Displaying items by tag: Valve

After passing various beta versions since November last year onwards, the Steam application for Linux is now officially released in the Ubuntu Software Center. Steam for Linux can be downloaded from there in both 32 and 64 bit versions. The new Steam App is officially supported in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.10. But, as in the beta stage, Steam for Linux can work with minimal adjustments on different version of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions like Debian.

Lately there have been some rumors going around saying that Valve plans to fire some of their employees, and now Gamasutra brought news that on Monday they fired 25 workers. After contacting the recently laid-off, one gets the impression that this relegation had nothing to do with the individual's work, but global challenges Valve is faced with.

The Vice-president of Sega's department for digital distribution asserted during London Games Conference that Valve's Steam has a whopping 50 million registered users. In addition, approximately half a million users willingly embraced the so-called Big Picture mode, which is currently in the beta testing phase. Also we wrote about Linux beta for the Steam client getting 5000 more users so soon these numbers could explode even further.

About a day ago we brought you good news about Steam sales and today we bring you more; especially if you are a Linux user. Valve has announced on their official website that they will drastically increase the number of beta testers for the Ubuntu Linux version of Steam's client. So far there are about 1000 Linux users that testing the platform which was launched with 12 Steam titles and the Big Picture mode, running on Ubuntu 12.04.

The Big Autumn sale begins today on Steam. The whole thing will be closed in about seven days and for now it seems to us that the far more serious sales will come around Christmas and New Year. In fact, Valve has confirmed that the holiday winter sale on Steam can be expected between December 20th and January 4th next year. They asked Tamas Bako, CEO at Artery Studios to include their game Secret of Magic Crystals in both the autumn and winter sales and they even gave the exact dates when will it happen. He was keen to share it on the developer diary, so now we know that the autumn sale will take place from November 21st to 27th, while the winter one will be from December 20th to January 4th.

Steam Workshop, Valve's service for sharing modifications for Team Fortress 2 has grown into a serious service that allows moders to share content and comment on many games with the community. The workshop currently supports 16 titles with many announcing upcoming support and community modders so far distributed nearly 300,000 modifications in the form of new models, maps, campaigns, and even complete games created with Gamemaker Studio.

Today Valve announced that they are looking “for folks to come to Valve and playtest both released and unreleased versions of our games as well as play around with some of our hardware prototypes”. This means that you will be able to test games at Valve's HQ and not only from your home. However take notice that this testing sessions last around an hour, so it won’t be those kind of beta game tests you do at home that could last for days, weeks, even months. Valve is certainly making a good move with this idea and as a huge amount of gamers like to play betas there will be great interest in it.

After Valve added new categories ranging from creativity to productivity earlier they have officially started to sell non-game software for the Windows platform. After the reviewing process, apps can be purchased and users can choose where they will install them in the latest Steam beta. Valve has all rights to provide certain discounts if they think it will be good for customers and developers. The developers won’t get their standard 70% cut of the sales, but instead revenue will depend on volume, price and other factors. So it is up to Valve to take care of that, and so far no developers have argued about this.

I was never sure why people play Minecraft and even after I watched people play it I couldn’t find anything interesting in it. Now I have started to like them, as game maker Markus “Notch“ Persson has expressed his disappointment over Windows 8. If you are a fan of this game, and play it regularly don’t rush with upgrading to Windows 8, because you won’t be able to play the game if you do that. That's right, Persson stated on his twitter “Got an email from Microsoft, wanting to help “certify“ minecraft for win8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform.”

In 1998 a new company crated from former Microsoft employees launched a game that would change the way we played first person shooters forever. The game was Half Life and although it followed games like Castle Wolfenstien and Doom it brought something new to the genre, thinking and puzzle solving. Instead of just walking into a room and killing all the bad guys you had to solve puzzles and interact with the environment to make it through the game. The enemies you faced were also smarter than what was present in Doom or Wolfenstien. Half Life also introduced one of the iconic characters in gaming: Dr. Gordon Freeman and his trusty crowbar. Now a group called Black Mesa Source has brought the original Half Life to a new generation of gamers. They have taken the original game (up to the Lambda Core) and refreshed it with new graphics and a few surprises for those of us that have played before. So let’s see if this new release of the classic Half Life can recreate the magic that the Valve brought to us with our first meeting with Gordon Freeman and the anomalous materials lab at Black Mesa.