Tag Archives: valve

It has been several months since we first heard about Valve's plans to phase out Steam Greenlight and replace it with a new service known as ‘Steam Direct'. One of the key changes with Steam Direct was originally going to be the price of submitting a game to Steam, which …

Last week, Valve began its series of community posts outlining the future of the Steam Store. The first post focussed on recommendations and improving discoverability. This week, Valve is turning its attention to what it calls ‘fake games' and the ‘bad actors' that produce them. Valve has sussed out that …

As we learned earlier this year, Valve is planning some significant changes to the Steam Store at the moment. One of the key changes has been Steam's recommendation algorithm, which Valve has now fully detailed in a new update, going over the Steam Store's ‘philosophy' and the tech behind it …

Almost two decades. That’s how long it took for German authorities to finally take Half-Life, the original and all its offspring, off its list of censored media content. Germany, a country known for its openness, political correctness and proactive federal authorities has always taken a very aggressive approach towards media …

Over the years, Valve has faced quite a bit of criticism over customer support. Things have improved quite a bit with the introduction of refunds but there is still room for improvement. Now in order to be more transparent about its support efforts, Valve has launched a new support stats …

Back at the start of 2016, Marc Laidlaw, the lead writer on Half-Life and Half-Life 2 departed from Valve. It was a shock at the time but the writers behind Half-Life 2 Episode One and Episode Two remained. Now this year, those writers have also left, meaning there are no …

It looks like Valve is finally looking to crack down on ‘asset flippers' and address concerns regarding the quality of games flooding the Steam store on a daily basis. Similarly to how Valve decided to get more involved with the press earlier this year, Valve has also begun consulting with …

Steam User Reviews are often a useful tool for many looking to pick up a new game on Steam but there are ways to exploit the system. For example, there are some developers out there that will gift copies of their games in exchange for positive reviews. As a result, …

Now that virtual reality is out there and in consumer hands, more companies are choosing to invest in it. In fact at GDC right now, LG is showing off its very own SteamVR-supported competitor to the HTC Vive. So with all of this new hardware coming in, Valve plans to …

Valve has been working on its Source 2 engine for a long time now and while the engine has popped up in the likes of Dota 2, we have yet to see a game truly showcase what the new engine is capable of. Fortunately, it seems like Valve is currently …

Back in December, an Australian federal court ordered a $3 million fine against Valve after finding that the company had breached Australian Consumer Law between 2011 and 2014. This had been an on-going case for some time and was a huge factor in Valve's decision to finally start offering refunds …

A while back, Valve acquired Impulsonic, a peculiar move for a company that doesn't delve into sound all that much. However, now we know why as today ‘Steam Audio' was announced, which is intended to usher in a new generation of spatial audio. Steam Audio has been in development for …

Valve has announced that it is ditching the requirement of a $3,000 training course to become a SteamVR tracking partner, meaning just about anyone can make SteamVR enabled hardware. While the course and in-person training will still be available for those who want it, Valve is also making much of …

Valve CEO Gabe Newell and members of the company's virtual reality developmental team sat down recently with the Valve News Network to talk about what it's been working on lately and what we can expect in the future. During it they discussed the idea of content before price cuts, newer, …

Back in 2015, Valve teamed up with Bethesda to experiment with the idea of paid mods, giving modders a chance to make some cash for their work on games. However, the paid mods launch for Skyrim wasn't handled particularly well and it was quickly drowned in controversy, leading to paid …

Valve appears to be opening up quite a bit this year. Last month, Gabe Newell held an impromptu AMA on Reddit and now just a few weeks later, Valve has held a long three-hour press briefing at its offices, giving people plenty of time to ask questions and figure out …

Steam has gone through various changes over the years, the version we have today is quite different from what we had back in 2005 for instance. However, it looks like we may see another major update to Steam's user interface in 2017, as this evening a new image appeared on …

Valve has announced that it will be cracking down on sites that allow people to gamble with their Team Fortress 2 game skins. It the short term it will be banning accounts associated with the sites, putting users at risk of losing items. In the future though, it may well look …

While the HTC Vive has enjoyed many months on the market as the only headset to use Valve's SteamVR tracking technology, it won't remain that way for much longer. In fact, soon there could be quite a few SteamVR headsets on the market, as Valve has confirmed that around 500 …

CEO and founder of Valve and oft-cited saviour of PC gaming, Gabe Newell, will be conducting a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the site on 17th January at 3PM PST (11PM GMT). This was secured by the new “The_Gaben” subreddit, mere days after being founded and it's been confirmed …

Microsoft's strategy of giving away free upgrades to Windows 10 looks to have been worthwhile, as a year and a half on from its release, most gamers on Steam are running it. While Windows 7 64 still maintains a foothold, nothing else even comes close. Windows 10 adoption rate has …

It's probably a good thing that Valve helped crack down on Counter Strike: Global Offensive skin gambling earlier this year, as it's just introduced a bevy of new aesthetic items that many more people would have been wagering if it hadn't. Gloves! They're the new gun skins and come in …

Valve has been attempting to spruce up its sales over the last couple of years in an effort to try and turn buying games into some form of meta game. However, with the Autumn Sale this year, Valve has chosen to try something different- The Steam Awards. For the first …

Since 2014, Australia's consumer rights group, the ACCC, has been hammering down on Valve due to the ‘no refunds' policy that was enforced on Steam prior to June 2015. In fact, this court case is likely one of the major catalysts that forced Valve into implementing its current refunds policy. …

If you open up your Steam account this morning, the Store page will look a little different than you remember. In a large update, Valve has overhauled the aesthetics and layout of its storefront once again, this time easing back on the free-flowing look that had dominated for a while …

If you want to let members of the public try out Steam VR games and experiences using your hardware, you need Valve's free commercial license to do so. However that limits you to only a few pieces of software for people to play. To expand that further, you need paid …

Following on from the revelation that not only were lots of people gambling away their in-game skins for games like CS:GO, but that Youtubers were marketing the practice to children, a lot of people have asked Valve to do something about it. Throwing their weight behind that cry now, is …

Following feedback from the community and developers, Valve has made changes to the way Steam's review system works once again. Although reviews from those who activated the game from a source other than Steam, still won't contribute to the game's rating, those reviews will now at least be easy to …

If you ended up with a Steam key for any other reason than you purchased it, your review will no longer contribute to the review score. This is part of a new update Valve has released to try and halt the practice of developers and publishers incentivising positive reviews with …

British Telecom (BT) has announced that it's taking Valve to court, over what it claims are patent infringements by the longtime game developer and publisher. While there does seem to be some merit to the suit, all of the patents are rather generic, so there will likely be some wiggle …