Shut Up And Game! » Valve

28,981,249,043 zombies killed so far in Left 4 Dead 2

Chip Loan — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:23:05 +0000

That’s right. Over 28 billion (as in a lot) of zombies have been put out of their misery since Left 4 Dead 2 was released in November. They were whacked with frying pans, teed up with baseball bats, doused in gas and set on fire, shot in the face and well you get the idea. It looks like a lot of people have been practicing for the impending real life zombie apocalypse. And if these numbers are correct we have nothing to worry about.

Valve has some interesting facts to help you put the death toll into perspective:

The entire population of the planet has been zombified and killed 4.26 times.
With the average height of a zombie being 6 feet, if you stacked them end to end they would circle the globe 1,322 times.
If you placed 28,981,249,043 rulers end to end, they would reach28,981,249,043 feet in the sky.

Let’s see if we can crack 50,000,000,000 before spring. Most of the country is trying to shovels themselves out of three feet of snow anyways. We might as well be productive!

Left 4 Dead Blog – Don’t worry, we’ll make more

Tags: Left 4 Dead 2, PC, Valve, Xbox 360

Team Fortress 2 patch adds new Highlander mode

Chip Loan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:42:23 +0000

Valve released a patch yesterday to their cartoon-inspired shooter Team Fortress 2. Which isn’t anything exciting in itself, but buried in that patch was a new Highlander mode. In Highlander mode each team consists of nine players and each team can only have one of each class. It sounds like fun, a mode where team balancing is all but guaranteed.

Unfortunately there isn’t any mention of mass decapitations, but I’m willing to look passed that. I played a few rounds today and it’s a blast. Definitely worthy of your time.

For a full breakdown of what else was included in the latest patch hit the break.

Engine

Enabled Steam Cloud support for key bindings and custom spraypaint images
- Added Options->Multiplayer->Advanced option to toggle off/on: default is on

Team Fortress 2

Added new Highlander mode
- 9 players allowed per team
- Restricts each team to 1 of each class
- Use mp_highlander (0/1) to toggle off/on: default is 0
Added “bots” to the server’s sv_tags convar if the server is running bots
Fixed a weapon name localization issue
Fixed the “tf_teamtalk” server convar not controlling text chat between living/dead teammates
Updated the map CTF_DoubleCross
- Fixed the map not ending correctly when using mp_timelimit
- Changed to prevent Engineers from building on top of the shack in each base
Updated the map Arena_WatchTower
- Fixed a case where players could open and get stuck on the starting gates before the round start
- Improved clipping to prevent people from getting out of the map
- Optimized the map for better performance

Tags: Steam, Team Fortress 2, Updates, Valve

Steam sees 25% growth in ‘09

Chip Loan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:46:43 +0000

2009 was a huge year for the gaming industry. Games like Modern Warfare 2 shattered sales records and raked in profits never before seen. We are talking swimming in gold Uncle Scrooge like money. And if Steam’s user base growth is any indication then Valve is riding the success wave as well.

In 2009 the digital software distributor saw a 25 per cent growth from it’s user base in 2008. The service now has over 25 million registered users logging an average of 13 billion minutes of playing time a month.

Valve’s president Gabe Newell had this to say about their success:

“Steam turned five years old in March 2009. With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years – such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks – we’ve seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform. As such, we plan to continue to expand and grow the platform to better serve the developers supporting the open platform and millions of gamers logging in each day.”

With so many people ready to put the last nail in PC gaming’s coffin it’s good to see that Valve is doing everything they can to keep it relevant.

SOURCE: GamesIndustry

Tags: PC, Sales, Steam, Valve

Steam’s top ten games for January 17-23

Chip Loan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:17:25 +0000

Steam has released it’s list of top selling games for the week of January 17-23. And pre-orders take four of the top five spots.

The biggest surprise is Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition taking the number two spot. The pre-order was only available for two out of the seven days. I expect it to handily take the number one spot from Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe Edition’s pre-order. Mass Effect 2 will be out this Tuesday.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is still holding strong in the number four spot, keeping it in Steam’s top five most popular games, a place it’s been since it’s release in early November.

And look at Counter-Strike: Source, the October 2004 release is still making it’s presence known in the top ten. BOOM HEADSHOT!

Here’s the entire list:

Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe Edition (Pre-order)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition (Pre-order)
BioShock 2 (Pre-order)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Aliens vs. Predator (Pre-order)
Mass Effect 2 (Pre-order)
Company of Heroes Complete Pack (Sale)
Global Agenda (Pre-order)
Mass Effect and Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition (Pre-order)
Left 4 Dead 2 and Counter-Strike: Source

Tags: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, Modern Warfare 2, PC, Steam, Valve

Valve isn’t done updating Team Fortress 2 just yet

Chip Loan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:04:47 +0000

Fans of Team Fortress 2 know how fun the game can be. And they also know how great Valve has been at supporting their favorite game post launch. Like way post launch, it’s been over two years since it hit Steam. Almost every class in the game from the Spy all the way to the Sniper has been updated. I say almost because we are still patiently waiting for the Engineer class update. But if you think Valve will wash their hands of the game after the last character update you are sorely mistaken.

In an interview on the Team Fortress 2 community site Community Fortress, Valve’s Robin Walker was asked how much support they had left in them:

We’ve got multiple updates in the works still, at least one of which will land before the Engineer pack. As always, we haven’t planned too much out beyond that point, because we want to see what feedback we get from the community.

That’s dedication.

Tags: DLC, PC, Team Fortress 2, TF2, Updates, Valve

Left 4 Dead 2 = free on Xbox Live

Chip Loan — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:52:52 +0000

Fans of Left 4 Dead 2 who are too cheap to buy a Gold subscription to Xbox Live are in luck.

Starting at noon on Friday, January 15 you will be able to play online multiplayer on Xbox Live for free. That’s right you cheap bastards, for the low, low retail price of $0.00 you will be able to enjoy the fun of playing your favorite zombie game with actual other humans online!

The free weekend will end on Monday, January 18 at noon so enjoy it while you can.

And do yourself a favor, pay the lousy $60.00 for a subscription you loser. Who plays L4D2 just to kill the A.I. anyway!?

Tags: Freebies, Left 4 Dead 2, Valve, Xbox 360, Xbox Live

Valve talks about community investing

Chip Loan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:02:45 +0000

You have to give it to Gabe Newell, at least he thinks out of the box.

In a recent interview with ABC Gabe talks about the difficulties of the early stages in game development. Outlining the enormous costs and risks associated with getting development off the ground. Millions of dollars have to be invested, either by publishers, banks or other financial backers. “There’s a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative,” he said.

What Gabe would like to see in the future is a possible connection between the gaming community and the game developers themselves. “What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I’ll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I’ll also get a copy of that game.’”

The idea is interesting, but would be difficult to pull off because of legal issues. And it might create more problems then it solves. How would you determine how much each investor would receive if the game is a success? What kind of return would you be talking about? Besides, isn’t that $59.99 I just shelled out for the game an investment itself?

Would you be willing to invest your money and help financially back a game’s development?

Tags: development, Gabe Newell, Valve

Soldier takes over Team Fortress 2 blog

Chip Loan — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:25:53 +0000

Yesterday fans of the popular shooter Team Fortress 2 got a surprise message from their favorite grunt the games official blog. The main message of his rant was to let us all know about the release of some new Team Fortress 2 avatars available for use on Steam. But was he hinting at anything else?

After the post made it’s debut the TF2 forums blew up with speculation. Was he hinting at something? After all there hasn’t been any new class updates since the Sniper and Spy got remixed…is the Soldier’s turn coming next?

Suspiciously he twice mentions hill defense. Are we maybe getting a new game mode? King of the Hill perhaps? Or are we all reading too much into the random rant? It’s all up in the air but the devs over at Valve always seem to hint at their next big TF2 update, only time will tell if that theory holds true this time as well.

Head to the official Team Fortress 2 Blog to read the post and draw your own conclusions.

Tags: Steam, Team Fortress 2, Valve

Cricket anyone?

Chip Loan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:14:39 +0000

Valve has been pretty tight lipped about Left 4 Dead 2 since it announced the game at E3. But that changed earlier today when news came of a new melee weapon that will have European fans ecstatic. You’ll be able to tee off on undead using a cricket bat. Though not as satisfying as the frying pan will be, it’s definitely a welcome addition to the already announced beat down tools such as the fire axe and chainsaw.

I know a lot of the hardcore Left 4 Dead fans are all up in arms about the sequel’s development. But I have to say that the more info Valve releases about this game, the more excited I am for it’s release. Let’s hope they have eve more fun details up their sleeve between now and it’s November 17th release date.

Tags: Left 4 Dead 2, Valve

New Team Fortress 2 Source SDK released

Chip Loan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:55:24 +0000

Valve has released an update to the Team Fortress 2 Source SDK making it easier to create and edit new maps for the popular online game.

Included in the update were the .vmf source files for 10 of the maps: Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro.

Dave Riller of the official Team Fortress 2 blog says:

“For the beginner map makers out there, we hope this gives you an easier entry point by allowing you to alter or edit an existing map, as opposed to being forced to start from scratch. For example, you could start by fine-tuning cover in Goldrush, alter the layout of Granary, or tweak the amount of health and ammo in Gravelpit. Or maybe you just have a ton of ideas on how you think you could improve Hydro or 2Fort. We’d love to see what you come up with.

For the experienced map makers, we hope this gives you a variety of examples of how we design and construct levels, the tools we use to finish the aesthetic/thematic elements, and some specific implementation solutions to performance and networking problems. We also hope that it’ll reduce the amount of confusion around the game logic and entity setup required for the various TF game modes.”

The update makes it a lot easier to edit maps because you no longer have to start from scratch. Having a template to work with and editing from that should simplify things for first time map editors and help speed up the process for the pros. Hopefully this translates into a steady stream of some great original content for the Team Fortress 2 community to play around with.

The Valve team teased at future releases as well “Our plan is to get more of our TF content source out in the SDK, so look for more maps & model sources in the future.”

Tags: PC, Steam, Team Fortress 2, Valve

America’s Army 3 available for pre-load on Steam

Chip Loan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:42:41 +0000

Those of you who aren’t too busy hating on Valve for their Left 4 Dead 2 announcement might want to take some time to pre-load America’s Army 3. Like the previous two America’s Army titles the game will be free to play.

America’s Army 3 is boasting some major improvements over it’s two predecessors. The ultra-realistic first person shooter was built from the ground up this time around, using the Unreal Engine 3 to do most of the heavy lifting. And no more jumping. Gone are the days of hopping around corners like a Halo freak. Also the U.S. Army took a lot of time and effort to improve on the movement mechanics. Players will move more fluidly and have smoother transitions between crouching positions, prone positions and full on sprints.

Another new feature will be highly accurate ballistics properties. The Army painstakingly integrated all of it’s ballistic information into the game. So each bullet will have it’s own unique physical properties. Each shot will sound different depending on the bullet used, location of the shot and where the shot hits. Bullets will now be able to blast through some materials as well. You’ll have to be very careful where you choose to take cover. That wooden wall just won’t cut it anymore.

Along with the increased realism with inanimate objects comes realistic character damage as well. No health regeneration here. If you take a bullet to the leg sprinting won’t be an option. Get hit in the arm and you can kiss your accuracy goodbye. And if wounds aren’t treated by medics you’ll find yourself taking a dirt nap. That’s as real as it gets.

More new features include integrated team chat (finally!), achievements, and a very robust stat tracking system. All recommendations they received from the game’s online community. Kudos to the developers at the U.S. Army for listening.

Oh and let’s not forget the 126-player online action!

America’s Army 3 won’t be released until June 17th, but make sure to pre-load it now and save yourself some time later.

Tags: America's Army 3, PC, Steam, Valve

Left 4 Dead 2 boycott picks up Steam

Chip Loan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:36:21 +0000

Witty titles are rad.

It didn’t take long for hate and discontent to spread throughout the Steam Community. Only hours maybe even minutes. But now it’s turned into a full fledged boycott. Valve’s surprise announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 seems to have left a real sour taste in the mouth of fans of the original Left 4 Dead.

The Steam Group L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2) popped up the very same day the announcement of the sequel was made. And it’s quickly gaining popularity with almost 18,000 members as of this post. Vavle should take notice.

On the group’s profile page they layout their major gripes and grienvances with Valve. Here’s what they say irks them the most:

Significant content for L4D1 was promised, and never delivered
Valve put little faith in L4D1 since they almost certainly started working on L4D2 right after release
The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games
The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes
The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far
L4D2 is too bright to fit in with L4D1’s visual aesthetic
The fiddle-based horde music is extremely disliked, though the differently orchestrated music is otherwise welcome
L4D2’s release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before
The community has lost faith in Valve’s former reputation for commitment to their games post-release

I’ve been torn on this announcement from the get go. I for one would actually like to see a sequel. But I’m not sure the timing is right. I still think there is more that could be done with the original Left 4 Dead. Spend more time and effort honing that game in first, and inevitably any sequel will be that much better.

Take Team Fortress 2 for example. That game was released almost two years ago. But with updates, DLC’s and other tweaks the game is still as fresh as the first time I played it. And the community behind it is a huge and loyal one. Not unlike the one behind Left 4 Dead.

But let’s cut Valve some slack here. I think it’s too ealry to jump ship and call for a mutany. Let’s wait to play and experience the sequel before we call for their heads. It’s the loyal fans like the ones who started this boycott that should know that Valve almost always comes through for it’s fans. Why would now be any different?

What do you guys think? Do yo agree with the announcement of the sequel or are you dead set against it? Are you a member of the boycott?

Tags: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Valve

Left 4 Dead 2 coming this winter

Chip Loan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:42:21 +0000

Looks like November is sizing up to be a big month for sequels. With the November 10th release of Modern Warfare 2, and now the November 17th release date of Left 4 Dead 2 (it will be a Xbox 360 and PC “exclusive”). Although the game was brought up briefly yesterday morning during Microsoft’s press conference, it wasn’t until later in the day that Valve dropped more details for us to drool over.

First, the sequel will feature melee attacks! Something that was sorely missing from the first Left 4 Dead. Available melee weapons will be the following: A frying pan, complete with awesome cartoony sound effect when bounced off a zombie skull. An ax, that the players can swing high or low, depending on if you want your zombie foe to suffer leg less and bleeding out, or if you want to be a sweetie and make it quick by taking the head off. A baseball bat, which is useful in getting you through hordes of undead. And last but not least a chainsaw. A gas powered zombie mangler!

Click the jump to read more and see the trailer!

The sequel will also feature four new main characters. First there is the aptly named Coach, who is a football coach from Savannah, Georgia. Then there’s Rochelle who works for a cable news network out of Cleveland. Next there is Ellis, a southern mechanic. And finally we have Nick, who is a conman and a gambler.

Left 4 Dead 2 will also bring new Special Infected to go along with the cast from the original Left 4 Dead. Not much has been mentioned about those yet. But we do know of one, seen in the Left 4 Dead 2 trailer called The Charger. He’s what looks like a nasty looking half breed of a Tank and Common Infected. A real sweetheart.

To tie everything together there will be four new campaign settings. All taking place somewhere in the southern United States and eventually ending up in New Orleans. And what a perfect backdrop for the final campaign. A city that was built below sea level and has to bury their dead above ground. Things could get interesting!

I’m really looking forward to this sequel. I know a lot of you out there are too. What other improvements/additions do you guys want to see in the follow up to the original?

Check out the trailer…

Tags: E3, Left 4 Dead 2, Microsoft, PC, Valve, Xbox 360

TF2 Sniper update gets archer on your ass

Chip Loan — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:01:55 +0000

Steam is finally rolling out the update for the Sniper Class in Team Fortress 2. And no you won’t be getting some new high-powered .50 caliber sniper rifle. Instead you’ll get “The Huntsman”, a vicious and I’m sure challenging to use longbow. As in medieval Europe longbow.

Sure popping off headshots with the sniper rifle is fun, but why not step your game up and start picking people off with the bow and arrow!? Those unlucky enough to be near a wall when they are shot will be pinned up against it for all to see. Your corpse will be hanging there like a wonderful piece of TF2 art.

Valve will be releasing further info on new Achievements, maps, and additional unlockable weapons in the next few days. Check back with us.

Tags: PC, Steam, Team Fortress 2, Valve, Xbox 360

Steam makes buying Left 4 Dead a bargain…again

Chip Loan — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:15:54 +0000

We told you yesterday that Steam was insane enough to let you try Left 4 Dead for 24 hours at no charge. Well the fine people over at Valve forgot to take their medication again today because they are sweetening the deal even more.

You can still play L4D for free today, but if you decide to buy it (and you will) it will only set you back $23.99. That’s 40% off for all you math geniuses.

Do yourself a favor and get the free trial if you are one of the 458 people on this Earth how haven’t played L4D yet. Happy zombie hunting!

Tags: Left 4 Dead, PC, Steam, Valve

Shut Up And Game! » Valve

28,981,249,043 zombies killed so far in Left 4 Dead 2

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