Just a few months ago, one of the largest updates in Steam's three-year history introduced a set of new community features to the millions of gamers connecting to Steam each week. Today Steam introduces the ability to purchase any game in its growing collection and send it as a gift to anyone in the world. To send a gift, customers simply select from hundreds of leading games on Steam and then indicate that the purchase is a gift at checkout. Within minutes, an e-card is delivered directly to the recipient's inbox. If the recipient is new to Steam, they'll receive everything they need to get started. For more information, visit Steam.

Sega and Valve today announced an agreement to deliver a lineup of new Sega titles to customers around the world via Steam. The new Sega games coming to Steam include Universe at War: Earth Assault, The Golden Compass, Sega Rally Revo, Sega Revo, Worldwide Soccer Manager, Futbol Manager and more. In addition to the new games, Sega titles previously released on Steam to customers in North America, such as Medieval II: Total War and Rome: Total War, are now available to Steam gamers in Europe and most of the world. For pricing information and release dates on these and other Sega titles, please click here.

When eager gamers purchased Valve's Orange Box, they noticed a new feature in every game included: the achievement system. While some people scoffed it off, others put much time and effort into getting every Orange Box achievement available. You can obviously guess what will happen when all the Achievements have been unlocked: gamers will get bored. In order to prevent this from happening, Valve has been working on brand new achievements for gamers to achieve. At this point, there's a confirmed achievement pack for medics, so expect more of them to clog the Team Fortress 2 servers than usual. Project Manager Erik Johnson confirmed in a public E-mail message to a Steam forum member that we should start seeing new achievement packs in the next couple weeks.

The Orange Box released earlier this week, giving PC faithful and Xbox 360 gamers the best effort from Valve Software yet. Those who own only PlayStation 3s, however, will have to sit by the sidelines to watch other games rave over the innovations introduced in Portal, the fun of Team Fortress 2 and the sheer brilliance of Episode 2. If Valve Software could have had its way, the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box would be on stores shelves right now - but the version of the game for Sony's console is actually in the hands the title's publisher, Electronic Arts.

Any Valve Steam customer who does not live in North America got a rather enticing offer for a pre-load in Steam news today. As of today, everyone outside of North America can purchase and download (but not play) Quake Wars: Enemy Territory for $49.95USD or equivalent via Valve's revolutionary Steam. North American Quake Wars fans will have to wait until October 9th (this coming Tuesday) for their turn.

With Team Fortress 2 just around the corner, some people have not yet had the pleasure of playing the original Team Fortress. Not anymore, say the makers of Fortress Forever. This free mod for Valve's famous and powerful Source engine does nothing more than bring the classic game to the Source engine, so hardcore fans can be confident that they are playing the original classic. You can download the mod here.

The Orange Box-featuring Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 experience to date-is now available for pre-purchase via Steam. Pre-purchase The Orange Box before the October 10 release to save 10% off the regular price and get exclusive access to the Team Fortress 2 beta on September 17.

The Orange Box, penned by IGN.com as "the package which could legitimately be called the deal of the century," features three highly-awaited new games by Valve: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second installment in the Half-Life 2 episodic trilogy; Team Fortress 2, the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map; and Portal, the game that blends puzzles, first person action, and adventure gaming to produce an experience like no other.

As the title says, Valve's famous Orange Box will be coming to the PS3 a little later than it will be for the Xbox 360 and the PC. However, this is not due to difficulties with the PS3. The Valve team coding the Orange Box for the PS3 is having some internal difficulties, which will push the final version off for a few weeks in the long run. Valve will still release the Xbox 360 and PC versions as planned, on September 15th.

Edit: It seems as though there is some controversy over the release date of the Orange Box. If it does not come out on September 15th, expect to see Orange Box by October 9th in the USA and October 19th in Europe/PAL territories.

Gabe Newell, one of the more popular directors of Valve Steam, recently berated Microsoft on it's choice of making DX10 Vista exclusive. A recent Steam survey shows that only 2% of gamers own both at least one DirectX10 capable graphics card and Microsoft Windows Vista. Newell also pointed out that none of the next-generation consoles use DirectX 10 features, limiting DX10 support. It would seem as though there is a general consensus among gamers and developers is nicely summed up by The Inquirer:

(DirectX 10) fractures an already-diverse PC gaming market even more, making consoles look even more attractive. One only has to look at Bioshock - the PC version has staggering requirements, barely any image quality upgrade under DX10/Vista, as well as installation issues - whereas the Xbox 360 version plugs in and works.

Valve today announced that 2K Boston and 2K Australia's highly anticipated first person shooter BioShock is now available for pre-order on Steam for the price of $49.95 in the US and $54.95 in Europe. Steam users can now begin downloading the game's assets, which will be unlocked and activated on the release date of the retail version: August 21 in North America and August 24 in Europe. BioShock is a first person shooter (FPS) that lets you do things never before possible in the genre: turn everything into a weapon, biologically mod your body with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade your weapons and craft new ammo variants. According to Irrational Games (now known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia), BioShock is a revolution in the shooter genre that will forever change the expectations for the FPS. You can visit the official BioShock website here.

Valve has confirmed that the Steam Community, the studio's social networking and online multiplayer extensions for its popular game download service, will launch in beta form "at the end of the month," meaning gamers will have to wait no more than a week and a half to get their hands on the new features. First announced last month, the Steam Community promises features such as voice chat support, user profiles and groups, organized matches, and opponent tracking. "This latest update is just the start," said Valve founder Gabe Newell when Community was announced. "We've got a long list of items that we're working on to make it easier for gamers to connect and play games on Steam."

This summer Valve will ship a major update to its online gaming platform Steam, introducing an advanced set of community features to more than 13 million gamers around the world. Beginning in July, Steam users can set up their own personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more. These new community services and features can be used with all Steam games, which include new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and independent developers. Free of charge, the new community features will be accessible via the Steam desktop client and via the web. For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com.

Japanese developer and publisher Capcom has announced it will begin selling its titles through Valve's PC digital distribution platform Steam. Today's announcement marks the latest of Capcom's efforts to support the PC, which include upcoming ports of the former Xbox 360 exclusive Lost Planet: Extreme Condition as well as Devil May Cry 4. Capcom's Steam offerings will begin later this week with the release of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, which originally appeared on PlayStation 2 and was only recently released on the PC. A PC version of Onimusha 3, which also appeared on PlayStation 2, will arrive in the following weeks, with Lost Planet: Extreme Condition arriving on Steam the same day it hits retail, June 26. No mention was made of the recently released PC version of Resident Evil 4.

Steam is the right place for us to go with our titles. Valve has created a huge installed base of gamers who naturally fit with the profiles of the titles that Capcom develops.

said Capcom executive vice president Mark Beaumont.

Valve has announced that effective immediately, ATI Radeon owners can download a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch through Steam. The software will automatically confirm the presence of ATI Radeon hardware and offer access to the two games. In related news, Steam will be included with the ATI Catalyst driver and software suit until early 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT owners will, upon release, receive Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two through Valve's content delivery application.

UPDATE: I talked to Valve and they confirm that once you activated the free ATI games, you will keep them, even if you swap to an NVIDIA card. Just ask your friends for their ATI card.

Valve today announced that Steam, the Bellevue, WA based company's pioneering PC platform for digital content, has surpassed 13 million active accounts since its launch in 2002. With over 150 games and 2500 updates in a broad selection of genres and dozens of other PC applications, movies, and demos available, Steam has become a leading destination for millions of gamers around the world. The activity of online gameplay via Steam averages over 7 billion player minutes per month. This summer, more major publishers will announce that they are bringing their games to Valve's platform, using it for electronic distribution and including it in their retail product releases in order to take advantage of features such as anti-piracy, server browsing, marketing promotions and more.

The recent news of the retail black box cancellation has raised the question if buyers of the HD 2900 XT, who also received a coupon for a free "Black Box" will receive an upgrade to the orange variant. Valve has now confirmed that only the retail offering has been axed and anyone with a coupon will still receive the same games as found in the Valve Black Box. Sorry guys - no free Episode One and Half-Life 2 for y'all.

The Black Box has been cancelled...We're going to have one package, The Orange Box

said Doug Lombardi, Valve's director of marketing. The package, which was to offer only Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, has been officially cancelled by Valve. The Orange Box will be the only collection offered when Episode 2 releases this fall. In addition to the three new products - Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life: Episode Two - The Orange Box will also contain the full version of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One and cost additional $10. The Orange Box, will be available on the PC (US$49.99) as well as the 360 and PS3 (US$ 59.99) game consoles.

MaddoxX, a member of the No-Steam forums, has managed quite a feat; he has hacked into Valve's computers. He has managed to get access to Cyber Cafe data, as well as several hundreds of credit card numbers, and Valve's balance sheet.

At the moment, he is awaiting some response from Valve, which does not seem to be too concerned.


Source: DailyTech

All over the interweb, there are intermittent forum posts with a strange topic: how similar S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to Half Life 2 and Doom 3. These claims certainly do not go unfounded. Someone, with way too much free time, went through and manually compared the texture directories of Doom 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You'll see the results in the first two pictures below. A particular texture, lights_impflash.dds, has the exact same name of the Doom 3 version, excluding the extension. Half Life 2 has also been allegedly stolen from. Not only are the file names nearly identical (except for the extension), the images are extremely similar as well. Whether or not anything comes out of this depends on what ID Software and Valve decide to do. Do you think S.T.A.L.K.E.R textures are stolen?

Eidos Interactive and Valve announced an agreement to deliver dozens of new and best-selling PC titles via Steam. This first agreement includes complete franchise sets of classics such as Tomb Raider, the entire Commandos series, Battlestations: Midway, Just Cause and many of the Hitman titles. In addition, Eidos is bringing some of this year's most highly anticipated releases to Steam, including Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Championship Manager 2007, and more. Pricing information is available at www.Steamgames.com, and news of additional Eidos games heading to Steam will be announced in the coming weeks.

Electronic Arts and Valve, today announced final information about Half-Life: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2, two of the most anticipated action games this year. Representing multiple platforms, the Black Box will ship for the PC and include Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box will ship for the PC, PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, and Xbox 360 videogame. It will include all the content of The Black Box, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. The Black Box and The Orange Box are targeted for release in Fall 2007. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com.

The people who designed Half Life must have figured that they should not call the version of Half Life going onto consoles just "Half Life: Episode Two", especially when it ccomes with so much more than that. And so, Valve will release a bundle of Half-Life 2, Episodes One and Two, Team Fortress, and Portal as one big "Half Life: Orange". It should come to at least the Xbox360 and PC, but may also come to the PS3.

It was a busy and windy week here at Valve. As most of the community knows by now, last week a major windstorm hit the greater Seattle area. Power outages are fairly common in the area, but the magnitude of this storm knocked out our data center, resulting in about 20 hours Steam interruption. This was very frustrating for everyone here and we know it was frustrating for you as well. We learned a lot and are taking steps to make sure that when the next storm like this hits our area 15-20 years from now *fingers crossed*, people will still be playing games on Steam while we are buying flashlight batteries.

There is currently a major power outage in the Seattle/Bellevue area, exactly where Valve's Steam is hosted. Unfortunately, there is no guess as to when the power will come back on. Steam will work hard to restore the power as soon as the storm that is currently battering the area dies down a bit. Basically, if you can't connect to Steam, it is not your fault.