pc gaming

This year's E3 has a brand new experience: a press conference devoted entirely to PC gaming!  A variety of developers, publishers, and hardware companies are slated to appear, so far including:

• AMD
• BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT
• BOHEMIA INTERACTIVE
• CLIFF BLESZINSKI
• CLOUD IMPERIUM GAMES
• DEAN HALL
• DEVOLVER
• HUMBLE BUNDLE
• HEART MACHINE
• PARADOX INTERACTIVE
• SQUARE ENIX
• TRIPWIRE INTERACTIVE

Just enter your Steam username and see not only how long it would take you to play your whole library, but what other "better" things you could be doing with your time, like, you know, running a bunch of marathons.

How many hours do you have ahead of you?

READY THINE WALLETS!

It's currently in beta, but Steam users can now broadcast their gameplay for friends or strangers.

Starting today you can watch your friends' games with the click of a button via Steam Broadcasting, now available in beta. When you see a friend in game, simply click on "Watch Game" from their profile or from the Steam Client Friend's List to open a window into their gameplay — no game ownership, special fees, or additional apps required.

Find out more from Steam.

Want to trade games? You better plan ahead; there's now a 30 day wait period between time of purchase and tradability in an effort to deter fraudulent resellers.


From the announcement:

All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading.

We've made this change to make trading gifts a better experience for those receiving the gifts. We're hoping this lowers the number of people who trade for a game only to have the game revoked later due to issues with the purchaser's payment method.

A thirty day wait period makes sense by this logic, but it sure has messed up my holiday trading. But don't worry, any gifting you're planning to do out of the kindness of your heart remains intact.

Check it out!

Steam's got a massive free weekend today through 1 pm on Sunday, with 10 free titles to play all weekend long:

Awesomenauts
Blade Symphony
Company of Heroes 2
Don't Starve
Grid 2
Injustice
Killing Floor
Payday 2
Trine 2
XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Shut up and take my m--er, bandwith!

But I could already listen to whatever I want, you say? Not from within Steam, you couldn't:

Point Steam to the MP3s on your computer, then browse your collection of albums and artists. You'll also find your Steam Soundtracks DLC in your Steam Music library when the associated base game is installed. Listen to albums, queue up mixes, and create playlists you love, right in your Steam library. Best of all, it's all available right within the Steam Overlay, so you can control playback without leaving your game. The Steam Music library and player consist of all the basics you need to enjoy your music without switching tasks.

In celebration of this new feature, Valve is giving away the soundtracks to the Half-Life and Portal series' to those who own the games, in case you want some other games to be a triumph.

Click the image to check it out!

NeoGAF user Tizoc spotted the above ad for the Steam Summer Sale that says it will be taking place on June 19th-30th. Are you ready for a miracle?

In an update to the Steam Universe group, Valve's Eric Hope has announced an expected delay for Steam machines and controllers:

We're now using wireless prototype controllers to conduct live playtests, with everyone from industry professionals to die-hard gamers to casual gamers. It's generating a ton of useful feedback, and it means we'll be able to make the controller a lot better. Of course, it's also keeping us pretty busy making all those improvements. Realistically, we're now looking at a release window of 2015, not 2014.

Can you wait another year for pseudo-console gaming?

If you're worried the PC version won't look as good as the next current gen versions, the creative director of Watch_Dogs wants you to know the PC version performs just as well as the console version does.