valve

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.

NeoGAF user crazy buttocks on a train has come across what they claim is a confidential presentation from Valve showing images of Left 4 Dead 2 rebuilt in a new Source 2 engine. This long rumored new engine could be the basis for L4D3, so the internet has collectively worked itself into a frenzy of LFD3 rumors. Don't get too excited; we all know Valve can't count to three.

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."

Freaking playtesters...

Ever wanted to see Valve characters re-enact the opening of "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya"? Now you can!

Valve officially announced Source 2 at GDC this year, and they're giving it away for free:

The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games. We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.