ValveTime

Valve have already begun giving out their Christmas presents, with the first sizable gift appearing in the form of a brand new major patch for Dota 2, known as the "Wraith-Night" update. Frostivus is once again cancelled, with Wraith-Night, which appears as this year's Winter update, instead focusing on Skeleton King, who was recently removed from the game in preparation for this update.

The announcement page mentions that "Skeleton King is crumbling to dust after too many resurrections", which means it's up to the Dota 2 community to bring him back to life as a redesigned character known as the "Wraith King"! The new mode is described as a horde game type which pits players to defend themselves and Skeleton King's wintry Altar against dangerous monsters while collecting "Wraith Essence" to revive the fallen monarch.

Once morning arrives at the conclusion of the event, Skeleton King will be permanently reborn as the Wraith King. At the conclusion of every match, all five players are awarded "Phantom Fragments", with the game rewarding more items based on individual player performance. Fragments can be used to purchase "Wraith-Night Reliquaries", "Offerings", and "Tributes", all of which function as separate tiers which provide different types of items.

Today at around 2:00pm PST (10:00pm GMT), Valve will be notifying the 300 selected beta testers for Steam Machines, Steam Controllers, and SteamOS. The beta participants are very unfortunately limited to the United States because of international regulatory hurdles. Though Valve have made it clear that the decision to limit units to the U.S. will not affect the commercially available Steam Machines forthcoming from other companies, which we will learn more about on January 6th at CES.


Chosen beta participants will also receive a special badge on their Steam Community profile, as well as a number of games that run natively on SteamOS.

SteamOS will also be made available to the public on December 13th when the hardware ships. Though Valve were quick to mention that only experienced Linux users are recommended to try it out at this early stage.

To see the original blog post, click here.

It's a little delayed, but it wouldn't be Valve ...Damn it, I said that last week! Erm, anyway - now is your chance to catch up on all the news from the past week with the ValveTime Weekly News Round-Up for 9th December 2013! Headlines from the past week included the release of the Unhappy Returns comic for Team Fortress 2, the announcement of a "Ranked Matchmaking" system for Dota 2, and the reveal of some really quite lovely Pyro-themed Christmas sweaters!


Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all the latest ValveTime videos. We would also appreciate it if you could head on over to our Dota 2 Announcer Pack on the Steam Workshop to rate us positively! Thanks for watching.

In a move which may surprise and please a whole lot of people, Valve have recently announced that "Ranked Matchmaking" will be added to Dota 2 in the "next major update", which is widely believed to also feature the return of the Frostivus/Greeviling update from last year.

To explain what Ranked Matchmaking entails, the Dota 2 team have released a rather sizable blog post discussing how this new mode is likely to improve the matchmaking system for experienced players looking for a more competitive environment. Ranked Matchmaking will only be made available to players with a certain level of experience, as the mode features a large number of restrictions designed to keep the mode balanced and enjoyable for all. You can check out these restrictions and criteria in the spoiler tag below.


As explained, a system known as MMR (Matchmaking Ranking) is used to calculate the skill level of Dota 2 players during the matchmaking process. While MMR has previously only been used behind the scenes to group players and teams together, the ranking will be publicly visible for you and your friends to see for the first time in Ranked Matchmaking. MMR is updated at the conclusion of every match, using complex algorithms to calculate the performance of a player relative to the team mates and opponents they have been paired with. For example, players who beat opponents with an equal or higher MMR rank are likely to be rewarded with an increased ranking, while players who lose against opponents with an equal or lower rank are to be given a reduced score.

In theory, this system helps to balance out the matchmaking system, as players should always be pitted against evenly matched players with a ranking close to their own. The rate at which a player's MMR ranking shifts depends on multiple different factors, such as whether or not a player is partied up, and how experienced they are with the game, as shown below.


However, the MMR system is far more complex than this rather basic, so we recommend checking out the extremely lengthy blog post over on the Dota 2 website if you're interested in the game enough to want to learn more.

It's a little delayed, but it wouldn't be ValveTime if it was on time, right? Anyway, this past week saw Valve reveal the winners of the 2013 Saxxy Awards and release a new CS:GO update which replaced all of the previously available weapon skins with six all-new collections! The first third-party Steam Machine was also revealed earlier this week, courtesy of iBuyPower.


As usual, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to rate our Dota 2 Announcer Pack positively over on the Steam Workshop! Thanks for watching.