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Feature: Is there such a thing as too much Freeman?
We've seen how much damage one theoretical physicist can do. Sven Co-op lets you unleash the vortex of chaos of a dozen Free Men (and women) upon Half-Life. Once just a mod enabling you to play the classic FPS with pals, it received Valve's blessings to go free and standalone on Steam in 2016, bundled with a free copy of the original Half-Life re-tooled for multiplayer.…
Dota Underlords, Valve’s take on Auto Chess, is now free for all
With today's exceptionally quick launch of Dota Underlords, I finally understand Valve Time. When unhurried, the studio takes longer, compressing the excess time for use later. When they need to hustle to get a game out of the door before the competition heats up? They reverse the valves and work like demons. At least, that's how I'm explaining it. Underlords is a turn-based tactical deckbuilder…
Feature: The mods are waiting for you, in the test chamber...
Half-Life 2 is nearly fifteen years old now, and despite Valve's sequel plans seemingly fizzling out, it doesn't look a day over ten thanks to the efforts of modders. Chances are that Half-Life 2 and its expansions have been gathering dust on your Steam account for years now, so here's a quick refresher -- mostly focused on the past five years -- on what's available,…
Steam dusts off some free weekends for the Spring Cleaning Event
Valve are joining all those great internet thought-leaders and telling you to clean your room, or at the very least to play the games that you've bought on Steam. Running this weekend until May 28th, 6pm GMT, the Steam Spring Cleaning Event provides a front-page checklist of games to try or return to, and rewarding the diligent with goodies to decorate their account page with.…
Valve on Assassin’s Creed, Notre Dame and “positive” review bombing
When Valve implemented Steam's anti-review-bombing policy in March - manual exclusion of "off topic" review clusters from a game's overall score - they'd not given much thought to what a 'positive' review bomb could look like. Just one month later, Notre Dame cathedral goes up in holy smoke and Ubisoft bring in a flood of positive press (and reviews) for Assassin's Creed Unity through a…
Feature: Points win invites to win prizes!
With the biggest event in the competitive Dota 2 [official site] calendar – The International 2017 – due to take place next month, it might be a little early to start thinking about The International 2018. Unless, that is, you’re Valve, who have revealed a massive overhaul to how the entire next professional season will play out. Here's an in-depth look at why these changes…
Feature: Something fishy
Remember how Dota 2's current seasonal Battle Pass/money pit has an under the sea theme? WELL, my Battle Pass is now sufficiently levelled up that I can swap the usual map with its trees and woodland wildlife for an underwater variant called Reef's Edge! After booting up a game replay I swapped to the free camera mode, ditched the HUD elements that were getting in…
Ooooh! The first part of Dota 2 [official site] co-op campaign, Siltbreaker, has arrived! Act 1: The Sands of Fate is the game's first co-op multiplayer campaign (unless you count crowding round a screen with a friend to take turns playing Warcraft 3 or something).
Hot on the heels of his hero Erik Wolpaw, Valve's VR top-dog and grizzled bossman Chet Faliszek has announced that he's leaving the company. Amicably, he claims, but anyone who's ever met him will know that's not possible.
Here's a joke you can borrow for when you're necking jars and dropping bantbombs with the lads tonight: Q: What do Gargamel and Dota 2 Ranked matchmaking have in common? A: They both hate smurfs. Steel yourself for some jolly vigorous high-fives from the lads there. To crack down on Doters playing across multiple accounts, Valve will soon start requiring players register a phone number…
It looks like Valve are experimenting with machine learning to deal with cheating in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site]. The snippet of insight comes from a Reddit thread about spinbots in Valve's first-person shooter. The gist is that Valve are investigating using an artificial intelligence system capable of constantly retraining itself to spot cheaters and try to stay ahead in the cheat creation/cheat detection arms…
Valve has announced that the iconic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site] map, Dust2 will be removed from active duty and replaced with the Inferno map. Dust2 will still be playable, but it exists as a separate map group for the casual and deathmatch game modes. As a result of this swap, you'll no longer see Dust2 in professional esports tournaments.
We can all agree that the Christmas season doesn't begin just because John Lewis tries to punch you in the heart or because Ian Starbucks cracks open the syrups again. That's crass commercialism denigrating the season where people buy me presents. No, the only corporation I trust managing Christmas is Valve Corporation, who each year put cute little festive jumpers on the chickens in Counter-Strike:…
In January and February of 2015, Valve handed down "indefinite" bans to a number of players found taking part in matchfixing in professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site]. Now an update on the game's blog says that those bans are permanent.
Feature: But no sandstorm
I've spent my afternoon watching the wildlife of the Dota 2 [official site] desert terrain. There are some newcomers who aren't native to the vanilla map which is cool - scorpions and vultures and the like. There's also a proliferation of beetles and I love looking at the new trees and the cacti. This isn't an exhaustive animal catalogue - there are definitely some butterflies…
Feature: Getting to know you
Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na’Vi’s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. I spent the last few Dote Nights talking about tutorials in three MOBAs – what they did well and what they did poorly. I realise I…
The Majors have been on the horizon for the Dota 2 [official site] pro scene for a while now. They're a series of big tournaments spaced through the year and around the globe culminating in The International. But Valve were reluctant to go into further detail until this year's International was done and dusted - i.e. now. The bit I'm most interested in is the…
Tutorials and practice in MOBAs is something I think about a lot. It came up again over the last couple of weeks because Riot ventured the opinion that a sandbox mode in League of Legends would introduce problems and take away from fun of the game. I already talked about the sandbox situation in greater detail here but I figured I'd put forward a few…
Feature: Tales from TI5
Pip is currently in Seattle to cover The International 2015 - Valve's six day Dota 2 [official site] tournament. There's over $18m on the line and a rich tapestry of professional gaming to enjoy (or unpick) - we did a cheat sheet to explain the basics. There was also a virtual reality secret shop to be visited and a game of "cornhole" to be played.…
Feature: Tales from TI5
Pip is currently in Seattle to cover The International 2015 - Valve's six day Dota 2 [official site] tournament. There's over $18m on the line and a rich tapestry of professional gaming to enjoy (or unpick) - we did a cheat sheet to explain the basics. There are also lemon curd cakes to be eaten and fountains be be enjoyed. Here's what happened on day…
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