ValveTime

Valve has officially confirmed to us that they will be attending E3 2012.


Earlier this year Gabe Newell did respond to some fan mail about E3, and he said that they "are not announcing anything at E3... We are going to be showing stuff everyone already knows about (CS:Go, Dota 2, 10' UI, ...)."

But in today's email, Doug Lombardi said that Valve will have some Counter-Strike: Global Offensive stuff at Sony and Microsoft's bustling booths. And a small group from the Steam team will be at E3 on business terms only, so they won't be holding any dedicated appointments with the press.


There was no mention of the "Meet the Pyro" short or the 10-foot Steam user interface, but those are believed to be released later this year. Perhaps we'll see that stuff at PAX Prime?

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Not even 3 weeks old is PeTI, the 2nd Portal 2 DLC which shipped with the Puzzle Maker and the community Steam Workshop has burst through 100,000 items. Quite an incredible number, which averages at around 5600 maps per day in that period.

As sad as my existence is, I tracked the figures every few days until the 100,000 milestone. Who doesn't love graphs!?

Alongside the dashboard comes a new hero picker, based on a 'hero card' system. It includes filters for finding specific heroes (even heroes you own cosmetic items for). Best of all, you can recommend to other players who they could pick to complement a team and avoid a 5 player carry team. If you prefer the grid style however, you can toggle that option.

Lastly, Ogre Magi was added (the only melee intelligence hero so far) and the International roster is getting quite full with 12 teams now confirmed.

Develop have revealed the details of Halo developer Bungie's new ten-year contract with Activision. The studio split away from Microsoft in 2010 and left the Halo franchise behind them.

The contract contains an unusual demand that major FPS developers Valve, Epic and Gearbox are banned from developing any games in Bungie's new Destiny franchise. We're not sure why this needs to be prevented as Valve and Epic are not in the habit of developing games within the IPs of other well-established studios and though Gearbox have done work in both Valve's and Bungie's IPs before they are now a major studio in their own right with their own franchises.
Continue reading to see more details of the contract...

A later than usual CS:GO update this week after the CS:GO blog admitted nothing would be released the Friday just gone.

This update brings a whole host of tweaks for the weapons (recoil, spread, firing modes) but most importantly all maps now support 30 spawn points (15 per side). Also chickens. All over Inferno. Full changelog: