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 …
Read More »Steam Big Picture launches today – could change industry
Valve is set to launch its latest expansive project today: Steam Big Picture. Designed to offer a decent Steam experience on your lounge TV – controlled via Xbox controller – Big Picture could end up having a very interesting impact on the industry. For one, while Valve has made it …
Read More »Valve doesn’t want erotic games on Steam
At least that's the message Miriam Bellard of No Reply Games got, when she received a notice that her company's game ‘Seduce Me,' had been kicked off of the Greenlight voting platform for breaking terms and conditions. Considering the only real two T&Cs that could get you removed were for …
Read More »Valve is entering hardware market
While it's been rumoured, hinted at and teased for a long time, we now have confirmation that Valve is set to enter the hardware market. Granted, it's not from an official announcement, but a job posting on the Valve website looking for someone to develop hardware. The available position is …
Read More »Valve forced to ban users due to Greenlight abuse
While Valve's Greenlight service – where users vote on what games they want added to the digital distribution platform – has only been live for about 24 hours, the Half Life developer has already begun banning swathes of users for submitting fake games to the service. While Greenlight should be …
Read More »Half Life 3 could be debuted at Gamescom
Update: Since writing this story, Eurogamer is saying that the Half Life 3 rumour is “a mistake,” according to the organisers of Gamescom. The hotly anticipated sequel to 2004's Half Life 2 and its ensuing episodes, could appear for the first time at Gamescom, according to a PDF from the …
Read More »EXCLUSIVE: Intel refutes nVidia claims regarding HD4000 game compatibility
EXCLUSIVE INTEL INTERVIEW: At a recent Analyst's Day, nVidia went through its usual array of slides regarding a wonderful history, present conditions and how glorious the future is likely to be. All well and good, we'd have done the same if we had Tegra, Tesla, Quadro and GeForce in the …
Read More »Steam will feature desktop software in September
Valve's Steam digital download platform will offer more than just games once September rolls around, confirming the rumour from a few weeks ago that office like desktop software would be available through the service. As of yet, no confirmation has been given on what sort of applications will be available, …
Read More »Valve tweaks T&Cs to protect against lawsuits
Valve has updated the Steam terms and conditions, in order to help protect itself from potential lawsuits from its customer base, specifically the class action kind. “It's clear to us that in some situations, class actions have real benefits to customers. In far too many cases however, class actions don't …
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