ValveTime

It hasn't been the busiest week for news, but we still found plenty to talk about for this episode, including how the infamous Heartbleed OpenSSL bug may have affected Valve, a recent CS:GO blog post following the changing face of the Overpass map, and various new pieces of merchandise themed after Dota 2 and Portal 2.

Welcome to the premiere episode of ValveTime Database, an all-new series where we bring you everything there is to know about the enemies, characters, items, and locations within Valve's fictional universes. In this first episode, we take a close look at possibly the most recognisable Valve species to date, the Headcrab.

We have a lot of news to get through this week, so let's get started! The headlines this past week largely focused around the reveal of The International 2014 Dota 2 tournament, the release of the "A Cold Day In Hell" Team Fortress 2 comic, and the announcement that Unreal Engine 4.1 will feature native Linux and SteamOS game packing, helping developers easily port their titles over to the open-source operating system.

Earlier today, Valve announced that the community may now submit merchandise designs to the Steam Workshop that, if chosen by Valve and merchandise partner WeLoveFine, could be sold as official designs at The International 4 event in July. By going to the "The International" tab on the Dota 2 Steam Workshop, Steam users can submit and vote for designs.


Designs that make it through the selection process will be sold at The Valve Store, The Secret Shop at the International 4, and various other retailers, including the WeLoveFine online store. The creators of the chosen designs will be paid royalties directly by WeLoveFine, who will be producing and distributing the merchandise. A full FAQ page can be found here.

Additionally, merchandise from last year's The International 3 is still being sold at The Valve Store. As always, we'll be sure to keep you up-to-date with all the latest news about Valve, Dota 2, and The International.

After several months of silence following the Smissmas event in December 2013, the Team Fortress 2 blog has been updated with a new post outlining a number of upcoming changes set to arrive sometime in the future.


The first major reveal includes a preview of an upcoming "Moonbase" map which features "a whole bunch of interesting new gameplay", something the team is "pretty excited about". The post also provides a look at a piece of concept art for the map, showing how the Moonbase may look once complete.

Additionally, the post has also revealed that community contributors will soon be able to upload their own custom taunts to the Steam Workshop. The team has confirmed they are currently working on animating some brand new taunts, which will likely be added to the game around the same time as the aforementioned Steam Workshop support.