Good (Valve) and evil (Activision) are about to head to court over $424,136. 

It seems Activision owed Valve a big chunk of change according to Gamepolitics and the court complaint.  The two companies had a dispute settled from 2002 over royalties and the arbitrator ruled that Activision owed Valve $2,391,932. The 2 million plus was money from Activision distributing Valve content way back when before Valve took it upon themselves to distribute their own stuff.

Activision apparently didn't take to…  More

In case you haven't seen it:

http://www.gameriot.com/videos/Meet-the-Sniper/

Funny? Yes, but as funny as, say, the Demoman? I'm not so sure. You can see them all here, but I seriously think it's the worst yet, and I play the hell out of the sniper class.

Desperately waiting for the Spy.  More

I don't want you to think I am one of those bleeding heart PC journalists or analysts who are going around carrying life sized banners noting the death of PC gaming.  PC gaming isn't dead yet, and won't be any time soon.  But it is struggling to stay afloat.  Over the past 10 years (*) PC game sales have halved, and console game sales have almost doubled.  What can be thrown into the water to save it?

I am not going insult your intellig…  More

Quick update to yesterday's news on the upcoming Team Fortress 2 many of us have been waiting for.

According to the latest news from Valve they are shooting for the release of Goldrush and the new Medic achievements and unlockables the week of April 20th.  The "meet the" series will also continue that day with the video of our beloved Scout.

CVG has some information from the crew at Valve in addition to all of this.
-one achievement for the medic requires 10 million healing points
-they are goi…  More

Robin Walker, the "it" guy when it comes to design and programing on Team Fortress 2 spilled some news to IGN recently. 

In the interview Walker talks about the new "Payload" game play that will be accompanying the Goldrush map which is coming soon, and the new unlockables that are heading to game starting off with the medic.

IGN: What types of items can players expect to unlock with the Medic and other classes? Can you give a few specific examples?

Robin Walker: We'll be shipping an unlockab…  More

The Valve express continues to pick up Steam, pun intended, as Epic Games joins the already massive library of games being offered on the Steam platform. 
Id Software, Rockstar, Activision, Atari, Eidos and many more are already hosted and available for purchase over Steam.  Now Epic Games will be bringing the Unreal Tournament games to boot. 

Read the full press release ahead.  There is 10% off for any of the Unreal game purchases made before March 24th.  Digital distri…  More

Valve has added another publisher to its never ending catalog of games on Steam. The latest to join the fray is none other than the classic Atari.

While there may not be any huge releases at this moment, The Witcher will be on the way eventually along with Neverwinter Nights 2 among many other Atari titles

It should be noted that Phil Harrison, formerly at Sony, recently left to take the role of President on at Inrogrames, Atari's parent company. With Harrison at the helm it should be interest…  More

A new update sneaked out of the Valve headquarters tonight for Team Fortress 2.  Fire up Steam and be sure to update your game.  Looks like a relatively tame update compared to last weeks which I still am not happy with.

Removed sv_alltalk from the list of convars that affect custom server tags
Fixed Demoman grenades not hurting the shooter if fired at point blank range against a target
Fixed critical modifier for explosive weapons (rockets, pipe bombs) increasing critical chance more tha…  More

Gotta love Valve and their willingness to answer community emails.  One thing I have always respected over there, even though may not listen to all of our opinions, they are very much in tune with the community and keeping their ears open.

According to a new email from Robin Walker to a Steam Community member there are some cool features on the way besides the big ones (new achievements, weapons, boosts, maps). 

Robin had this to say:

Sorry for the super late reply on this one. I'm gett…  More

Another night of great link action here in the Epic Drop and a hilarious video courtesy of Will Arnett from the upcoming season of Human Giant.

I have one more game related piece tonight before I sign off; a great interview with Chet Faliszek from Valve. Topics include Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and Call of Duty 4.

AintItCoolNews has posted up the original ending to I Am Legend featuring Will Smith. Improvement or failure? You decide.

AOL is opening the AIM IM network to other clients. Abo…  More

I don't make a habit of posting speed run videos but this is one you all have to see to believe. I saw this Saturday but I was a bit too busy to post it. This game took me a couple of hours on first run to make it through so this just blows me away.

This guy does a segmented run, which means his fastest per level times tied together in one video, in only 13 minutes and 46 seconds. It is absolutely insane. I can't even figure out how half the stuff was done.


Portal - 13:46 - Segmented Speedru…  More

The other day Slasher posted the preview of tonights Gametrailers TV on the SpikeTV network.

Like a good news man I made sure to turn in live to G4 TV tonight to be able to bring you the news fresh off the presses. The episode will be up on Gametrailers.com later tonight.

Here is the direct link to the video

At this point it doesn't sound like it is in development. If anything they are in the early stages. They mentioned the big question they are asking at Valve is do we build a new game or upd…  More

Wow I am not happy right now. Valve has seemingly decided to nerf my two favorite Team Fortress 2 classes; Soldier and Demo. Their reserve ammo on average has been cut in half for the grenade launchers and the rockets. What the hell...

This is a real disadvantage for quality players, and those on the competitive scene. In essence this means you will spend a lot more time running around for ammo and dropped weapons try to extend your useful time alive. I have had many lives in both classes in…  More

I try catch most of the news during the course of the week but I am not perfect. Late last week during the hectic GDC period there was an off the radar interview with Doug Lombardi over at Tom's Games.

Highlights of the piece entail:

-Steam game sales are doing quite well
-Audio Surf is the top selling game on Steam right now by far
-Left 4 Dead expected in early fall, maybe September
-No time frame for Half Life 2: Episode 3 yet
-Valve bought Turtle Rock Studios
-Possible music and movie content …  More

5 COMMENTS

Stryider said: What's funny is I've never really had a problem with DRM music ever.  The only "pirated" music I've downloaded in the last 5 years was a copy ... Slapnuts said: I still buy some music, not nearly as much as back in the day.  I just refuse to buy DRM'd music from anywhere.  But I still buy quite a ... Stryider said: I personally don't download music from P2P networks but I do buy all my music from Itunes.  I literally haven't purchased a CD in over a year....

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X-Play had the lead designer from Portal on the show tonight, Kimberly Swift. Not a whole lot of big news, but at the end of the interview we got a nice scoop:

"Well, I believe Doug Lombardi who is our lead marketing director at Valve, has announced Portal 2,"


Her announcement is near the end of the interview, scroll to the last quarter.

Now whether or not this was a slip up by her we don't know. Doug has stated the desire to do more portal related content, so this is either confirmation by her o…  More