Official Steam sections are appearing in retail stores across the US, UK and Canada. We took a quick look.

After some time in hibernation our podcast, All Things Lambda has risen from the ashes with a new episode.

The classic Counter-Strike map Train (de_train) is back, with some new features to boot.

Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian, Simon “smn” Beck, and Gordon “Sf” Giry were all slapped with VAC bans a few days ago. What does that mean for the competitive gaming scene in CS:GO?

CS:GO releases operations every so often to highlight community made maps. This latest operation among many is titled Vanguard, which sets a new trend with missions.

Valve today announced a $250,000 prize pool for the DreamHack CS:GO Championship at DreamHack Winter 2014.

DreamHack takes place in Jönköping, Sweden from November 27th-29th. Why this event is so special you ask? DreamHack is the largest digital festival in the world, and lays claim to holding the world’s largest LAN party in the Guinness Book of Records.

The CS:GO competition ESL One Cologne started just a few hours ago.

Like many of Valve’s games, they can be very competitive at times. So much in fact, they are used for ‘real world’ competitions around the globe. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one such game, and it’s being played right now at ESL One, in Cologne, Germany.

Is Counter Strike: Global Offensive not enough to satisfy your Counter Strike needs? Well you are in luck; Nexon is going to release a new CS game.

Update 11th August: Thanks to everyone who emailed in!

If anyone is still interested, we are still looking for contributors to cover the following specific topics:

• Garry’s Mod – Modding news, playthoughs, gamemode/map reviews, comics! etc.
• Portal Series – Modding news, mod/map reviews, community creativity eg.fan-films, artwork etc.
• Left4Dead Series – Official news, modding news, map reviews, community creativity eg.fan-films
• DOTA 2 – Official news, events coverage, community projects

We are also appealing to anyone who is interested in producing video content, such as playthroughs, mod/map/gamemode reviews and video tutorials.

Also, if you are someone who is interested in producing very occasional articles for the site, we are always interested in publishing ‘guest articles’ as opposed to dedicating yourself as a contributor.

Aspiring terrorist hunters, assemble! Have this year’s Halloween preparations left you without enough pennies to continue with your terrorist hunter training? Well, I bring you good news, for thanks to the wonders of Steam’s free weekends, Valve’s latest game – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, released little over two months ago, is now free to play for the entirety of this coming weekend, until Sunday at precisely 1 PM PST (roughly 9 PM GMT).