There’s more Half-Life fanfilms these days than you could shake a hundred sticks at.

But hey, more is better. Right?

Valve announced that they would be releasing Dota 2 in the fall of 2011 back in October of last year. The announcement was quite controversial, and came as a huge surprise to both Valve fans and Dota fans alike. Valve fans were wondering what Valve is doing developing a fantasy, action RTS title that first came about as a Warcraft 3 mod. Dota fans were wondering what the hell IceFrog is doing working with Valve.

Almost one year on, many of these original impressions live on. Valve has not had the opportunity to show the game off as of yet. It would seem as if Gamescom is going to be Dota 2’s lucky day, but what exactly is Valve going to do? Through whispers and rumors, we know a bit about that. But not quite as much as we’d all like to know!

There’s two really big problems with Portal 2 right now – one, the SDK is… well, it’s Hammer. That speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Hammer is still Hammer, even if the Portal 2 authoring tools are still in the beta stage. And number two? Custom maps can be hard to find at times, especially for newer players. They don’t know they should go to “That Site” to download all the hottest new custom maps. They haven’t found out that “This Other Site” is only used by a few, and only has low-quality maps. In fact, they might not even know about any of these sites at all.

But Valve has come to the rescue! Could they have the solutions to these problems? Read on…

Who doesn’t remember E3 2003? The entire gaming community, caught by total surprise with amazing footage of HL2? A release date just 4 months away? It seemed like a dream come true, really. Until July rolled around, and Vivendi announced that the game would not make September 30th. Gabe responded with the legendary: “First time I’ve heard about this.”

And oddly enough, it seemed as though HL2 might make September 30th. At least until Valve went into what seemed to be a total media blackout towards the end of summer. Apart from mentioning that HL2 would make the previously announced release date, no footage or details on the game were released. It seemed almost surreal… well, until September 23rd rolled around, and Valve announced that HL2, just one week before its planned release date, would be delayed until the holidays. Immediately, the fans went crazy. But one thing people weren’t expecting was one fan leaking the entire game and its source code onto the Internet.

Earlier yesterday, Valve’s extensive update to the Steam Community framework, adding a variety of new social-oriented features, went live for all Steam users, as a mandatory addition within the Steam client. Valve have also provided client notes, for anyone who wants to get a quick lowdown on what’s been added.

I’ve had access to the new Community for almost a month now, courtesy of the closed beta that Valve began on the 16th of August. And I have to say, I’m definitely enjoying it a lot. There’s a lot of great stuff in here that simply turns the Community into a much better, much more useful, and more enjoyable social experience. And while it is hard to get used to at first, it’s definitely a great idea on Valve’s part, with a very good execution as well.

One of the more note-worthy parts of this update, is the future of the venerable Steam Powered User Forums. It would appear that, recently, Valve removed the “Forums” link from the Steam Store’s main navigation tab. In addition, all the “Forums” navigation links, on the right-hand side of any game entry within a user’s Steam Library, will now lead to that respective game’s Discussions (Discussions being another feature added as part of the new Community update). And on the central Discussions homepage, the SPUF are directly linked to, but they are referred to as “the old forums“. So, it certainly seems like the Discussions are meant to supersede or perhaps replace the SPUF, at least in some capacity.

Well, according to Al Farnsworth, one of Valve’s leading Steam software engineers, the SPUF will remain open “as long as people are still active there“. He says that they currently have no plans to close down the forums. This is great, and very re-assuring, but at the same time, it’s hard not to feel a tingle of sorrow as we realize that this does represent the beginning of the end, for an era that began almost 10 years ago. I am not crying, there is just something in my eye. Don’t look at me.

In any case, the rest of the Community update has been fairly mouthwatering, rather than just eyewatering. I’m simply hoping Valve keeps working on the way community content is displayed within Game Hubs, and screenshot galleries – because as it is, it’s pretty painful to navigate and browse these areas when you have no idea why this thing is bigger than the next, and why the next four things are bunched together, for no apparent reason. Once that’s taken care of, all will be well.

And the article is slightly late.

Update: Poker Night is now set for November 22nd! Thanks to Jeff for the tip.

In case you forgot, Telltale’s “Poker Night at the Inventory”, a poker game that features the Heavy among Max, Tycho and Strong Bad, is nearing release.

It will be out this month.

Now, this is interesting.

Numerous people are disappointed by Valve’s treatment of the Half-Life series. Not a single concrete word has come out since October 2007. Not one word. Valve prefers to procrastinate, throwing Steam for Mac, PlayStation 3 ports and the Left 4 Dead series before the property that got them where they are. It is simply LUDICROUS that a series of THREE episodes have been ruined in such a manner.

Over and over again, they say they have nothing to say at the moment. When will that other moment come?

At this point, one can say “r.i.p. ep3”, and be absolutely correct. For all we know, it hasn’t even started development. If you keep telling yourself that people shouldn’t be saying this, you need to stop lying to yourself.