Category: Other Source

In 3 Hours, Valve And Dark Horse Will Announce Their Next Project

March 30th, 2012 · By Vic · 7 Comments

In case you forgot, November of last year saw the release of the best-selling ”Valve Presents: The Sacrifice And Other Steam-Powered Stories“, a 200-page print anthology of Valve’s greatest online comic book series: Portal 2: Lab Rat; Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice, and the Team Fortress 2 comic shorts. Certain listings indicated that the comic was actually the first volume in a series, and since then, Valve has released quite a few other comics – most notably, the absolutely superb Dota 2: Are We Heroes Yet, a number of TF2 comic shorts, and a few Portal 2 comic shorts.

At precisely 6PM, at the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, Valve and Dark Horse will be announcing their next project – so says the Valve Store’s official Facebook page. This might be Volume 2 of the “Valve Presents” series, and if it’s being announced this early, we can expect a slightly earlier release date – possibly September. Perhaps it will be a tie-in of sorts with Dota 2, and maybe even CS:GO. Who knows, at this point? We’ve got 3 hours to go until then, and we’ll let you know whatever they reveal.

A Call For Communication’s “Mosaic for Valve”

March 13th, 2012 · By Vic · 18 Comments

The Call For Communication movement’s “A Red Letter Day” event was a pretty significant success. Getting over 13,000 fans playing Half-Life 2 almost 8 years after its release in the hope that Valve will notice is no easy task. But now they’re moving on to bigger things – with a pretty big, ingenious and impressive event that Valve will notice. Because it’s something we’re going to hand over to them, as a part of Half-Life history.

LambdaGeneration’s Nuclear Dawn Giveaway

March 7th, 2012 · By Vic · 8 Comments

It’s time for our first ever giveaway! And let me tell you this, it’s a big one! Like… post-apocalyptic big!

Penny Arcade Report Interviews Gabe Newell – Including Wearable Computers, Gabe’s New Beard, And The Half-Life Silence

February 22nd, 2012 · By Vic · 8 Comments

As far as webcomics go, Penny Arcade is pretty damn swell. But it’s become more than a mere webcomic, what with Child’s Play and PAX. Recently, it’s been moving into the big world of game journalism (assuming we can still call it journalism), with the terrific Penny Arcade Report, helmed by Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica. And they’ve got quite the treat for us - a 5,000 word interview with Gabe Newell (and his new beard), and an in-depth look at the insides of Valve HQ. Let’s check it out!

CS: Global Offensive Beta Really Kicks Off With Thousands Of New Players, A New Website, New Features, And New Maps

February 15th, 2012 · By Vic · 4 Comments

The CS:GO beta started on the 1st of December last year. Originally billed as a mere stress test, it was rather barren regarding game features and functionality, and felt, quite frankly, like a console port. In addition, it felt like Valve had not taken the title very seriously (the first ever CS:GO tournament was not sponsored by Valve or even advertised by it… unlike Dota 2′s first tournament). Nonetheless, the beta was, and still is an enjoyable experience, and most testers held hope that frequent updates would make it into an even greater experience.

Two months later, it seemed like Valve had all but forgotten about CS:GO. It was still pretty much unchanged, and the “early 2012″ date didn’t seem like it was going to hold up. Then, out of nowhere, Valve saves the day, with a gigantic update for the beta, adding new maps, new weapons, all-new features as well as redesigning the website and inviting thousands of new players. The stress test is over – now the CS:GO beta really begins.

Vic’s Thoughts On: Dear Esther, Or Why A Video Game Can Be Much, Much More Than Just Entertainment

February 14th, 2012 · By Vic · 16 Comments

At their core, video games are essentially entertainment - designed to be fun. They accomplish these two objectives through all sorts of ways, within the various genres of the gaming world. Most of the games we play are mere entertainment, created to be fun. But recently, many have debated whether or not video games are truly art. But this debate goes beyond gaming itself: for instance, can we classify the Roundhay Garden Scene as art? While we’re at that, can we classify the Mona Lisa as entertainment? Is all entertainment actually art, or is all art somehow entertainment? It’s a multifaceted argument that might be going on for a very long while. I, personally, am of the conviction that, yes, video games are art. Of course, there are some games that simultaneously represent both entertainment and art (Portal 1, Half-Life 2). There are also some games that lead more towards the art side, but they still maintain the basic framework of a video game. If they didn’t, we’d have a tough time calling them video games.

But in comes something that might shake up the way we look at video games. That something is Dear Esther. Originally designed as a free HL2 mod in 2008, Dear Esther was a terrific, if flawed experiment regarding interactive, non-linear storytelling conveyed through a video game. Almost 4 years later, the same team, plus one master level designer, have returned to remake and reimagine Dear Esther, almost from the ground up, as a independent Source game. That which was primitive is now beautiful, and a whole new audience could be exposed to this interesting creation. But is it more than just an experiment, or, perhaps, is it more than just a video game? Well, read on to find out!

Blizzard Opposes Valve’s Ownership Of “DOTA” Name And Brand, Through Some Mean Legal Action

February 10th, 2012 · By Vic · 12 Comments

Almost 10 years ago, Valve was involved in a turbulent, and controversial legal showdown with their then-publisher, Vivendi, regarding their bizarre and near-hostile practices (illegally distributing Valve games to Asian cyber cafes, withholding game royalties from Valve, purposely delaying CS: Condition Zero). Valve was victorious, although Activision Blizzard would later refuse to continue settlement payments to Valve.

Then, when Dota 2 was first revealed, and when Valve first filed for the trademark “DOTA”, Riot Games, the creators of the Action RTS title League of Legends (and the company that former Dota caretaker Steve “Guinsoo” Feak currently finds himself in the employ of), filed for ownership of the “Defense of the Ancients” trademark in direct opposition to Valve, as DotA-Allstars (the Riot Games subsidiary company owned by Guinsoo and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon, former community manager for Dota – the company would later be acquired by Blizzard, from Riot Games in 2011). What most people don’t know is that they also filed for ownership of the “DOTA” trademark itself, on the same day – for whatever reason, Pendragon and Guinsoo forgot to publicize that fact.

Then Rob Pardo of Blizzard also expressed his concern over Valve’s move - one year later, when the mediocre “Blizzard DotA” was revealed to the world, Frank Pearce of Blizzard would share the exact same thoughts on the issue… as would Mike Morhaime of Blizzard. Still, the general consensus was that, for the time being, Blizzard and Valve would keep the peace, and the trademark issue would ultimately be resolved in one way or another, hopefully with Valve acquiring both the DOTA and the “Defense of the Ancients” trademarks.

But sometimes it’s just too good to be true. And it is in this case. Just today, folks found out that about 3 months ago, Blizzard went on an all-out trademark dispute with Valve, over the “DOTA” trademark.

More Info And Concept Art Surfaces On Valve’s Secret New Game “SOB”

February 2nd, 2012 · By Vic · 28 Comments

Early last year, we got to take a look at some… well, some really fancy-looking concept art laid out on the walls inside Valve’s headquarters. There was one thing we all immediately noticed, apart from just how fancy-looking it was – it looked nothing like any existing Valve intellectual property: it had weird spaceships, weird space aliens, and good stuff like that. No one knew what it was all about, and supposedly, Valve didn’t take kindly to this concept art finding its way online at that time. Then a couple of months later, Portal 2 came out, and we were too busy playing that to death to care about whatever Valve’s got cooking in that secret bunker they open by turning the big valve.

Then Dota 2′s beta client got leaked. And among the client’s coding, and among the interesting mentions to “ep3″ and ”cstrike2″ were a number of references to something called “SOB”, including code references for ”nebula”; “npc_ship”; “ship_guns”; “client_ship”; “flightplan”; “server_ship”, and quite a bit more, which you can find on this mirror of the code references, provided by Cyborgmatt. Naturally, most of us assumed that this SOB game might just be what that concept art is for.

Now, we have a solid connection between the SOB code and the concept art, and there’s more. Read on!