valve

FREE TO PLAY is a feature-length documentary that follows three professional gamers from around the world as they compete for a million dollar prize in the first Dota 2 International Tournament. In recent years, E Sports has surged in popularity to become one of the most widely-practiced forms of competitive sport today. A million dollar tournament changed the landscape of the gaming world and for those elite players at the top of their craft, nothing would ever be the same again. Produced by Valve, the film documents the challenges and sacrifices required of players to compete at the highest level.

Part 1 of TF2's Two Cities update is out, and features a new Man vs Machine map and new weapon upgrades.

If Portal cores were people, I'd wager they'd look just like this!

The team at Team Fortress teased this moonbase image a while back, and it seems the time might be upon us to see the real deal:

Check in with the countdown at around 5 PM Pacific to see what it is.

Seriously, Valve, you're beginning to make Steam look more and more like Origin every day.

Valve rolled out its pay-for-mods service on Thursday to universal ire from the PC gaming community. In theory, the system is less dubious, if it weren't for the fact that Valve will pocket a massive percentage of the mod charge, leaving the actual modders with precious little profit to their name.

Let's say a modder makes a Skyrim mod that they want to charge $4.99 for. Setting aside the fact that DLC microtransactions are already a plague on the gaming industry, the maker of said Skyrim will only ever get $1.25 for their efforts, while the remaining $3.74 goes straight to Valve for doing no work whatsoever.

This system also introduces an endless quagmire of problems for modders who use elements of other people's mods to make their own. Case in point: the Skyrim fishing mod made by Chesko. As it turns out, Chesko used elements of an idle character animations mod made by Fore. So, that means that Fore is entitled to a percentage of the profits from Chesko's mod on top of Valve's already egregious 75% cut, right? If so, what percentage does Fore get?

As you can see, the whole system quickly becomes a mess, seriously curtailing the resources of modders like Chesko, and infringing on the intellectual property rights of Fore. No matter what happens though, Valve wins and we lose. Such a sleazy cash grab is uncharacteristic of our lord Gaben, but some say it was bound to happen eventually. As Harvey Dent once said, "something something die a hero, something something the villain."

Now you can! Steam has introduced a fairly straight-forward review system that allows you to write reviews for games that appear on their store pages. You'll also be able to rate other reviews, and if you happen to take a liking to a particular reviewer, you will be able to take a look at all their reviews. Now you too can be a hardcore game critic!!!!1

In an interview with IGN, product designer Greg Coomer said, "you won't see an exclusive killer app for SteamOS from us. We're not going to be doing that kind of thing." Business developer Anna Sweet also explains Valve's philosophy on third party exclusives, saying, "Whenever we talk to third-party partners, we encourage them to put their games in as many places as possible, including not on our platforms."

A developer version of HTC's new headset, powered by SteamVR, will be out some time this spring, and the retail version is due out for the holiday season of this year.

From the official site:

THE VISUALS
A 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye, with refresh rates of a blistering 90 frames per second, displays photorealistic imagery that fills your field of vision in all directions, eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies and transporting you to another world.

Read more about the controller here.