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). Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 to play Ranked Dota 2 [official site]. Smurfs muck up the fun, you see, dropping into lower-level games with their higher-tier skillz. Ooo those smurfs make me sick! I must catch them! Read the rest of this entry »

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 race. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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: Global Offensive [official site]. That’s real Christmas to me. Ladies and germs, Christmas is here.

Oh, and Valve added some fancy technology to improve positional audio to help folks play the game better but look, the chickens are what really matters. Read the rest of this entry »