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"I'm so excited to watch the replays for The International 3's grand finals!" I thought this morning, with a little more grogy muttering and cussing, "But I'll just check there's nothing pressing in my work e-mail." And then I saw the press release from Valve at 5am boldly declaring the winner. Bum. So I'll avoid naming names in these opening lines, only saying that the winning five-man team takes home a whopping $1,437,204.
Dota 2 is really good, you guys. And it's cracking to watch when played at its best, such as at Valve's big annual tournament this weekend, The International 3. Watch who what when where how why? I'll explain.
The internet jokes that Valve is allergic to the number 3. However, it appears one sequel may finally reach that ever-elusive number. A recent tour of Valve's office by Reddit members has unearthed a listing for "Left 4 Dead 3."
Operation Payback was another of Valve's experiments with 'games as services' and paying community creators, and a jolly successful one at that. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community mappers earned over $150,000 from players paying $6 to run around their seven maps on Valve's official servers. So huzzah, it's been extended for another month, until August 31.
Valve's Tom Bui explained the shortcomings of its Steam Greenlight program, and said it is actively working to fix them by making the processes more automated.
Following the official launch for Windows earlier this month, Valve's, er, Dota clone Dota 2 is now available for Mac and Linux. This sentence is a hilarious joke about how Linux users are already well-prepared for complex systems with unfriendly communities, but Mac users are in for a hell of a ride. Laughs.
Gosh, it's been over four years since Team Fortress 2 introduced random item drops. Four years of people standing idle in servers waiting for hats. Curiously, Valve's now chosen to clamp down on that. It's all perfectly reasonable but, well, hasn't everyone already moved onto idling in other games to score Steam Trading Cards?
We may have seen the final release of Half-Life co-op mod Sven Co-op last week, but oh, it's far from over. It's getting a free standalone release on Steam, and Valve has given the team engine access to tinker under the hood and add new features.
Steam has kicked off its "Summer Getaway" sale, offering a slew of games and new sets of trading cards.
It just took two years, but Dota 2 is finally out of beta.
