ValveTime

As many of you may have noticed, Gabe returned to Reddit earlier this week to take part in his promised AMA. This episode of the ValveTime Weekly News Round-Up includes a full recap of the event alongside discussions for the upcoming arrival of Valve's first officially licensed board game, the release of the latest themed content pack from TF2Maps.net, and more!

The fine folks over at TF2Maps.net have recently revealed their latest themed custom content pack for use in Team Fortress 2, created by forum users E-Arkham and Cinnamon (aka Aly). As you would imagine, this new "Japan Content Pack" is primarily themed around traditional Japanese architecture and foliage.


A wide number of high quality new props are featured in the pack, including various lanterns, bridges, trees, bamboo, doorways, structural supports, signage, a resupply locker, and even a themed upgrade station for use in the Mann vs. Machine gamemode. Most of the models included with the pack come in a variety of sizes and skins, allowing for map creators to easily develop the distinctive red and blue colour contrasts present within so many TF2 maps. Various themed textures and overlays were also designed specifically for the pack, including 7 coloured wood variants, bamboo flooring, and a number of signs. If that isn't interesting enough for you, the pack also includes a rather pretty blossom particle effect, which players can totally fail to notice as they rocket jump through levels at high speed blasting everything in their path.

Click here to check out the rest of the content included in the Japan Content Pack! [...]

Update (March 7, 2014):
Even though the AMA never officially ended -- Gabe said he was going away for a bit, and that he would return after more questions had been upvoted -- it's been three full days since the AMA was left hanging, so we're assuming that it's over at this point. As such, click here for the finished, nicely-formatted PDF containing all of the questions that Gabe answered.


Original Story (March 3, 2014):
Earlier today, Gabe Newell made true on his word to hold an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit if the"Heart of Racing" charity effort reached a donation goal of $500,000. Even if it was a day later than originally expected, Valve's co-founder took to Reddit and fielded a number of questions submitted and upvoted by the community. Gabe was joined by Valve employees Erik Wolpaw, Erik Johnson, Ido Magal, and Greg Coomer.

In the AMA, Gabe has covered a broad range of questions, ranging from the location of the next Dota 2 International tournament to the reason why Gabe and Mike Harrington picked the name "Valve". (We think they made the right choice, since "ValveTime" sounds better than "RhinoScarTime".)

Click here to read the answers Gabe and the others provided during the AMA! [...]

As you may have noticed, this past week wasn't particularly bustling with headline news, but there was definitely still enough developments to fill up an all-new ValveTime Weekly News Round-Up! In this episode, we talk about the public release of Steam Family Sharing, a major update to the Steamworks Development tools, the reveal of "Fantasy Dota", and much more!


As always, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to give our Dota 2 Announcer Pack a thumbs up over on the Steam Workshop. Thanks for watching.

It's been a pretty slow news week, so we thought we would fill up some of the empty space with a new episode in our A Minute With series! In this new episode, we relive some of our fondest memories from Valve's gameplay library by spending A Minute With Portal, Valve's critically acclaimed puzzle title from 2007!