[UPDATE]: The mod is now available for download, containing three entries.

The Wraith King Cometh.

Hey, are you excited about Frostivus? Yes? Too bad. Remember how last year, we had to cancel our Frostivus dinner because of the traumatic greeviling incident?

Well, I got some news for ya pal. It’s cancelled. Again.

There is truly no time to rest in the world of Half-Life 2 custom maps at the moment. The first 3×10 mapping competition (Ambushville) yielded nine levels for your enjoyment, now Defendville ups that number to ten!

The theme was again simple but with plenty of room for interpretation. Create a level in 10 days where the player defends a location, with a short prep time before the assault begins. Enjoy!

Defendville can be downloaded from PlanetPhillip right now for the cost of 60.4 Earth megabytes.

It’s been long since we’ve had a proper Team Fortress 2 update that have added something more than just hats and cosmetics (ignoring, of course, the Halloween events). But this is about to change.

Update: According to Deniz Sezen on the Black Mesa forums, the rumors about Black Mesa being ported to Source 2 are false: “Just to dispel a large rumor (and I know I’ll be viewed as the grinch that stole christmas): We are NOT on Source 2. It wouldn’t make sense for a company to license tech they haven’t proven yet with a released title to a mod team. Our [visual] however, WILL be improved. Don’t get me wrong though, we’d love a Source 2 license but our fans would be waiting another 9 years if we had to port again.”

Can’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Since I am sure many of you will have mixed feelings about the news mentioned in the title, I just want to make it clear right out of the gate that an updated Black Mesa will still be available for free and will be supported!!! Now, onto the details…

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

Valve was a big, healthy company; not usually easily astonished. But now they turned pale, and quiet. They gazed upon the little boy who had dared to ask for more.

“What” Valve whispered in complete astonishment.

“Please sir, I want some more Diretide…”

We’re living in a world where you can’t trust to almost anyone.

The bad thing is – if you can’t trust to your publisher or a developer even if NDA means nothing to them.

Today (or I’d say yesterday) a screenshot of email, which was sent to publishers and developers by Valve, was leaked by a Russian developer via Steam Greenlight – a system that uses the community’s help to pick some new games to be released on Steam.

Most of you can say ‘No, it can’t be true. It’s a fake’, but unfortunately – no. No it’s not.

This is, probably, the biggest leak, related to Steam that I have ever witnessed (but I’m pretty sure that I have forgotten something).

It’s no secret that I am terrible at multiplayer games. Whether it’s Counter-Strike or Team Fortress, I’m often that noob at the bottom of the scoreboard, so it should be no surprise that I stick to the single player side of modding. I occasionally make an exception to that rule though, and I’m glad I did for this mod – because Pirates, Vikings and Knights II is a lot of fun.

A few days ago Valve announced that Steam has now passed 65 million users.

It’s a huge achievement, especially since Steam just marked it’s 10th year of operation.

Man, what I love the most about Halloween is the spooky mood I get in. You know what I’m saying? Like, for instance, I feel spooky enough to pull of insane spooks that would be considered too spooky outside of Halloween.

It’s all good on Halloween though, because everyone has already been spooked by the Halloween event in Team Fortress 2, which is dubbed every year Scream Fortress. Yes, people. It’s that time of the year. The annual Team Fortress 2 Halloween update is live!