The popular “XboxAhoy” YouTube channel, which is a member of the Machinima.com gaming network, just uploaded an excellent retrospective video analysis that explores Valve’s success with the original Half-Life.

Written by Stuart Brown, the video analysis highlights the early influences of Half-Life, such as Quake as well as the affect that Half-Life’s release had upon the FPS in genre, including the modding scene as well as Valve’s later developments with Team Fortress, Steam and the Source engine.

If you have a spare 20 minuets, it’s well worth a watch!

This is an editorial by Lilgreenman which analyses the recent development of the “We Want Half-Life 3” fan campaign from a retrospective standpoint. All views expressed in this article are his own.

Remember the good old days when free weekends were only a single title? Well, those times are behind us now. Valve is throwing the biggest free weekend ever with a total of 10 titles. Shame I have midterms…

As a result of the recent public release of Steam Music, which also saw the release of the Half-Life and Portal soundtracks as free DLCs on the Steam Store, this week’s Community Spotlight features the work of DJ Anton Dubrovin (known online as “Thonidy”) who has created an awesome hour-long musical mix of the work of Kelly Bailey.

For this week’s Community Spotlight we wanted to feature a project known as “Steam Database” or “SteamDB” for short.

Essentially, SteamDB is an online tool which catalogues information about games and applications on the Steam Store. It acts as a one-stop shop for pretty much everything and anything that you need to know about every single release on Steam, from technical data such as “AppIDs” and “depot configurations” to sales information such as DLC listings and worldwide pricing, it even gathers live player statistics.

The rumors turned out to be true; we are in fact getting a new store page. The best part – It’s live as this is being written.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) are issuing a lawsuit against Valve.

While Valve doesn’t have physical presence in Australia, they still serve clients and customers there. This means that they are bound to Australian law. The ASCC states that Valve has not fulfilled its requirement for mandatory customer guarantees.

Phishing isn’t new, and certainly not for Steam accounts. While Steam Guard has been an integral defence since the last major Steam Community upgrade, it still isn’t enough. We take a look at a new method of circumventing Steam Guard and how attackers can gain access to your account.

Valve is once again attending Gamescom, Europe’s largest gaming trade fair, which takes place on August 13th-17th at the Koelnmesse exhibition center in Cologne, Germany.

As in recent years, they’ll be set up in the Business Hall, so there will be no public access to Valve’s booth.

LambdaGeneration confirmed this in an email to Valve’s Doug Lombardi earlier, who said that there will be no press or public showings planned this year and only business related meetings will be taking place.

But that still begs the question, what will Valve be doing there?

If you’ve been a follower of the Steamcast Podcast and have been wondering what happened to their website, Twitter and RSS feed, don’t worry they’re still around, just under a different name.

Due to a legal problem regarding the name ‘Steamcast’, the podcast has had to rename itself to ‘Steamchat Podcast’, which fortunately has also allowed them to keep their logo and acronym intact.