ValveTime

After nearly half a year without a major Team Fortress 2 update, Valve have announced "Robotic Boogaloo" - the most recent sizable patch for everyone's favourite war themed hat simulator. The update, which was announced on the Team Fortress blog alongside the release of a brand new short teaser trailer and comic, is being described as "the first entirely community-created update" and includes 57 brand new community developed cosmetic items, many of which are robot themed replicas of existing hats and miscellaneous items. Every element of the update was created by the community before being evaluated and accepted by Valve including the website pages, the teaser trailer, the comic, all artwork and all in-game models. The new items are all available from the RoboCrate, a robot themed crate the community have been collecting en masse since it was added by Valve in late April 2013.


The update website uses original community created artwork uploaded to the Steam Artwork section to highlight a series of individual items included with the patch. The update is now available, so head on over to Team Fortress 2 if you feel like checking it out. While you download the update, don't forget to watch the impressive update teaser trailer included on the main announcement page, which was created by community member "MrPopulus89".

Valve today announced six more games have been greenlit for release on Steam. The six games are:

Bleed - a 2D action platformer
Game Dev Tycoon - a game development simulator
Stardew Valley - a co-op "country-life RPG"
RIOT - a game about riots
Legends of Eisenwald - a medieval RPG-RTS
The Legend - a first person horror game that isn't about collecting notes

We'll keep you up to date on any more titles getting through the greenlight process.

Following a week of speculation and rumour, Valve have officially announced the beta of Steam Trading Cards, a new feature that will allow players to earn and trade rewards using their games and Community Profile. Also included is a major cosmetic update for the Steam Community, offering players better ways to personalise the look and layout of their profile pages.

Players will be able to obtain the new Trading Cards in two ways. Firstly, by playing any of the participating games on Steam and secondly, by trading with other players in the Steam Community. Currently, the beta allows users to obtain cards using any of the games listed below, with more titles to follow in the coming months:

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• Don't Starve
• Team Fortress 2
• Portal 2
• Dota 2
• Half-Life 2

Once you have amassed a completed collection of cards, they can be combined to craft a badge specific to that game. These badges will be displayed on your profile page, including one "featured" badge displayed at the top of the page. Badges now also posses an XP value that contributes towards your profile level. Each new level offers certain perks, including increased friends list capacity and Profile Showcases, a new feature that allows you to highlight your favourite games, workshop items, or achievements on your profile page.
Crafting badges will also unlock their own randomised rewards, including coupons for the steam store which offer discounts on Games and DLC; new emoticons for use in your steam chats; and background art for your newly customisable profile page. All of these crafting rewards are tradable. However, they can only be used while you own them.

Profile pages in general have also seen a major update, with a greater emphasis on your personal playing habits and style. Along with customisable background art, information such as achievements, statistics, and community contributions have been organised into blocks which can be highlighted via the new Profile Showcase feature mentioned above.

Invites to the new beta are being released periodically, so be sure to sign up here if you wish to get early access to all the new features.

Reddit users are reporting seeing new versions of the Steam Community profile pages on the Steam Community website and in the Steam client itself, possibly accidentally on Valve's part as all changes seem to have been since been reverted. These new profiles don't seem to be available to everyone but if you want to see them for yourself there's a handy album of screenshots available here. All profiles seem to be between level 0 and 10.

The new profile features a system that allows users to gain levels by earning XP like in an RPG. These seem to be earned mainly through completing Steam Badges. The Pillar of the Community Badge seems to also be updated with some new tasks that reveal new features for the Steam Community and give more insight into the Steam Community Trading Cards we revealed on Saturday.

Although it's still unclear how you are to get trading cards one of the badges reveals that if you collect a complete set of cards you can craft them into a "game badge" for your profile. Other virtual items to upgrade your profile with will also drop during trading card crafting including profile backgrounds and Steam chat emoticons. Both of these items are tradable.

One last feature shown is a "Featured Showcase" which seems to be a space to show off your favourite games, perhaps with the game badges mentioned above. Hopefully the new Community will be pushed out to everyone soon. I'll be trading a Potato Sack Badge for a Gogoat.

If you thought Dota 2 took the spotlight in previous weeks, you'd better get yourself ready for this week's ValveTime Weekly News Round-Up! In the news this week, the International 3 tournament received several major updates while the SteamDB community unearthed something known as the "Steam Trading Card Beta". If you're interested in virtual reality and/or Linux, you'll want to check out Half-Life 2 as a set of updates earlier this week introduced beta support for Ubuntu and the Oculus Rift. Stay tuned for more ValveTime videos, news and reviews coming soon.