[UPDATE: The 2012 Dota 2 International Championship has begun. If you're interested in watching it, you can do so here.]
Well, Valve certainly seems to be taking Dota 2 very seriously! And with good reason, I’d say.
Category: Other Source
![WETA Workshop To Produce Official Dota 2 Weapons, Armor And Statues [UPDATE: The International Has Begun]](http://lambdageneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/dota2isdifficult.jpg)
Yesterday, GTTV’s 20-minute Valve-centric episode went live. While many expected some sort of big game reveal (I suppose the community always does that), the episode itself brought us quite a bit of new information, especially on the upcoming Steam Big Picture Mode (also known as the Ten-Foot, or 10′ UI), set to completely revolutionize the way Steam works.
As a matter of fact, they even gave us a sneak peek at what it might look like, as well as a timeframe for its beta period. Read on!
![Oh My God, Source 2 Is Actually Real – And A Sneak Peek At The New Hammer Editor? [UPDATED]](http://lambdageneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/valve.jpg)
[UPDATE 3: Facepunch member J*Rod has created an insightful and very informative explanation of how Source 2 might work, based on what we've seen in the leaked code. If you can't read code (or as I like to call it, hieroglyphs), then this is your lucky day.
[UPDATE 2: LambdaGen fan 3rrorVirus has made this hilarious little video about this whole Source 2 debacle - check it out!]
[UPDATE: Facepunch member DevinWatson has compiled a full list of just about every single Source 2 reference in the SFM files. Take a look!]
Yeah, it gets better. Waaay better.
We can’t go a few months without another one of these propping up!
Valve have just announced that the Source Filmmaker is now in full-on open beta, available “for free, to everyone“. Yes, that means absolutely everyone with a Steam account. It can be downloaded from the Steam Store, here. It’s a fairly bulky program, though, so make sure you have a fair bit of free space on your hard-drive before you download and install it.
The SFM itself has received a brand new update, which includes session files for “Meet the Engineer”, the third TF2 Meet the Team short film. This means that the onslaught of “Meet the Heavy” parodies is about to come to an end, and an even greater influx of “Meet the Engineer” variations are about to flood the Internet. May God have mercy on our souls.
The Source Filmmaker is a cinematic story-telling tool based in the Source engine, originally developed by Valve in 2005. It is now used all of their animated short films and promotional videos. It’s unbelievably versatile, fairly simple, and it synthesizes the entire production pipeline of a modern animation studio, into one simple program, that can be used and operated by any gaming PC. Really, what’s not to like?
In addition, Valve have opened a new section of the Steam Community devoted entirely to the Source Filmmaker. There, you can share, view, discuss, and rate videos made using the SFM. There are already over 870 videos in this Filmmaker community, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping. So why not join in?
![Valve To Reveal New Unannounced Game At gamescom 2012? [UPDATE: Debunked]](http://lambdageneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mine141.jpg)
[UPDATE 2: In addition, Doug Lombardi (Valve's VP of marketing) has confirmed to us that Valve has no plans to show anything game-related at Gamescom:
We will have the Steam team there to meet with developers and publishers. No game showing planned.
Ouch. Well, there goes my grant money.]
[UPDATE: As it turns out, Gerald Bauser doesn't work for Gamescom's organizers, and therefore, the profile in question is illegitimate. Sorry, folks - just another false alarm!]
When trading was first introduced to TF2, most fans didn’t imagine it’d grow into a full-blown Steam economy, spanning multiple games, systems, communities and currencies. It’s pretty crazy, and sometimes I look at it all and just say “wow“. Don’t get me wrong - I say “wow” to a lot of things when I look at them (sometimes even when I don’t look at them), but Steam trading? That’s definitely something to say “wow” to.
I’ve always wanted to find out exactly how Valve managed to make everything come together and function in such a harmonious way. I’m also interested in how these gaming economies can interact with Valve’s monetization practices – or, to be more precise, the way Valve prices their games and services. Well, either Valve is spying on me or I have the most generic ideas ever, because Valve have come up with a way to enlighten us all regarding those exact topics!
This quite surprised me when I first spotted it.
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