As the 2018 Dota 2 season kicks off, controversy had already begun to swirl around streamers who broadcast or commentate matches from tournaments they aren't running. While Valve has responded to the issue, the answers ended up being more vague than some had hoped.
Valve has once again tampered with the holy grail of Counter-Strike maps, Dust2. Long considered a gold standard not just for CSGO, but for multiplayer maps in general, it's very difficult to tangibly improve without accidentally knocking the overall synergy of the map out of balance.
On October 10 2007, Valve didn't just release a video game, they released three. All came in the one package, and it was called The Orange Box.
Dust 2 is one of the most famous Counter-Strike maps of all time, and it's coming back to the newest version of that game. Valve revealed a reworked version of the iconic bomb defusal map, and it's looking pretty great.
Steam is perhaps the most monolithic gaming platform, the PC's biggest show in town by a long shot. It's also a multi-layered mess of systems and ideas, a Frankenstein UI (FrankenstUIn) assembled from limbs and tissue whose purposes are dimly remembered at best. It annoys the piss out of me sometimes, is what I'm saying.
Yesterday, Highlight Reel professional and walking ASMR generator Chris Person and I played Half-Life: Caged, a new mod for the classic shooter made by an ex-Valve employee. It's a remarkable mod with great gunfights.
Hate to break it to you, but Half-Life really stinks.
Valve has removed games from Steam before, but never this many, especially not all at once.
Every playable character in Team Fortress 2 is a dude. But the recent release of an artist's old work shows that Valve at least toyed with the idea of introducing women into the game's roster.
One of the longest running bugbears of Steam is that Australians have always, since its inception, been forced to pay for games in American dollars. But finally, after years of lobbying, that could be about to change.
Weird fact: There was a PlayStation 2 version of the original Half-Life. Weirder fact: It contained a filing cabinet that would move to face you if you approached it.
I first played Half-Life in 1998 and played it again over the last month for a series of livestreams on Twitch. It's been 19 years since the game was released, and what I experienced in 2017 made me reassess the game. It's a chaotic, if sometimes sloppy, masterpiece.
Back in the dial-up days, when it came to taking out Ts and CTs, you made do with an IBM Model M keyboard and Honeywell disc mouse. Over the last decade or so, peripherals that glow like psychedelic double-rainbows and sound like 50-cal. machine guns are all the rage. And the settings you can tweak -- DPI, mouse sensitivity, USB rate... being a pro Counter-Strike player requires tuning your gadgets and now you can benefit from their knowledge.
If you missed out on a chance to grab the excellent Steam Link box when it was going for under $30, good news: it's back.
Former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw has posted a fictional letter on his site that sure reads like a possible plot summary for Half-Life 2: Episode 3.
The International 7 has come and gone, crowning a new victor in Team Liquid along the way. Whether you were on the ground in Seattle at the Key Arena or watching from home, there were plenty of sights and sounds to take in, as well as a few good signs.
He's the most bad-arse tree in video games and the lower bracket finals at this year's International showed everything that makes the hero one of Dota's best.
Team Liquid are the victors of The International 7, a Dota 2 tournament with over $US24 million in prize pool. The European squad will take home the lion's share at $US10,806,301 ($13,690,502) after an historic 3-0 sweep of team Newbee.
