As someone reading this on the Internet, you know that people on the Internet are often awful. Doubly so if they're playing a video game. To help weed out horrors, Valve is playing with a community self-policing scheme for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It sounds similar to the Tribunal in Riot's League of Legends, presenting players with "cases" of others who've been reported and asking them to make judgements.
Team Fortress 2 has gotten a new, community-created update. The "Robotic Boogaloo" is the first update entirely made by the community, and it features a plethora of new hats for your metal minions.
Valve started the prize pool for its big Dota 2 tournament The International 3 with a very respectable $1.6 million. But to make teams Dote like they've never Doted before, Valve's kicking in 25% of sales from its $10 collector's chart-ish-sort-of-thing The Compendium. It's selling like nobody's business so the pool has now passed a cool $2 million, and Valve has added more "stretch goal" bonuses for Compendium owners.
What do you do when your platform already sells and launches video games? Make the platform itself a video game, naturally. Valve announced the beta launch of "Steam Trading Cards" today. The collectible meta-game lets you upgrade your Steam profile by playing games and collecting and trading their associated (virtual) cards.
Steam's Greenlight program is meant to raise indie awareness by putting aspiring games up to a popular vote, but some developers feel it isn't doing enough to put the games in front of potential audiences. Valve hosted an online get-together to hear the thoughts of indie developers, some of whom were outspoken about improvements to the service.
Valve has used Dota 2 to test all sorts of interesting doodads for professional gaming, from selling tickets to watch matches in an oh-so-slick spectator system to, heck, hosting a huge annual tournament. As third tourney approaches, Valve is launching The International Interactive Compendium, a social-y thing which'll let fans predict results together, win prizes, and vote on things like who plays in the all-star game.
Valve has a history of experimental hires, like when it brought on an economist to examine in-game economies. The company has now taken in Mike Ambinder, an experimental psychologist who is tasked with researching biofeedback.
Valve has offered a treat to Linux users with the release of a Left 4 Dead 2 beta. A Portal beta for Linux is also available, but Valve has been a bit mum on that release. If you own any of those three games, the betas should appear in your Steam library.
It's been about six years since the Minerva mod for Half-Life 2 was released, but after some cajoling from co-workers at Valve, developer Adam Foster has given it a new coat of paint and is releasing it on Steam as a Director's Cut.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is introducing a new community program today, aimed at rewarding the community's best mapmakers. It kicks off today with "Operation Payback," a collection of seven top-voted community maps that will be promoted through July 31.
"The International" is returning yet another year. Valve's annual Dota 2 tournament will be held in Seattle on August 7th, a few weeks before PAX Prime.
No prize pool has been announced on Dota 2's official website, but the winning team at last year's tourney took home $1 million.
Steam announced support for subscription plans today, allowing publishers and players to use the revenue model through its service. The new model promises easy management of your subscription-based games, with Darkfall: Unholy Wars serving as the debut title to use the service.
For umpteen years now, the fundamentals of rescuing hostages in Counter-Strike have remained the same. From the original mod, through the commercial release, the revamped Counter-Strike: Source, to the new CS: Global Offensive, you'd head to where they spawn, then lead all the idiot AIs home. But that young upstart shook things up in a patch yesterday, switching to randomised hostages you need to carry.
With games continuously evolving after release, gamers have become accustomed to frequent title updates and patches. But, what if you could see a game evolve before it's ever officially "released"? That's what Steam plans on offering through its new "Early Access" library of games.
Through the new initiative, you'll be able to buy beta versions of games through Steam. Because the games are incomplete, you'll have the privilege of not only playing the games early, but you'll also "help test and report bugs." You may even have to pay extra to get said right.
Ever since Oculus Rift was unveiled, modders have been working on unofficially adding VR support to many PC games, including Valve's classic Half-Life 2. However, Valve has been experimenting with VR as well, and plans on launching an official "VR Mode" for its popular free-to-play shooter, Team Fortress 2.
"Oh really? They didn't even support the console versions of CS:GO.. I was really disappointed in ..."
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