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From now until July 31st, seven of the top-rated Steam Workshop maps will be available on official CS:GO Classic Casual servers through Operation Payback, available now through an in-game purchase for a limited-time discounted price of $2.99, or $5.99 after the offer expires.


The seven maps that will be made available are: Museum, Downtown, Thunder, Favela, Motel, Seaside, and Library. After purchasing the update, players will be able to invite their friends to play on the seven new maps with them - even if they don't have the pass.


It also comes with an upgradable challenge coin, which can be viewed alongside players' avatars. Players will begin at bronze and can battle their way to gold.

Operation Payback is the first in a series of limited-time updates aimed at giving a financial reward to some of CS:GO's most popular mapmakers. From the Counter-Strike blog:
Source: Counter-Strike Blog

Please note: the Store page for CS:GO reads that there should be eight maps, while the Counter-Strike blog, the in-game map list, and the Operation Payback page state that there are seven. It would seem that Operation Payback was to contain one more map, Pool Day, but for unknown reasons they chose to exclude it. Pool Day is currently available in the Steam Workshop.

In the latest update to the official Left 4 Dead Blog, Valve announced that the Beta Client for Left 4 Dead 2 will expand its availability to the entire community next week.

The Beta Client was introduced back in February with restricted access to mod makers wishing to help test the "Extended Mutation System" -- a scripting system that allows modders to create custom game modes with greater complexity than currently possible with the existing SDK. The public beta should allow all players to download and test these Mutations when it goes live.

In addition to the EMS, the Beta Client will also see testing of the upcoming Linux version of Left 4 Dead 2. Linux support for the game was first seen back in September 2012, when Eric Anholt demonstrated the game as an example of Source on Linux. The game will join Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source, and the GoldSRC era titles in Valve's Linux library.

Following up on the success of their major tournaments in 2011 and 2012, Valve has today announced "The International 3" for Dota 2, which is set to be hosted in Seattle in August 2013. Similarly to previous years, the International 3 will feature the top 16 Dota 2 teams from all corners of the globe in a massive tournament, all of whom are fighting to win a grand prize of $1,000,000.


The tournament was unveiled earlier today via an announcement page and accompanying post on the Dota 2 blog. While both of these sources are particularly light on information, Valve have promised that more teams and information will be revealed in the coming days. At time of writing, Chinese team Invictus Gaming are currently the only confirmed team to appear on the tournament page after having secured their place as the 2012 International 2 champions. The event, which is scheduled to take place between the 7th and 11th of August 2013, will be held at the Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington, which is the same venue used for last year's International 2 tournament. 12 of the remaining teams will be added to the tournament roster in the near future via invites from Valve while the last 3 team slots will be selected through a pair of qualifier tournaments set to take place in May. The winners of each tournament will receive a guaranteed space in the tournament and the runners up from both qualifiers must fight one another to determine which team will become the tournament's "Wild Card" team.

We can also confirm that Valve can officially use the number 3! As usual, stay tuned to ValveTime for all the latest news as we learn more.

Valve have officially announced functionality for subscription-based billing services within Steam. While the Steam Store already contains a sizable library of subscription-based games, Subscription Plans will, for the first time, allow developers to offer users the ability to make regular payments without the need for a second, external account.

The news came alongside the release of the greenlit Fantasy MMO Darkfall: Unholy Wars, which will be the first release to make use of the new system. Valve also stated that "additional subscription-based games" will follow, and included a full FAQ on the Steam Support page.

UPDATE: Cry of Fear has since been released on Steam as a free to download mod as originally planned. You can find it over on Steam at this cleverly placed link.

You may have noticed that promised release of the Half-Life 1 mod Cry of Fear on Steam didn't happen today. According to a post on the Cry of Fear Facebook page this is because Valve thought the team wanted to charge for it when they in fact wanted it to remain free. They're currently in discussions with Valve to resolve the issue and hope they will still be able to release it for free.