Alongside the Skyrim Creation Kit and the HD Texture Pack that was officially released last night, Valve added their own little addition to Skyrim: Fall of The Space Corp, Vol. 1 adds Portal 2′s jittery little Space Core to the Nord world, voiced by the man that holds the patent on all gaming voiceovers, Nolan North. It’s both proof that clicking things in Skyrim’s Steam Workshop works just like they said it would, and that Valve’s punmasters are missed a trick by not calling him Nolan Nord. When you add the mod to the game, you need to find him. Here’s a video I made that shows you how.
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Posts Tagged ‘Valve’
Valve’s Skyrim Mod: Finding Spaaaaaaaace Man
By Craig Pearson on February 8th, 2012.
TF2 Team Aren’t Working On A Hat
By John Walker on February 3rd, 2012.
According to some typically cryptic words on the Team Fortress 2 blog, 2012 holds a “secret project” for the game, and they promise it is neither a hat, nor a map. But they don’t say what it actually is. And there comes the promise that this year will finally see the final Meet The Team video, giving the Pyro the coverage she so deserves. And apparently it’s going to contain an awful lot of blood. But no mention of fire. Finally, there will apparently be a more imminently revealed secret related to the Saxxy Awards. But who knows.
So I challenge RPS readers to speculate – what is the next new inclusion for the game? An entirely new game mode? A new character to muddle all the balancing? An RPG set in the TF2 universe in which you play as a struggling Scout, trying to find his way in the brutal world? A new hat?
Property Is Theft?
Thought: Do We Own Our Steam Games?
By John Walker on February 1st, 2012.
What do you own? Looking through my possessions, I feel fairly comfortable that the food in my fridge belongs to me. And I have an odd confidence that the hardware in my PC is mine. But the books on my shelves? I seem to have very little rights over them. The CDs stacked up in a cupboard (remember CDs?) certainly aren’t my property. And the software on my computer may as well be tied to a long piece of elastic, just waiting for the publishers to give it a tug. You own a license. But a license for what? This lack of ownership becomes even more concerning when it comes to the digital space, at which point our rights to anything become extremely ambiguous. And that’s something that can bite you hard on the bum, when places like Steam seem to reserve the right to ban you from your account, and not even tell you why they did it. Below is the story of one RPS reader who says he lost access to his entire Steam collection, and thoughts from game lawyer Jas Purewal on whether we really own any game we buy.
30,000 Gamers Ask: Where’s Half-Life 3?
By Craig Pearson on February 1st, 2012.
Looking at Steam’s Stats page, Half-Life 2 is currently sandwiched between Plants vs Zombies and X3: Albion Prelude. But this weekend, if the Call For Communication Steam Group pull it off, Valve’s own game should be somewhere near the top ten. The protesters are hoping that the surge of players will send a message to Valve: “we want to know what’s happening to Gordon Freeman.”
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i(OS)-Spy: Steam Mobile App Closed Beta
By Jim Rossignol on January 27th, 2012.
The Androids and the i-people will soon be able to log into a Steam app and access a bunch of Steam functionality “on the go”. Here’s what Valve had to say by way of explanation: “With the Steam app, gamers around the world may chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, read the latest gaming news, stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales, and more.” You can download the app to “express interest in the beta” just here. Gosh, isn’t modern life convenient? You may now speculate on Valve’s plans to bring out Half-Life 3 exclusively on the iPad.
TF2Maps Preparing A New Payload Delivery
By Craig Pearson on January 24th, 2012.
Any new Team Fortress 2 Payload maps are relevant to my interests. My interests being defending my themed house from carts of explosives while wearing a very silly hat. I rarely stray from Badwater Basin, but when I do it’s for more Payload fun. So I’m eagerly awaiting the entries of the newly announced TF2Maps.net Dynamic Payload competition, to add a little excitement to the bomb on wheels.
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Half-Life Dreamcast Gets A PC Port
By Craig Pearson on January 19th, 2012.
Way back in the year 2000 I had a very brief stint on Dreamcast magazine, DC-UK. I won’t bore you with the details of my quick departure: just imagine the most dramatic escape scene you can, then double it. But while I was there I happened across a preview disc with Half-Life on it. I say preview, the damn thing was nearly complete and I played a tonne of it on that bizarre controller. It was cancelled. As is the way of these things, the code found it’s way onto The Google and now someone’s ported it to the PC.
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An open closed book
Hey, Valve, What’s Going On, Eh?
By John Walker on January 17th, 2012.
Valve have created themselves an interesting situation. Presenting themselves as bastions of consumers, remarkably accessible to gamers, regularly inviting in groups of modders – often to give them jobs – and always being present to offer a quote on how customers deserve to be treated with more dignity, they establish themselves as being our friend. And then from that position, they sure do like to muck about. And as Eurogamer’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell mentioned on Twitter this morning, it’s hard not to sympathise with a growing body of Valve’s customers who are asking for better communication.
Today’s Greatest Thing Ever: Elevator Source
By John Walker on January 16th, 2012.
Elevators, or as we Brits call them, dangleboxes, get a fair showing in gaming. Very few FPS titles will let you reach their final bossmonster without having had at least one go on the world’s slowest ride, giving you a moment’s pause, before they inevitably shudder to a halt as you’re ripped out of the side of the building by something with more tentacles than manners. But until now (to my knowledge at least, inevitable person who knows of a game on the Amiga) they’ve yet to receive a game dedicated just to them. And that’s what we have in the Half-Life 2 mod, Elevator: Source. YES.
Steam Wants You To Look At Its Muscles
By Alec Meer on January 6th, 2012.
We’ve already seen some minor willy-waving from Valve regarding the bumper 2011 they had with Steam, but now they’re full-on doing The Crab and asking you to admire their big, shiny guns. After ten years in this business I’m a bit bored of saying “only idiots think PC gaming is dead”, so I’ll let this do it for me.
Below: many statistics, and a lie.
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Steam Passes Five Million Concurrent Users
By Jim Rossignol on January 4th, 2012.
As the lovelies at PC Gamer have observed, Steam passed 5 million concurrent users on the 2nd of January, a spike that seems largely powered by the popularity of Skyrim and the Christmas sale. Check it out on the Steam stats page. Valve confirmed that Steam had passed 30 million active accounts as of October 2010, so it’s probably a bit bigger than that by now.
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