Steam, Valve will be changing the pistols in Counter-Strike: Source. Right now pretty much everyone uses the Desert Eagle causing a dramatic increase in price since the introduction of dynamic weapon pricing. Valve will attempt to rectify the situation by making the other pistols more effective. All pistol prices have been reset while Valve prepares the update.

The latest Steam marketing message is up, mentioning, among other things, that the final update for the Counter-Strike: Source weapon pricing beta has been released. The new CS:S is set to go public November 1st, with the first price correction happening on the 6th.

According to the latest Valve news update available through Steam, they'll start beta testing the Counter-Strike: Source weapon pricing change on Wednesday. The news item mentions that major CS websites should soon have information on how to join this beta.