In a new interview with Maximum PC, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford claims that Valve's dominance in the PC digital distribution arena could come to hurt the industry, citing a "dangerous" conflict of interest and a lack of competition that has already lead to the exploitation of smaller developers.

"I'll tell you what, Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don't trust Valve," said Pitchford, who later clarified that while he personally trusts the company, "a lot of the industry doesn't."

"Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing," he said. "It's exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we're going to sell the units and it will be fine."

Pitchford explained that since Microsoft "is focused on the console... Read more

Gabe Newell--president of Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead developer Valve--has declared that "based on the strength of pre-orders, Left 4 Dead 2 will be the fastest-selling product in Valve's history."

The statement came as part of today's revelation that the November 17-due PC and Xbox 360 shooter will be backed by a $25 million ad campaign. The original, released last year, had a $10 million ad budget. Valve noted plans for a "more aggressive" European campaign spanning television and outdoor ads in more cities and markets.

"Left 4 Dead 2 has consistently run at 300% of Left 4 Dead's numbers," Newell added, with marketing VP Doug Lombardi clarifying that "Left 4 Dead 2 has already set the record for greatest number of pre-orders in our company's history."

Known only as 'IceFrog,' the mysterious developer behind popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients: Allstars has announced that he is now leading a team at Half-Life developer Valve and teased the move will be "great news for DotA fans."

IceFrog has developed the action RTS-RPG mod since 2005, taking over from Steve 'Guinsoo' Feak--now working at Riot Games on the DotA-inspired League of Legends.

"I finally have all the resources needed to do some very exciting stuff that you guys will love," notes IceFrog. "As I've said many times in the past and especially after today's developments, I am very excited about DotA's future!"

"My goal and top priority in the future is to solve the surrounding issues that affect the DotA experience in order to allow it to reach new heights," he says, though it's unclear whether this will be working on DotA itself or a new project at Valve.

After announcing an agreement nearly one year ago today, Valve has updated its Orange Box games--Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and Portal--to support Novint's Falcon three-dimensional controller.

Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat will also soon receive similar updates.

The $150 Novint Falcon (shown left with optional pistol grip) was released in 2006. The three-dimensional "haptic" device is operated by a small spherical grip connected to three robotic arms.

The device's motors react to in-game events, with the end result... Read more

Half-Life 2 developer Valve today filed suit against Activision, owner of former HL2 publisher Sierra, over a 2002 lawsuit regarding cyber-cafe licensing.

Valve originally won its dispute with Sierra, and was awarded $2,391,932 in its favor. However, Activision paid Valve only $1,967,796 last week, claiming that the missing $424k had already been doled out over the years, as pointed out by GamePolitics.

Not all that happy with Activision's appraisal of the situation, Valve sued the publisher this Tuesday. As promised, Activision is now threatening to countersue.

And in the span of time that it took you to read this, Activision Blizzard probably earned another $400,000. This one is about principle.

Steam operator Valve has released a new version of the digital distribution client, which resolves the issues Earth 2160 owners have been experiencing for over two months.

After a February client update, the Steam version of Reality Pump's strategy game refused to load due to Steam-specific error. Though aware of the issue, Steam sold the broken game for more than two months, but pulled it shortly after our report.

While the game has yet to return to the Steam Store, owners of Earth 2160 will be prompted to download the client update when they try to boot the game... Read more

Update: In the few hours since this article was published, Steam has stopped selling Earth 2160 and removed the product page. Still no word as to when a fix might hit.

Original: Some, if not all, of those who have have bought Reality Pump's 2006 PC strategy title Earth 2160 from Valve's digital distribution platform Steam have been unable to play the game since February, going by this Steam Forums thread.

Prior to February 2009, the game ran just fine. But after an update to the Steam client, owners began reporting a "failed to get SteamID" error that prevents the Steam version from launching. The message links to a support site that offers no help.

The "failed to get SteamID error" exists to this day, Shacknews has confirmed, as the copy we purchased and downloaded this morning suffers from that... Read more

Getting into the spirit of April Fools' Day, peripheral maker Razer today announced a partnership with Half-Life creator Valve to develop a new PC game, HellRazer: Triple Helix, to take advantage of Razer's motion-sensing "Anaconda" controller.

Here's what Razer had to say about the "game" due in fall 2010, wink wink:

HellRazer is a squad-based tactical first person shooter set on a modern day biogenetic research lab, Onyx Rift. Gamers are thrust into the middle of a level 4 biohazard zone when the lab's centralized... Read more

"Unfortunately the game is really like an evil Gilligan's Island. They never escape."

Valve designer Michael Booth is taking a crowd of followers through the evolution of Left 4 Dead, step by step. For instance, it began as a series of boxes.

"This game started out as a world full of grey boxes, and it got pretty fun as a world full of grey boxes," said Booth of the all-important playtesting phase. "If you can make a world full of grey boxes fun, then you've got something good."

But how did Left 4 Dead become the 2.5 million-plus seller that it is... Read more

Valve's cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has now sold over 2.5 million copies since its November debut, project lead Michael Booth revealed today.

The update came as part of Booth's GDC presentation on the game.

That tally includes both the PC and Xbox 360 releases, but does not include sales from Valve's digital distribution platform Steam. The company has a long-standing policy of not revealing Steam sales figures, though a recent discount saw sales jump 3000%.

In a press release celebrating its free development and publishing toolset, Half-Life creator and Steam operator Valve declared that "Steamworks makes DRM obsolete."

The studio trumpeted recent additions to the toolset, including "Custom Executable Generation (CEG) technology" and support for in-game downloadable content.

"[CEG] compliments the already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks," explained Valve. "A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits."

"As we roll out these features, we continue to look for new ways make PC games easier to create and better for customers to experiences," said Valve co-founder Gabe Newell.

The Steamworks toolset allows PC developers to integrate the various aspects of Valve's Steam platform into their games, including achievements, Steam community support, automatic updating, shared settings across multiple computers, and more.

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell recently took exception to a recent Edge editorial proclaiming the "Age of Steam," writing a stiff defense of competition in the digital distribution market.

Wardell's company maintains Impulse, a service similar to Valve's Steam that launched in 2008. And while Steam has taken a lead in the digital PC gaming marketplace, Wardell argues that it's still too early to name a clear winner.

"I must confess that I am surprised to see Edge, or anyone else for that matter, imply that Steam's early lead in digital distribution translates to permanent dominance," said Wardell, who quickly made the case that Valve's 20 million accounts and half-million daily visitors can partly be attributed to "shrewd business practices," such as acquiring Counter-Strike and its user base.

"As new titles come out bundled with Steamworks, which requires a user to become a Steam user in order to play the game (something I would normally think that the press would raise alarm about if this were being done by say EA... Read more

Titles from Final Fantasy series developer Square Enix will soon begin appearing on Valve's PC digital distribution platform Steam, the two companies announced today.

Coming April 9, the PC version of The Last Remnant will be Square's first Steam release, and will also integrate Steamworks for as-yet-unspecified functionality. The action-RPG arrived on Xbox 360 last fall, with a PlayStation 3 release due later on.

The announcement added that Square will "continue to add to its roster of games on Steam" in North America and Europe, but did not specify any other titles or pricing. Supreme Commander 2, which Square is publishing, represents a likely candidate.

"Square Enix is committed to delivering the best quality titles to PC gamers and distribution on Steam is one of the many steps we are taking to increase accessibility for fans in North America and PAL territories," said Square Enix CEO John Yamamoto.

How does Valve deal with PC piracy? According to Valve director of business development Jason Holtman, it gives them what they want--and makes a lot of money doing it.

"Pirates are underserved customers," said Holtman today during a speech at the Game Business Law summit, according to GameDaily.

"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"

Holtman used Valve's success in the Russian market as an example of how piracy can be reduced by simply selling the pirates what they want--when they want it.

Explained Holtman: "Russians are reading magazines and watching television--they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond, 'You can play that game in six months...maybe.' "

After ensuring that its products launch simultaneously in Russia, Holtman said that Valve's piracy rates in the territory "dropped off significantly."

Valve today released an update to Steam that includes the final version of the in-game web browser from December's beta patch.

A "Web" tab at the bottom of the in-game overlay opens up the generic browser. Highlighting, copying and pasting is supported, but right-click is apparently disabled.

The rest of the update adds random fixes to various games and Steam systems.

The full patch notes follow:... 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.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard's World of Warcraft topped the PC charts, with those surveyed playing the PC MMO an average of 671 minutes, just a bit over 11 hours, per week. Blizzard's Diablo II also appears on the list, as do three games from Valve.

Unfortunately, Nielsen did not specify the methodology behind this year's results. In 2007, the firm based its list off an extremely small pool of participants, a mere 1200 gamers, which could explain the unexpected results. It is not known if this was changed for 2008.

Top 10 PC Game Titles in the U.S.
1. World of Warcraft (2004) / Blizzard Entertainment
   671 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.723% AU*
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) / Infinity Ward
   403 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.163% AU*
3. Halo: Combat Evolved (2003) / Gearbox, Bungie... Read more

Valve has released the results of its November PC hardware survey, a compilation of statistics taken directly from users of its Steam digital distribution network.

Over the last four months, technologies that have gained statistical ground include: Intel CPUs (4% gain), multi-core CPUs (6%), ATI GPUs (2%), Vista (5%) and DirectX 10 GPUs (7%).

Nvidia and Intel both hold around a 65% share of their respective categories over competitors ATI and AMD, while 21.43% of machines are DirectX 10-capable.

The most common (median) user of Steam runs an Intel CPU... 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.

Furthermore, it was not specified if the figures of multiplatform games--Half-Life, Half-Life 2, The Orange Box--included both PC and console sales, or just PC.

• Half-Life (Valve) / 1998 - 9.3 Million
• Half-Life: Opposing Force (PC, Gearbox) / 1999 - 1.1 Million
• Half-Life: Blue Shift (PC, Gearbox) / 2001 - 800,000
  
  
• Counter-Strike (PC, Valve) / 2000 - 4.2 Million
• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC, Valve) / 2004 - 2.9 Million... Read more

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell left no doubt about his company's stance on DRM in a recent email to a fan.

"As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb," said Newell in an email to gamer Paul Reisinger, which was then picked up by GamePolitics.

"The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't)," he added.

DRM, or digital rights management, has recently become a subject of intense controversy in the PC gaming field. High-profile games utilizing DRM to restrict overall installations, such as EA's Spore and Mass Effect, have been criticized by users and industry figures alike.

Valve requires its boxed games to be activated online initially, but allows for an unlimited amount of installations over a product's lifetime.

"We really really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches," concluded Newell.

In the near future, Left 4 Dead developer Valve may take a scientific approach to making games by scanning players' brain waves, co-founder Gabe Newell has explained.

"Right now we have to [observe players] simply by watching them and then we have to guess as to how certain things are affecting the player," Newell stated in an essay appearing on Edge. "We want to take that even further in the future," he wrote.

Getting scientific, Newell wrote, "One of the areas that we're really interested in is testing biometrics on player state." Biometrics is the practice of measuring activity in the human body such as heart rate--or, in this case, brain activity.

"There are new technologies where we can wire players up with EEGs and actually have direct exposure to their physical reactions to the games," the Valve head continued. EEG is the technology that measures brain activity by placing electrodes on the scalp. The product of an EEG is usually a chart with spikes and troughs, like a seismometer.

The benefit to Valve is precise knowledge of what works, and what doesn't, when making a game. "We can know for sure of something is actually frightening the player--their heart rate is going up ... appropriate parts of their brains are being activated," Newell asserted.

Concluding, Newell called the possibility "super exciting."