Whether you're a DotA 2 fan, League of Legends fan, or just like a bit of eSports in general, there's no reason not to be excited this weekend, as the DotA 2 International 2013 championships kick off with a bang – and it's got the biggest eSports prize pool ever. …
Read More »DotA 2 price pool continues to grow
The prize pool for the third annual DotA 2 International tournament is still on the rise thanks to community efforts that see fan purchases simply adding to the collection. To date it's reached over $2.6 (£1.7) million, making it the largest cash prize pool of any single esports event in …
Read More »No dawdling in Team Fortress 2 from now on
Valve's item system for Team Fortress 2 has been a resounding success, but it's seen an unscrupulous few, idle in games simply to get their hands on new ones. No longer though, as Valve has updated the game, meaning you have to be actively playing in order to receive the …
Read More »DotA 2 breaks player records after official release
While it's still got a way to go to topple the current player-numbers king of MOBAs, League of Legends, with its 30 million or so monthly players, DotA 2 had a big upsurge in the wake of its official release, seeing a new record of four million monthly total players …
Read More »Sega suing defunct THQ
Poor THQ. It struggles to stay afloat throughout 2012, finally announcing at the close of the year that it'll be shutting up shop for good, and it can't even rest peacefully in the grave. Along with several other creditors, Sega has announced its intention to sue the bankrupt publisher for …
Read More »Steam Summer Sale could be starting in two days time
Valve has announced that the Steam Trading Cards, that achievement like, collectible, reward scheme announced earlier this year, is set to leave beta as of 26th June, meaning everyone can get ahold of them. However, the Half Life maker also teased something else on that date, “an event we think …
Read More »Steam could let you lend games to your friends
If you're one of the few out there that thinks the Xbox One is great, or you're one of the larger group that aren't fans, you have to admit, the ability to share and lend games with your Xbox “family” is a pretty cool feature. Fortunately, it seems Valve did …
Read More »Valve drops off old augmented reality tech with fired employees
Two of the employees let go during the big Valve cull earlier this year, Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, have been gifted the augmented reality glasses tech that the Half Life maker was working on and they've been beavering away at it since they were let go, suggesting that the …
Read More »Steam launches “Early Access” buyable alphas
While you've been able to buy your way into a few games' alpha builds for a while now, Valve has created a special section of Steam just for that. Called, “Early Access,” those of you that want to pay early to get a chance to play unfinished games, can now …
Read More »Valve’s business boomed 50 per cent in 2012
Gabe Newell got a chance to speak in the UK recently, after being awarded the fellowship Bafta. The acceptance speech was full of the sort of thanks and jokes you'd expect, but the interview afterwards was a bit more illuminating: Gabe said Valve had grown by as much as 50 …
Read More »Xi3 admits Piston isn’t official Steam Box
Valve came out earlier this week and claimed there was no official relationship between it and mini-Piston PC creator, Xi3 and that ultimately the miniature machine wasn't a Steam box. While initially taken aback by this announcement, Xi3 seems to have collected itself now and it has agreed, the Piston …
Read More »1,000 Natural Selection 2 gamers lose access in Steam crackdown
More than 1,000 gamers have had their access to Natural Selection 2 cut off after Valve found their copies of the game linked to credit card fraud. Due to charge-back fees, this ended up costing the developer, Unknown Worlds Entertainment, over £20,000. All affected players have had their game deactivated …
Read More »Why were so many Valve employees fired?
A couple of weeks ago we reported on how one and then many other Valve employees were let go. This seems to be a pretty rare thing at Valve and something that's a little hard to understand, since it operates a boss-free structure that sees people moving their desks where …
Read More »More Valve staff let go – as many as 25
While we don't quite know the extent of the layoffs just yet, it's being suggested by a few sources that as many as 25 of Valve's staff may have been let go as part of “group layoffs,” from all over the company – business networking, hardware development and more. We …
Read More »Valve hardware dev gets the boot, could work on Occulus Rift
Valve's hardware guru Jeri Elssworth, announced this morning that she'd been let go from the company and would need to find a new workplace to call home. She was thought to be currently working on controller designers and other hardware developments for Valve's Steam Box console system. Noted for her …
Read More »Gabe Newell talks Steam of the future
Gabe Newell has been speaking out about the future of Steam quite a bit recently, with a lot of focus of expanding its reach and giving better opportunities to smaller developers. However, he's also been thinking about having much less Valve involvement, replacing its current gatekeeper like system with an …
Read More »German consumer group is suing Valve over used game sales block
Despite Valve changing its terms of service in recent months to make it impossible for users of the digital download platform to sue it, that hasn't stopped a German consumer protection group – VZBV – stepping up to the plate and announcing its intentions to sue the company on behalf …
Read More »Steam user base is still growing, fast
While many might look at Steam as the default platform for gaming on the PC, it obviously hasn't got everyone on board yet, as its user base is growing all the time and according to new statistics, that growth is accelerating too. Back in January last year, Steam had a …
Read More »Gabe Newell clears up Steam Box confusion
Ok so yesterday I might have jumped the gun a bit saying we were looking at “Valve's console.” It isn't. Still, it will be part of a new lineup of Steam compatible hardware that are designed as small form factor PCs for gaming in your lounge. Yes I also said …
Read More »First look at Valve’s “console”
It was only yesterday that we heard about Valve's Linux box coming sometime this year, but it's today that the world will gets it first official look at CES. However, the boys at Engadget managed to get an early peek at the system, known as “Piston.” Manufactured by Xi3 and …
Read More »Linux Steam Box coming this year
We might already have heard from Nvidia about its new Shield console and we certainly know that the Ouya is up and running, but Valve has been relatively quiet about its own console offerings. Now though, according to an engineer at the company, we know it'll run Linux and that it'll …
Read More »Game Guides debut on Steam
Valve has launched a new feature on its digital distribution platform, allowing those that participate in the beta to begin making and using guides for games. The idea being that when you get stuck, you can pull up the guide within Steam itself instead of having to Google for it. …
Read More »League of Legends coming to Steam?
League of Legends has been making a lot of journalistic waves in the past few days, with the biggest focus on the removal and crack down on trolls. However the big rumour today is that the world's most popular game could be coming to Steam. The hints come from entries …
Read More »A handful of videogame movies could be just round the corner
With the impending release of Wreck-It Ralph next year, it looks like Hollywood is beginning to consider video games a part of our culture that's worth talking about. First we had Seth Rogen who said he was looking to write a movie about the Sega vs Nintendo years and now …
Read More »Valve economist talks Steam machines and other hardware
Valve's ‘economist in residence' Yanis Varoufakis, has opened up in a blog post translated by Neogaf user alexanderos, that gives us a little more information on Valve's hardware developments, including the reasoning behind them. “At the time period between March till June I went back to Valve and we begun …
Read More »Steam Guard required in future for trading
Starting in mid December, anyone wanting to take part in trading items on Valve's Steam, will need to have Steam Guard activated. This currently optional layer of protection is being implemented, presumably to prevent hackers taking advantage of the system. This news was spotted by a Redditor, with other commenters …
Read More »Steam had six million online at once over the weekend
It's been almost a year since Valve announced that it had hit five million concurrent gamers on its Steam digital download platform and now it's crested that wave, reaching the lofty heights of six million gamers at one time. Perhaps what's more impressive about this stat, is that there wasn't …
Read More »Gabe Newell clarifies class action clause
Head at Valve, Gabe Newell, has expanded on the initial official statement regarding the company's Terms of Service that forced players to agree that they could not take out a class action lawsuit against Valve; apparently it's because lawyers suck. This all came out as part of a 4Chan visit …
Read More »Valve plans to greelight another 10 games by end of month
Despite having given the greenlight thumbs up to over 30 games already, Valve has announced that due to the pace of voting on the crowd platform at the moment, it expects to see another 10 ready for Steam addition by the end of the month. On top of this announcement, …
Read More »Valve creates Greenlight concept section
Perhaps to counter the fact that many of the first 10 games that the Steam community gave the ‘Greenlight' to were unfinished, Valve has implemented a split in the way games are shown on the crowd voting platform. Now titles that are finished will have their own sections, while unfinished …
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