ValveTime

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.

SteamDB, a website dedicated to exploring the Steam database, has a listing up for "Steam Trading Card Beta" which was added to Steam a few days ago. A banner image for the Beta was also found on the Steam servers and looks like this:


Unfortunately that's all the info we have on this. Is Valve building some kind of trading card game directly into Steam or will these cards represent something about your Steam account? Share your thoughts in the comments.

This week saw the arrival of CES 2013, and Valve were there in force as the first SteamBox was revealed by Xi3. We also received a lot of other news this week, such as the arrival of Medusa in a Dota 2 update, the retiring of the nine original Team Fortress 2 hats and a version of the Half-Life alpha was leaked onto the internet. Oh, and we found some Half-Life 2: Episode Four screenshots, which we think you might be interested in.

We've spent the last few days taking the time to experience and investigate the files included with the recently leaked Half-Life Alpha, which dates from 1997. In the latest ValveTime Spotlight video, we discuss what did and didn't make into the final game. And what about the briefly discussed Prospero game that came before? Find out!

Half-life 2: Episode 4 or Return to Ravenholm was a title being developed by Arkane studios between 2006 and 2007 before eventually being cancelled. Little of the game beyond concept art and an animation reel demo has been seen before now. All images are verified as work from Episode 4.

Our investigators have uncovered a selection images which show some in-game shots of the title which show new textures and models Arkane had planned for the game. You may notice a HUD element saying 'Absorption' in the images, if you have any suggestions what that might be, we'd like to hear them!

You can also check out our video showing all the media from Episode 4 right here.


Read More & Watch our Episode 4 Media Video [...]