Valve has brought about an update to their eons-old competitive shooter CS:GO. The update brings the game to the modern, post-Fortnite era of multiplayer games, with a new Battle Royale mode named "Danger Zone". The "Danger Zone" Battle Royale mode cuts the number of maximum players to 18, though, which is a far cry from other market offerings - but has designed to mode so that each match lasts at most 10 minutes, which should bring about some escalating tension despite the reduced number of players compared to other Battle Royale game modes. The usual "save the hostages" mechanic has been baked into the mode as a way for players to make money, which they can use to purchase weapons, a la classic CS fashion.

The other move that Valve has made in order to boost popularity of CS:GO has been to make the game free to play, waiving the usual $15 entry fee. It just wasn't justifiable, it seems, to keep such a price on a game released back in 2012 - especially not when compared to the money-making prowess of Fortnite.

A few weeks ago Valve developers announced a new technology called Motion Smoothing that would enable low-end GPUs to support VR games without problems. The system "looks at the last two delivered frames, estimates motion and animation, and extrapolates a new frame. Synthesizing new frames keeps the current application at full framerate, advances motion forward, and avoids judder".

Motion Smoothing has been available in Beta for some time, but the test phase has come to an end and it seems the technology is ready to enter the final, stable stage. You'll still need an HTC VIVE or HTC VIVE Pro headset -Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headset have their own display drivers with other tricks to sustain frame rates-, and the lack of AMD GPU support is somewhat disappointing, but hopefully Valve will fix this in future iterations of this technology.

Valve seemed to have the ambition to become a hardware company when he launched peripherals like his Steam Link and its Steam Controller. The scope of these products has been limited, and now the company reports that "the supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is sold out in Europe and almost sold out in the US". Valve has discontinued the product, although the company will continue to offer support for the Steam Link.

The idea was (and still is) really nice: any decent PC or laptop can be converted into a video game and even video content server, allowing the user to enjoy those experiences on much less powerful devices through an Ethernet or a good wireless connection. They started supporting Linux and Windows desktop and laptops, but Steam Link made it possible to stream video games to Android devices (Apple rejected the application for iOS) and Samsung Smart TVs. The product, announced in 2015, therefore says goodbye, although surely those who already have it will be able to continue enjoying it for a long time.

In June 2016 Valve announced 'Destinations', a Steam workshop not easy to find anymore, that allowed the end user to enter real and fictitious scenarios through the magic of virtual reality. The idea was intriguing, but the media was not completely sold and judged Valve's proposal as both "the best and the worst of VR". From all this, however, came a singular discovery: those who reverse-engineered its code discovered in it the HLVR acronym, which initiated a wide debate about the potential appearance of a Half Life VR (HLVR) version specifically developed for VR headsets.

Lending further credence to this hypothesis was Gabe Newell's announcement in February 2017 that Valve was preparing three big titles for virtual reality- two of them based on Source 2, and one of them based on Unity. More such signs appeared in the summer of 2018, and everything was pointing towards this project being indeed real, that it would likely be based on Source 2, and that it would offer a full-fledged blockbuster title that this generation of VR has been desperately seeking. We now have more data courtesy a "leaked email" to Reddit user 2flock that suggests Valve's work is apparently going beyond just VR game development, as images of a prototype device seen below confirm that Valve is also working on its own VR head-mounted display (HMD), one whose development would also be more advanced than initially suspected.

Well this was a tale that took a roller-coaster ride, and then some. It started with a YouTube trailer for a mod that promised to take back Team Fortress to its 2008-era, which unsurprisingly got many fans of the game excited. The developer/modder who went by the handle XYK initiated a website (now inactive), along with other social media channels that included an active Discord server for the project. Timely updates followed, and good news came in the form of news from Valve that informed the modder of approval of a Steam release, as well as upcoming beta test keys as well. This was followed by Valve wanting some things to be changed, which were also done and things looked smooth at the time.

Then Valve decided they were not sure the mod was more than just a re-purposing of leaked game code, and decided to reverse their decision of approving a Steam release for the mod. This, as expected, did not go well with the vast majority of fans. The killing blow to the project came, however, not from Valve but from the modder himself who decided to go out with a negative bang of sorts instead of working with Valve. As it is, not only is the game community upset at both Valve and the modder but the u-turn taken by Valve has since been negatively criticized by other modders as well.

Developers at SteamVR have announced a new feature called Motion Smoothing that will enable "more players on more PCs to play high-fidelity VR games and experiences". This technique works in a similar way to what it does on flat screen TVs. In this case, Motion Smoothing interpolates between two existing frames and creates a new in-between frame that smooths the experience and increases framerate. That adds latency, which is not a good idea in VR experiences, and that's precisely what's different at SteamVR implementation.

With that feature enable, SteamVR detects when an application is going to drop frames. If that happens, "it looks at the last two delivered frames, estimates motion and animation, and extrapolates a new frame. Synthesizing new frames keeps the current application at full framerate, advances motion forward, and avoids judder". This allows the user to enjoy full framerate while the performance requirements decrease. That way, even users with graphics card not specially powerful can still enjoy VR experiences without problems.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.12.0 released today with useful new features and several stability updates. We worked extensively on the ability of GPU-Z to detect fake NVIDIA graphics cards (i.e cards not really having the GPU advertised on the box). GPU-Z now prepends "[FAKE]" to the Graphics Card name field, and lights up with a caution triangle. This capability is forward compatible for the supported GPUs (listed in the changelog), so for example, it will be able to detect a fake RTX 2060, which in reality uses a GK106 GPU. The second big feature is the ability to extract and upload graphics card BIOS of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2000 graphics cards. Graphics cards with multiple independent fans (each with its own speed control) are gaining popularity, and we've added the ability to read and log fan-speeds of individual fans on NVIDIA "Turing" graphics cards that support the feature, in addition to fan speed percentage monitoring.

Our feature-rich "Advanced" tab now also shows information on HDMI and DisplayPort connectors of your graphics cards. Power-draw on NVIDIA graphics cards is now reported both as a percentage of TDP and as an absolute value in Watts. Among the bugs fixed are a system hang due to Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) kicking in when GPU-Z is running in the background; memory bandwidth reading on RTX 2080 & RTX 2080 Ti with GDDR6 memory, AMD Radeon RX 400-series GPU utilization monitoring, and improved texts for system memory usage sensors.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.12.0

The change-log follows.

Keen-eyed Linux and Valve uses have noticed what could seemingly be a big reveal and shake-up to games' compatibility with the Linux platform. If you're a die-hard Linux fan, or even if you're just a curious dabbler in that operating system, you know that there aren't many concerted efforts of bringing game experiences to that operating system. A good port requires many more hours than game developers are willing to put into it - let alone compiling a native implementation of their game for that OS.

However, Valve, being the most important digital games distributor through their Steam platform, know there's an untapped source of income in that part of the market. And if developers won't do it themselves, then Valve seem to be willing to take the matter into their own hands. This speculation arises from Steam's GUI files, which when looked at with SteamDB's Steam Tracker, include a hidden section with unused text related to an (as of yet) unannounced Steam Play system, which "(...) will automatically install compatibility tools that allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems."

It's been two years since Valve decided to take away the excitement of their flash sales out of the equation. The thought-process was that by having sales go uninterrupted from the beginning through to the end of each sale period would maximize chances of users being able to find it in their budgets - and in their time - more chances to purchase said games. However, one thing is for sure: that means that for users who see the sale in the first day, they've really seen it all.

Valve News Network's Tyler McVicker says the flash sales are returning in a different way now. This time, developers will be able to choose how long they want each game's flash sale to last: 6, 8, 10, or 12 hours, meaning Steam's front page will likely be updated every hour. This is both good and bad, as we've seen; however, it seems that Valve is erring towards the side of excitement and daily viewing of flash sales as being quantifiably better than the alternative. For one, I can see that users that see a flash sale are much more likely to do some impulse buys than if they know a sale will last for a long time. It's basic psychology here.

Following Valve's decision to disable trading in the Netherlands due to that country's legal statutes regarding gambling, the company is now taking other steps to comply with the country's Dutch Gaming Authority. Players in the Netherlands and Belgium "will be restricted from opening containers" following this week's patch, according to the patch notes. This will prevent players in those countries from even opening the lootboxes. As the "Miscellaneous" section of the patch notes reads:

• Updated Steam and CS:GO account restrictions for users in Netherlands and Belgium:
• Steam Trading and Steam Market features are now re-enabled for Steam accounts in Netherlands.
• Customers in Netherlands and Belgium will be restricted from opening containers.

Not long ago, the Netherlands ruled that loot boxes in games are gambling, and have been designed to get people addicted, in order to spend more money. Gaming companies had until June 20 (yesterday) to either change their game mechanics accordingly or to apply for a gambling license.

This has now caused Valve to disable trading of items on CS:GO and Dota 2, as the current interpretation of the law has a little loophole that considers loot boxes as gambling only, when the in-game goods are transferable between players.

Have you ever wondered how much money you've invested into your entire Steam collection? Well, now you can! Valve has recently added a nifty feature called 'External Funds Used' that allows Steam users to see the total amount of money spent at the Steam store. All users have to do is sign into their Steam account at this link. Do note that the tool doesn't take into account key activations. So, games that have been purchased through third-party stores like GOG, Green Man Gaming, Humble Bundle, G2A, and etc. will not contribute to the grand total. The "OldSpend" field equals to the amount of money that was spent before the Limited User Account policy was implemented in 2015. The "PWSpend" is related to purchases made on games operated by Perfect World Entertainment. a Chinese company that runs CS:GO and DOTA 2 in China. So, how much have you spent? Let us know in the comments below.

As most of you have heard by now, Apple revoked the release of the Steam Link app on their platform last week. Concerned customers have been sending emails to Apple to inquire about the reasons behind the decision. Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Apple, stated that the Steam Link application didn't comply with the App Store guidelines. Unfortunately, he didn't explain exactly how the application violated the guidelines. Nevertheless, Apple assured their customers that they will continue to work with Valve to bring the Steam experience to iOS users.

Apple approved the Steam Link app for release. On Weds, May 9th, Valve released news of the app. The following morning, Apple revoked its approval citing business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team. Valve appealed, explaining the Steam Link app simply functions as a LAN-based remote desktop similar to numerous remote desktop applications already available on the App Store.

Ultimately, that appeal was denied leaving the Steam Link app for iOS blocked from release. The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we're clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future.

Valve today announced the upcoming release of two additional apps that will further the way users can interact with - and more importantly, game on - their Steam platform. The two apps, dubbed Steam Link and Steam video, will bring users new functionality that aims to extend their freedom to game and consume content in new ways, particularly geared for mobile, on-the-go interaction.

The Steam Link app, slated to launch on the week of May 21st, allows gamers to experience their Steam library of games on their Android (phone, tablet, TV) and iOS-based (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV) devices while connected via 5Ghz network or wired Ethernet to a host system (Mac or PC). Android access will be initially offered in beta. The Steam Link App will feature support for the Steam Controller, MFI controllers, and more across both platforms. The Steam Video app will take a little while longer to perfect, though, and should be available on the start of summer, just in time for those long hours when users just want to enjoy the thousands of movies and shows available on Steam directly via their Android and iOS devices over Wi-Fi or LTE - in both offline and streaming modes.

Firewatch Developer Campo Santo has announced in a blog post that their studio has been acquired by Valve. The affair has come about after a sort of enamorement period after the team at Campo Santo drank a bottle of champagne that was meant to be opened with the attribution of a Game of the Year accolade to Valve's own Portal 2 - back when Valve actually developed games (some of us can remember that time, yes).

The message sent by the Campo Santo team is one of excitement at the opportunity, and confidence that Valve will be a partner in the development their studio wants to make, rather than an evil overlord mind-bent on franchise and creativity destruction. Knowing Valve, I'm sure people would agree with the developers. Here's hoping this marks a newfound interest from Valve in games development... even if by proxy. How I miss GLADoS' jokes... but that's a story for another day. For now, you can read the press release from Campo Santo right after the break.

Valve was one of the first to run a centralized game distribution + multiplayer service, through Steam, and its in-house alternative to the Punkbuster anti-cheating software, in the form of VAC (Valve Anti-Cheating). Over the years, VAC has evolved to leverage newer technologies. Its latest avatar is VACnet, an AI deep-learning system built up of over 1,700 CPUs, to more intelligently sniff out cheaters. VACnet leverages CS:GO's player-operated replay system. It studies replays of players who have been reported for cheating, and studies their replays for patterns of cheating, such as wallhacks, aimbots, and more.

What makes this different from previous approaches to the problem is that the AI evaluates the behavior of the gamer through their inputs in a way only a human could, before this. It also makes up its own criteria for spotting cheaters, as it learns more about cheating, so creative and new cheaters are quicker to spot. The decision to suspend or ban players ultimate falls in the hands of humans. VACnet sniffs out the most probable cheaters, and reports its findings to human moderators that determine guilt, and hand out suspensions or bans. VACnet has the potential to increase "convictions" of cheaters by close to four fold.

Valve yesterday announced the begin of yet another wallet-burning sale to appeal to our consumerist bones. The Lunar Sale, as it is being called, is live from February 15th through February 19th, so, a mere four days with tons (thousands) of games under heavy discounts that can sometimes go up to 90%. On this front, it's business as usual - buy all those games you've been wanting at a fire-sale price, and then look at them guiltily as they collect virtual dust on your backlog.

Other, somewhat more relevant changes that have been made by valve to the overall Steam experience also look towards making it easier for customers to part with their hard-earned currency of choice (or not so hard-earned, it's all good for Valve, really.) Namely, there are some changes to the wishlist which now allow users to place items on their shopping cart directly from their wishlist page - which is nice, since before, you had to enter the games' own store page, and then add it to your cart). Of course, for items that are sold in packages or where there's a bundle, customers will be invited to peruse "Details" on the package, via the relevant store page. There's also the ability to sort your wishlist gamers through those that have the higher discount percentage - a handy tool for bargain-bin hunters. There's also tag search, and filtering options to exclude games such as W"Early Access" titles that aren't currently finished - and that may, or may not, be finished in the future.

We welcome all lucky applicants to Bridge Constructor Portal with our new vehicle-based test chambers, Quantum Tunnels and patented Aperture technology! For the last year we've been secretly working in our underground labs on the next iteration of the million-selling Bridge Constructor series. This new stand-alone title will release on PC, MacOS, Linux, mobile devices, and console, and fully embraces the Portal license, one of the most beloved video game franchises of the last decade.

Bridge Constructor Portal will blend the laws of structural engineering and technology straight from Aperture Laboratories into an exciting new game experience, all under the demanding gaze of GLaDOS. Bridge Constructor Portal will be released on December 20 2017 for Windows, MacOS and Linux as well as for mobile devices. The console versions will follow in early 2018.

With its upcoming "Fall Creators Update" for Windows 10, Microsoft is preparing to roll out its own game anti-cheating platform, under two new technologies, TruePlay and Game Monitor. TruePlay provides a "new set of tools to combat cheating within their PC games," according to Microsoft. This is similar to VAC (Valve Anti-Cheating). From the looks of it, the TruePlay API is limited to games built for the UWP (Universal Windows Platform), such as recent additions to the Forza franchise. Game Monitor is another side of this coin. When enabled, the operating system shares system information with games to weed out cheating tools such as aimbots. Enabling it could soon become a requirement of certain online multiplayer games.

Games with TruePlay run in a "protected" (read: sandboxed) process, which mitigates a class of common cheating tools, as the game's real PID is never exposed to other processes. A separate Windows process will be on constant lookout for behaviors and manipulations that are common in cheating scenarios. Data (read: telemetry) of this process will be shared with game developers after determining that cheating could have occurred. The "Fall Creators Update" for Windows 10 is likely to be released before December.

In what might sadly be the closest we'll ever get to knowing Valve's original plans for Half Life 2: Episode 3, if you will, Ex-Valve lead writer on Half-Life Marc Laidlaw has released a prospective, would-be script for the game that never came to be. The writer, who recently left Valve after 18 years working for the company, posted the story entitled "Epistle 3" on his personal blog (which is, naturally experiencing heavy traffic). He then gave a heads-up through his Twitter account, commenting on the fact that his website was brought down by the sheer amount of traffic it generated, Laidlaw said "I guess fanfic is popular, even a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago."

Whether or not this closely resembles the would-be script for that third Half-Life installment only Laidlaw knows; perhaps this is just the writer's own take on what the story should have been, lacking any of the changes that it would incur during the development process. The fact that Laidlaw says this is fanfiction can be interpreted as a line of defense against lawsuits - as is the fact that he slightly altered the character's names from their originals (Gertrude Fremont seems a lost opportunity for Gordon Freeman's actual name...) Perhaps some crafty, dedicated users will create a mod that brings this story to fruition? Time will tell; for now, this seems to be as much closure as we're ever going to get. Follow the source links for Laidlaw's site, as well as GitHub and Pastebin links for the corrected story. There are also some interesting hints for a subsequent Half-Life 3, but alas, that one is even more of a mirage.

An update to the Steam survey results is always worth noting, especially with the added, tremendous growth Valve's online store service has seen recently. And it seems that in the Steam gaming world at least, quad-core CPUs, NVIDIA graphics cards, and Windows 10 reign supreme.

Windows 10 64-bit is the most used operating system, with 50.33% of the survey. That the second most used Windows OS is the steady, hallmark Windows 7 shouldn't come as a surprise, though it does have just 32.05% of the market now. OS X has a measly 2.95% of the grand total, while Linux comes in at an even lower 0.72%. While AMD processor submits may have increased in other software, it seems that at least in Steam, those numbers aren't reflected, since AMD's processor market share in the survey has decreased from 21.89% in February to just 19.01% as of June, even though the company's Ryzen line of CPUs has been selling like hotcakes. Quad-core CPUs are the most used at time of the survey, at 52.06%, while the next highest percentage is still the dual-core CPU, with 42.23%.

In an internal presentation, Valve, the company which simply won't give us Half Life 3, made a pretty interesting presentation on its growth and plans for the future. During the independent games showcase Indigo 2017, which took place in the Netherlands this past June, Steam revealed it had achieved a record 14 million concurrent users, up from a 2015 peak of (comparatively) just 8.4 million. Some other interesting statistics include an average of 33 million daily active players; 67 million monthly active players; and around 26 million gamers who made new purchases since January 2016.

North America seems to represent the bulk of Steam sales, with around 34% of sales through the market occurring way over that side of the ocean. Next comes Western Europe, with 29% of the sales pie, followed by Asia, which achieves a grand total of 17%. Next come the Russian Territories, Oceania and Latin America, which account for 5%, 4%, and 3% respectively. We'll just assume the remaining 8% come from Eastern Europe, the African Continent, and those researchers in Antarctica. Jokes aside, this shows monumental growth for the company, which should only increase provided the continued growth of the PC gaming market. Steam certainly has features games appreciate already - the growth speaks strongly for this. So now Valve only has to not ruin it, and keep on adding incremental features.

Even though current VR controllers already do a competent job of tracking our movements in the 3D world, there is always room to improve (and VR has much, much room to improve.) AS such, valve is looking to improve the way we can interact with the VR worlds we are offered. And one of those ways is by improving gesture and hand recognition in these worlds. If ever something seemed to be designed to allow you to taunt your opponent, Valve's "Knuckles" controller is it.

Through the use of a new "CapSense" tech, which basically adds capacitive fields to the grip of the wand controller, games will be able to know whether you're fully gripping the controller or not. These sensors, which for now need to be calibrated on a per-user basis, can "detect the state of the user's hands", meaning, they're able to track the degree to which your fingers are curled or sticking out. Valve has used a technologically impressive solution for those cases where you might drop your controller for eagerness of showing your fingers to your enemies: an adjustable strap on both controllers that tightens around your hands. Valve has started to ship the Knuckles controllers out to developers, but there's no word yet on when consumer versions of the device might be available.After the break: bonus taunts.

Pixvana, makers of the cloud-based 360 video creation studio SPIN, today announced a partnership with Valve to integrate their software services into the greater Steam platform. A beta version of the SPIN software will now let users directly publish 360 video content directly to the Steam Store, which will allow Steam VR enabled headset users to browse a new huge library of high quality (up to 12k according to Pixvana) 360-degree video content.