ValveTime

Valve have begun a trial run of a new community initiative for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive named Overwatch. The idea is to recruit a group of "investigators" from the community in order to combat persistent cheating and other disruptive, in-game behaviour. Players are selected to become investigators based on a variety of criteria, including their win ratio in competitive games, the age of their steam account, the number of hours they have played, and their own record of behaviour.

Once chosen, community investigators will receive cases via a new "Overwatch" option on their menu screen. Each new case will consist of around 10 minutes of recorded footage featuring the suspected player in action, after which they will be asked to make a decision as to their accountability. If enough investigators agree that the accused player is guilty of an offence, then a suitable banning will be issued. Over time, each individual investigator will receive a score based on the number of cases they have judged, as well as the frequency that other Overwatch Investigators agree.

For now, the system is undergoing a limited beta test in order to ensure the fairness of the system and reveal any major problems with its conception. A full FAQ for the Overwatch initiative can be found here.

Valve certainly stepped it up this week and gave our new writers plenty to talk about. In the news this week, Valve announced the International 3 Dota 2 tournament, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive received the first "Operation" community map pass and a variety of Steam updates introduced brand new features to the service. Stay tuned for the return of ValveTime TalkTime coming later this week! We promise this time.

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.

Game and Steam updates featured pretty predominantly over the past week. Valve updated Team Fortress 2 to include support for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive received an update which introduced the return of the classic CS_Militia map and Dota 2 was updated to improve a variety of elements related to gameplay and visuals. You can check out more information on these news stories and more in our ValveTime Weekly News Round-Up!

You can once again blame James for the delay of this episode. He'll probably try to cover his tracks by lying and claiming some big blizzard got in his way. Regardless, the past week saw the inclusion of Steam Workshop support for maps in CS:GO, the reveal of Steam's Consumer Survey results for January 2013 and Gabe spoke with JJ Abrams at DICE 2013, where the pair revealed their interest in working together on potential Half-Life or Portal films.