Independent developer Valve is "happy to have that conversation" should the company be approached with a buyout offer, marketing VP Doug Lombardi has revealed.

That said, he noted that the independent studio behind Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal and the Steam digital distribution platform is "doing pretty well" and is "really happy with what we're doing."

Lombardi also heaped praise on publishing partner EA, describing the relationship between EA and Valve as "really good," with Valve yet to see the fabled EA "boogeyman." id Software president John Carmack had previously said that Valve's positive experience with EA was a key factor in its decision to let EA publish id's Rage (PC, PS3, 360, Mac).

"We set up the deal so that it turned out that if EA was this evil empire, that it wasn't going to last forever," Lombardi explained to Gamasutra. "But it's turned out that all those scary stories--maybe some of them were true, and maybe some of them are history; I don't know--haven't appeared to us. We haven't seen the boogeyman."

"EA was very progressive about saying, 'We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don't want Steam to go away,'" he continued. "Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they're not asking us to make Steam go away."

With Valve's wit-driven action-puzzler Portal hitting Xbox Live Arcade this fall, marketing VP Doug Lombardi has expressed interest in releasing more of the studio's catalog, which includes shooters Half-Life and Counter-Strike, as Xbox 360 downloads.

"We'll certainly consider [bringing old games like Counter-Strike to XBLA]," Lombardi told OXM UK. "If you look at what we've done on Steam, we try to make all our games available and we're always reviewing the prices to keep them current. We'd love to do that, but this is our first step at doing that beyond the PC."

When asked about a possible console release of the Team Fortress 2 add-ons that PC gamers have been receiving for free, such as new maps and weapons, Lombardi stated that the company was still discussing the specifics of pricing.

"We're accumulating a lot of TF2 content for PC and at some point there'll be a sweet amount of stuff that's ready to go and large enough that if people have to pay for it [on consoles], they'll be happy," he noted. Earlier in the year, Lombardi told Shacknews that the content was likely to hit Xbox 360, but wasn't sure if it would arrive on PS3.

Valve's multiplayer-focused zombie survival shooter Left 4 Dead (PC, 360) will include two-person split-screen play in addition to four-person online cooperative survival play, co-founder Gabe Newell revealed at EA's E3 press event.

It was unclear if that functionality is limited to the Xbox 360 version, or if it will be included in the PC edition as well. The game will let players assume control of undead foes as well, though the exact details of that functionality have not been disclosed.

Newell also noted that the game's four survivor characters have been redesigned. The new character designs better reflect the characters' status as survivors of a recent outbreak instead of hardened battle veterans.

Louis, for example, has lost his dreadlocks and battle armor, replaced by blood-splatted dress shirt, a loose tie, and a bald head.

Left 4 Dead is slated to arrive November 4. More details on the playable undead are expected to arrive tomorrow during Shacknews' hands-on time with the title.

Valve Software and publisher Gamecock Media Group today announced a partnership to bring Gamecock titles to Valve's PC gaming digital distribution platform Steam.

The first Gamecock-published titles on the platform are Firefly Studios' Stronghold Crusader Extreme and the first installment of Crackpot Entertainment's episodic action-adventure title Insecticide.

"No RTS fan can ignore Stronghold Crusader Extreme as the pinnacle of hardcore warfare," Valve stated in a press release.

Additional Gamecock-published PC titles, including Replay Studios' World War II stealth title Velvet Assassin, Spark Unlimited's fantasy shooter Legendary and the second episode of Insecticide, are slated to hit Steam later this year.

A man who hacked into a third party Valve file server and stole the credit card numbers of Steam Cyber Cafe users was caught by police in the Dutch town of Maastricht this Tuesday.

According to the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, the 20 year old hacker had managed to "burn 13 million Euros playing poker online and shopping for notebooks, flat screens and MP3 players" before being caught.

Known by the online handle MaddoxX, the man first made news when he boasted of the Valve hack in April of 2007.

"We also don't want money from VALVe," he wrote on the No-Steam forum last year. "We want a simple message on their site." ... Read more

A number of Valve's PC shooters will soon support Novint's Falcon controller (pictured left) as part of a new agreement, the companies have announced.

Serving as an alternative to the traditional mouse-based FPS control scheme, the Novint Falcon allows for three-dimensional freedom of movement and tactile response. Support for the peripheral will be added in an update distributed through Valve's digital download platform Steam.

Games slated to support the controller include Half-Life 2 and its two following episodes, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Counter-Strike: Source. Valve's ... Read more

Speaking at Valve's PC gaming market conference attended by Shacknews at its offices in Bellevue, Washington, company co-founder and president Gabe Newell said that online PC sales revenue has seen massive growth rates and will soon pass over retail revenue.

"Within the next three months we see sub-10% growth rates in our traditional core packaged goods retail business," said Newell. "But right now we're seeing close to 200% growth in the development of these alternative ways of connecting with customers."

Newell added that the company expects online distribution sales from its Steam platform to pass over its retail business. A graph was also shown illustrating that the company anticipates online revenue to dwarf retail by 2012.

"There have been a bunch of stories written recently, both by the gaming press and the industry business press that PC gaming is dead. There's a ... Read more

Valve today announced Steam Cloud, a free Steam system that will retain users' saved games and configuration files indefinitely.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 will be the firstgames to support the service. User key mappings will also be saved in Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead will ship with thefeature.

If players are offline, the service will store the data and then add it to the networkon the next connection. According to Valve, saved games and configurations will be storedforever.

Valve further noted that the service will be freely available to developers, and is setto launch in the "near future."

The company also detailed plans for several new Steam systems, including a driverauto-updater and calendar functionality.

Another feature in development is a system-requirement checker. The program will analyzeyour hardware and compare it to multiple games, estimating your performance andrecommending upgrades.

Valve is also considering storing replay videos and kill-cam screens from games such asTeam Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source.

Entering the final minutes of EA's Spring Break event, most demo stations in the room long since abandoned, the bank of Valve's Left 4 Dead systems were still at capacity.

Zombies exploding in the background, I pinged marketing VP Lombardi on a number of Valve-related topics, including whether we'll see a demo for Left 4 Dead, and the likelihood of launching with a free weekend. We also touch on his company's new Steamworks initiative, as well as what Valve has planned for the future.

We're still sort of tinkering with the model and playing with it a little bit, but we'll definitely at some point do a free weekend for Left 4 Dead. It'll be somewhere near the launch. Whether or not it's the first weekend is still sort of to be determined. Read more...

The PC is no longer a viable platform. The PC is all about casual gaming. The PC market is dying.

We've heard it all before, and so has Valve's Doug Lombardi. I recently caught up with the marketing director during an Electronic Arts press event. At the end of the night, the house music dying down, we had a long chat on a number of topics--many of which pertained to his company's primary platform.

What does Valve think of the PC Gaming Alliance? Are they as tired of the PC gaming "problem" as we are? What is at the root of the issue, anyway? Read on for some answers.

If you go around and you look at all these different things that are happening on the PC, and you add them together, my hunch is that [the sales numbers] would actually be much larger than all of the consoles put together.

Again, minus the DS, because the DS is this crazy thing by itself. But talking purely in terms of the Wii, the PS3, and the 360, if you added those together and looked at the whole picture, I'd bet you PC would be even, if not bigger than those three systems in terms of the money that's changing hands and the opportunity for doing business. Read more..

Valve has revealed the results of its latest PC hardware survey, which polled 1,728,662 Steam users from November 13, 2007 to May 15, 2008.

Among the findings, the company reported that Nvidia cards occupy the top six slots of video hardware among Steam users, with the GeForce 8800 leading at 9.36%. The most common RAM configuration was 2GB and above.

Other interesting results include the ability of 9.57% to utilize DirectX10, the part where 0.55% of Steam users connect with a 33.6 Kbps modem, as well as:

Display

• 73.87% use 4:3 aspect primary displays
• 25.70% use 16:9 aspect primary displays
• 3.49% of use multi-monitor desktop resolutions
• 39.18% run their primary display at 1280 x 960
• 32.02% run their primary display at 1024 x 768

Hard Drives

• 32.59% have more than 250GB in HDD capacity
• The most common amount of free HDD space was 10GB-19.9GB

Following the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Three, and a long period of PC FPS development, it would only be natural for the free men at Valve to try their hands at something new.

But according to Valve's Doug Lombardi, the Bellevue, Washington-based studio may move further away from its typical territory than you might imagine.

"There's a lot of people at Valve who are parents and would love to make a game for kids," said Lombardi to CVG. "We all play the Wii a lot and we think that the proper way for Valve to approach the Wii would be to make something cool designed specifically for it.

"I mean, I'm not making any announcements, but there's a lot of desire internally to do something for kids, do something on the Wii."

And as long as we're talking extreme divergence, why not a Valve MMO... Read more

Independent developer Valve today announced the release of its Steamworks software development kit, a set of free tools that will allow PC game developers to add a number of supporting services to their products.

The list of features includes product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, and anti-cheat technology.

Those interested in the nitty-gritty details can check out the Steamworks partner site, which has now been updated with additional documentation.

An exclusive version of Nunchuck Games' Ninja Reflex (NDS, PC, Wii) built with the Steamworks tool set is now available on Steam, Valve announced today.

Retitled Ninja Reflex: Steamworks Edition, the new revision of the reflex-testing game comes equipped with Steam-exclusive features including 50 achievements, as well as a slew of Half-Life and Portal-themed Easter Eggs to be discovered.

Ninja Reflex: Steamworks Edition is available now on Steam at a 10% debut discount for $8.95.

Unreal creator Epic Games today joined the ever-growing ranks of game studios that sell their products through Valve's PC digital distribution platform Steam.

Epic's initial offerings constitute five titles: Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition, and Unreal Tournament 3.

Each title will be sold for 10% off until March 24. An Unreal Deal Pack is also available, containing the five titles for $59.95--a savings of over $46. The discount applies to the Unreal Deal pack as well, making it $53.95 until March 24.

"Epic is a leading developer of game engine technology and has produced some of my favorite games of all time," said Valve president Gabe Newell. "It's an honor to be working with them and offering their current and classic titles to the millions of Steam gamers around the world."

Valve today confirmed reports that the PC version of its critically acclaimed compilation the Orange Box (PC, PS3, X360) will be split for individual retail sale on April 9.

Portal and Team Fortress 2, which had previously not been available individually at retail outlets, will be sold for $19.99 and $29.99, respectively. Valve is also planning the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack, which will include both Episode One and Two in addition to Half-Life 2 Deathmatch for online play, priced at $29.99.

All three games will be identical to their Orange Box and Steam counterparts. The individual titles will be available in North America on April 9, and worldwide on April 11.

The Orange Box--Valve's acclaimed compilation containing Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2--will be split into separate PC titles on April 9, according to Joystiq.

The move is not one of desperation. While The Orange Box has done well on consoles, with well over a million copies sold between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, Valve's Doug Lombardi characterized the PC release as "significantly stronger," citing a two-digit percentage increase over the console editions.

No official prices have been announced for the individual packages.

The topic of a full Counter-Strike sequel has been cautiously broached by Valve during a series of interviews with GameTrailers TV.

"We will never abandon Counter-Strike," asserted Valve director of marketing Doug Lombardi, who went on to explain why the game hasn't received a major update since the release of Counter-Strike Source in 2004.

"It's a little bit unfair to compare Counter-Strike, I think, to your classic game that's gonna have these sequels. It looks a little bit more like an MMO where it's constantly [being updated]."

Of course, even the most successful MMOs get sequels eventually, and it appears that Valve is at least tentatively working out the details of a Counter-Strike refresh.

"With Counter-Strike 2, there's a big question between, do we go start over from scratch and build this whole new game, do we do something that looks more like Team Fortress 2 that is rooted in the old game but has a ton of new stuff, or do we just sort of take everything that's new that we've released and put that out in a new box," remarked Lombardi.

"I think we're leaning more towards the two more radical places than... Read more

Music and video downloads may be headed to Valve Software's digital distribution platform Steam before the end of the year, according to the company's marketing VP Doug Lombardi.

"We're also looking at other types of content like video and music," said Lombardi to Tom's Games.

"We're definitely having those conversations and meetings, and we're reaching out to folks with other types of digital entertainment. I think before the end of the year, you'll probably see some pilot programs with other digital entertainment on Steam."

Lombardi also mentioned that while the Xbox 360 version of The Orange Box sold over a million copies, and the PlayStation 3 edition sold an additional "few hundred thousand," sales of the PC version were much stronger.

"I'd say significantly stronger, at least a two-digit percentage increase... Read more

Caution: The full text of this article contains spoilers.

Don't tell anyone, but some of Portal's best dialog, the stuff about the importance of your weighed companion cube, came from writer Eric Wolpaw's readings of some "declassified government interrogation thing."

From that, he learned "isolation leads subjects to begin to attach to inanimate objects." So when designer Kim Swift and the rest of the small Portal team at Valve, which was never larger than ten people, were trying to make players drag "this stupid thing" (Swift's exact words) all over a map, Wolpaw had an idea.

His solution? Have a piece of dialog that implied the box was the player's only friend in the world. "After that, no one ever forget the box," Swift noted. "When all else fails, great dialog really was a great tool to give hints to players."

Making the Player Smile
"On its own, the [Portal] gameplay would be alright. Honestly, a little on the dry side," said Swift, emphasizing the importance of clever writing in the beloved title.

"If you're writing a funny game, first of all, god help you," admitted... Read more