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.

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?

Many moons ago, you might remember an article we posted about how Valve had given the Black Mesa team (now known as the Crowbar Collective) the opportunity to sell their mod as a full retail product. Despite announcing that a Source SDK 2013 version of Black Mesa would also be available for free, the announcement was met with mixed criticism. There was an overwhelming amount of support for the team, but there were a number of people who were concerned with what ‘ethical’ implications this choice to go retail might have. Should community made content that has always been available for free suddenly be given the chance to be monetized?

With Valve having recently released the full version of their new ‘Steam Trading Cards’ feature, after a surprisingly short beta period, there has been much discussion around the Internet about the purpose and usefulness of the system. Some have praised the system as another way for allowing users to get more involved in the Steam Community, and rewarding dedicated Steam users; others, however, have criticized the system as being gimmicky and even exploitative, and nothing more than a money-making scheme on Valve’s part.

A quick run-down for those of you who are unfamiliar with the system: Steam Trading Cards allows users to receive random trading cards for playing various games, which they can then craft into ‘badges’ in order to increase their ‘Steam level,’ a new, RPG-like feature added to Steam. Higher Steam levels grant users additional Steam features, such as the ability to customize their Steam profiles further, or have larger friends lists. Trading cards can obviously be traded with other users, and can also be sold for money. At first glance, the system seems like a fantastic idea: it rewards you for playing games you like, which you can then use to unlock additional features; meanwhile, people not interested can simply ignore the system altogether. Thus, everybody is happy. The truth is not that simple, however.

Sometimes ’tis hard fer international swabbies t’ find the’r way around on English websites, which be why services like Google Translate be havin’ come into existence. Valve be doin’ the’r part t’ make Steam more accessible t’ them without much knowledge o’ th’ English language by translatin’ the’r services into various languages, includin’ Seafarin’ hearty (Pirates).

Th’ Steam Translation page shows th’ progress o’ translatin’ th’ service into different languages, an’ one that stuck ou’ be “Seafarin’ hearty.” I`ve got nay idee what ‘t means, so either Valve really be caterin’ t’ a new, untapped audience, or they’s jus’ trollin’ us like usual. Whaterethe cause, I love ‘t.

If ye be havin` trouble talkin` wi` sea dogs, I recommend this here translator.

Valve’s Jason Holtman tells GamesIndustry.biz about their plan to get more PC-to-Mac games on Steam, and more importantly, their plan to get more third-party developers using Steamworks, Valve’s free software suite that includes Steam’s community support, dev tools, online play and copy protection (the most recent and popular game to use Steamworks is, of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2). Hit the jump for the full story.