The Xi3 Piston opened for pre-orders on Monday, and seemed to be the first of many Steam Box type devices powered by Valve’s online gaming store and service. But Valve quickly came out and said that despite their investment in Xi3, the company has no “official involvement” in the development of the Piston itself. Now Xi3 is firing back, admitting that while it received… → Read More
As it turns out, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell gets awfully chatty when he attends award ceremonies. His appearance at the (generally awful) Spike TV Video Game Awards got him ruminating about the future of living room PCs, and ahead of today’s BAFTA Games Awards he confirmed to the BBC that Valve is working on Steam Box prototypes that will be released to testers “in the next three to four… → Read More
Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Valve, took the stage today at the DICE gaming conference to deliver a keynote, and while he said upfront he wasn’t going to be announcing any products, he did give some hints about Valve’s future. In his keynote, he outlined in a fair amount of detail how he envisions the future of PC gaming and what it might bring to the living room that… → Read More
I don’t normally expect much to come out of Spike TV’s annual Video Game Awards, but Kotaku managed to score a gem of an interview with Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell earlier this weekend. In his brief exchange, Newell said he expected to see several PC makers crafting Steam-centric gaming PCs for the living room in 2013, and that their products would rival the next… → Read More
As anticipated in August, digital game seller Steam is now offering Windows non-game applications. It acts like a traditional app store. After the reviewing process, apps are available to purchase in a centralized store. Users can choose where to install their apps in the latest Steam beta. However, like Amazon’s Appstore for Android, Valve can discount apps if it thinks that it would benefit the… → Read More
Valve, creators of (among other things) the Half-Life franchise and Steam, the gold standard for digital game distribution, are said to be getting into the hardware game. If The Verge’s tip is to be believed, the company is working with partners to establish a base PC gaming standard to sell as a packaged deal, a sort of set-top box PC that would run Steam or other download services and run most… → Read More
Don’t expect Episode 3 to come to your New Controller any time soon, but Valve’s Gabe Newell has made some noises about Nintendo being included in their “scalability model.” What he means is that there was no way they were downsizing a game to fit on the Wii, but the Wii U might have the chops to make it worth porting games to. For a long time Nintendo has been the whipping… → Read More
What’s going on here? Over at aperturescience.com a fancy countdown timer just counted down, and now there’s a message up top that says “Help release Portal 2 early! Play the 13 games in the potato sack to reboot GLaDOS.” → Read More
Attention! Valve has announced exactly how Portal 2‘s Steam features will work on the PS3. PS3 gamers can look forward to cross-platform (with the PC) matchmaking and gameplay, real-time chat, Steam achievements, and access to the Steam Cloud for game saves. → Read More
The one thing I just don’t understand is why they’d fire the whole bullet. What does that even mean? → Read More
It’s as if Valve is run by actual people, and not input-output robots that are programmed to respond with shiny phrases that sound pleasing to The Man. The company recently released its Portal 2 TV spot, and the novel thing about it is that it was created entirely in-house. Valve didn’t enlist a third-party ad agency to create it. And why is that? Because “no one knows the product better than… → Read More
PSM3, the PlayStation magazine, has reviewed THQ’s fancy new shooter Homefront. It got a respectable 83/100. What’s perhaps worrying, however, is that the single-player campaign clocks in at a mere five hours in length. With such a short campaign, you start to ask yourself: is that even worth the developer’s time? → Read More
Valve has officially announced Steam Guard, which is a new form “user rights management” in the words of Gabe Newell. There were all sorts of rumors about it yesterday, but now that Valve has made the official announcement it’s safe there’s no real reason to panic. The service is more about keeping your Steam account secure and out of the hands of evildoers than it is about punishing you for… → Read More
Portal 2 may be coming to the PS3 and bringing cross-platform play and some Steam elements with it, but the Steam interface is really designed for mouse navigation, not analog sticks. Valve is looking to fix that with a special “big picture mode” designed for use with big TVs and console controllers. → Read More
It’s looking more and more like the PS3 version of Portal 2 will be the better of the two console versions. Valve told the German PlayStation Blog that Portal 2 PS3 will ship with “complete” Move support. Apparently they’re still working on working out all the kinks, but it’s part of Valve’s effort to make up for the so-so PS3 version of The Orange Box, which was developed by an external team. → Read More
Here’s an interesting figure: Valve makes more money per employee than Google or Apple. While we can easily figure out how much the publicly traded Google and Apple make per employee, estimating what Valve pulls in is trickier. Valve has done quite well selling video games – over 12 million copies of Half-Life 2 alone – but Valve is even better at selling everyone else’s… → Read More
Valve has released the details surrounding pre-ordering Portal 2. The game is available for pre-order right now on Steam (and other retailers), and if you pre-order the game they’ll knock $5 off the price, bringing it down to $45. → Read More
Nice, it looks like the PS3 version of Portal 2 won’t stink on ice—something that can’t be said about the Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2. (Though that’s hardly Valve’s fault, having to play by Microsoft’s silly Xbox Live rules.) PS3 owners can look forward to cross-platform (PC/Mac vs. PS3) gameplay in multi-player mode, Steam Cloud-based storage of saved games (eh…), and… → Read More
Presenting… a new trailer of Valve’s Portal 2! You know you love it. → Read More
Valve knows that they’re notorious for not quite getting things out on time, and so it is with tongue firmly in cheek that they announced “the shortest delay in Valve’s proud tradition of delays,” which puts Portal 2 out in April instead of February. → Read More
Time to brush up on your modding skills? Modders who created content for Team Fortress 2 have earned nearly $50,000 apiece. So, let’s say you create a hat. A few months later you’re driving around in a fancy car, not unlike the id Software guys from way back when. → Read More
OK, so a few minutes ago I got a press release from Valve talking about the latest Team Fortress 2 update. I read the subject line and was like, “Oh, I bet they added a bunch of stuff. Neat.” But then I read the press release. → Read More
This is Lucas Molyneux, famed game developer Peter Molyneux’s son. In this exciting video we see Molyneux The Younger ask Valve Software: “Where’s Half-Life 3?” Cheeky! → Read More
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Valve’s own Gabe Newell took some time to talk about the possibility of a Half-Life movie. Apparently after the smash success of the first game, they were inundated with crappy scripts, and directors who didn’t get what the game was about. As a result, Valve started thinking about how they would make a movie. The result is the ever amusing… → Read More
Probably should have mentioned this yesterday, but such is life. Valve is running a fun little content wherein you get to DESCRIBE HATS~! in Team Fortress 2. The name of the contest? “The First Ever Hat Describing Contest.” Two thumbs up. → Read More
This week being QuakeCon and all, Steam has set up a special deal on all of the current Id and Bethesda games. If you bought these separately, the over all value on the software in the package would be over $300. In light of QuakeCon though, Valve is selling the whole package for $69.99. Just to hit a few highlights from the list, you get Wolfenstein 3D, Ultimate Doom, everything related to Quake… → Read More
Just a heads-up to let you Mac users out there that Counter-Strike: Source, “the number one online action game in the world,” is now available on Steam for Mac. → Read More
I just got out of my Portal 2 meeting a little while ago, where Erik from Valve went through a few of the game’s new features and themes. It’s nothing particularly new if you read the Game Informer article, but seeing it in motion started my brain juices flowing again, just like the old days. And there are a few new details in here. → Read More
Do you want to see the same Portal 2 trailer that Matt and I saw a few moments ago during Sony’s press conference? Of course you do! Also: the game’s official site isn’t live yet, but it’ll be here when it is. → Read More
Portal 2 now has an official release date: 2011. So says a fancy e-mail we just got from Valve. That gives you around a year to play it before the world ends, according to people who misinterpret the Mayan calendar. → Read More
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