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As promised during the All-Star match back at The International 2016, this evening has seen Valve release a new major patch for Dota 2. Dubbed "Dark Rift", the update introduces the long-awaited Underlord hero, who uses his powerful area of effect spells to devastate team fights while also being able to teleport himself and multiple allies across the map to a friendly unit's location. As the last hero to be ported from Dota: All Stars, Underlord's arrival is well overdue, and his abilities will undoubtedly shake up the Dota 2 scene rather substantially.

Also promised in the interim between Underlord's reveal and today's update is the arrival of a new post-game summary. The summary, as shown in the Dark Rift update announcement page,...

Suuure, we might have let our Round-Up schedule slip once again, but it's not like we haven't been busy - just check out our front page! The past few weeks have seen Valve announce major new talking points for all of their currently active projects and hardware. News featured in this week's Round-Up includes Valve's upcoming studio move, the conclusion of The International 2016, the announcement of two new Dota 2 heroes, the end of Team Fortress 2's latest class-war, and...

After over a month of competition, the Meat vs. Match class war started with the Meet Your Match update for Team Fortress 2 back in early July suddenly came to a close earlier this evening. In a 56% to 44% split, the Pyro has beaten out the Heavy to become the first in line to receive the first of a whole new line-up of class themed updates.

The contents of the update and the balance changes set to be made within have yet to be properly be revealed, but new hats, weapons, and abilities are likely all on the table. A small reference linked in the Pyro's victory blog post appears to show Valve have taken notice of an open letter written by the community a while back. The letter, written largely by professional Team...

After over a week of competition in Seattle and months of build-up, this year's iteration of The International Dota 2 tournament has finally concluded following a 3:1 match-up between Digital Chaos and Wings Gaming at the Main Event. This makes the five Chinese players of Wings Gaming the most recent winners of The Aegis of Champions, taking home a total first place prize of $9,123,681.

Congratulations to the latest winners of The International!

Wings Gaming

• shadow
• bLink
• Faith_bian
• Innocent
• iceice

Of course, runner-ups Digital Chaos don't go home empty handed, taking home just over $3M. With 105 total picked and banned heroes,...

With The International always standing as the biggest annual event for Dota 2, it shouldn't really be a surprise that Valve are using it as a platform to reveal new heroes and content - they've done it plenty of times before. However, while we all sort of expected the long-awaited arrival of Underlord (previously known as Pit Lord) during the All-Star match on Thursday, the community was recently surprised by the reveal of a brand new hero known as Monkey King.

Seemingly associated to the game's Monkey King Bar item, this mysterious new hero can seemingly use his extreme agility to overwhelm opponents before spawning hordes of rampant monkey duplicates to finish them off. Check out...

Do you remember Half-Life: Uplink? No, the film, not the demo with the same title. Well, we've covered the subject in detail in a previous ValveTime Database episode, which you can watch at the bottom of this post if you're interested.

We recently received never-before-seen production photos of the film from an individual who worked at Sierra's UK division, revealing a greater behind the scenes look of the filming and its shooting location. We'd like to thank our source for letting us share and preserve these photos.


Here is the...

In typical August fashion, Valve have recently announced the Sixth Annual Saxxy Awards, the annual TF2 and Valve-themed film making competition. This year's event is basically identical to the one held last year, featuring a total of six categories and the same exciting prizes. This year's categories are listed below:

• Best Action
• Best Drama
• Best Comedy
• Best Short
• Best Extended
• Best Overall

All videos submitted are limited to a duration limit of 3 minutes, except for those in the "Best Short" and "Best Extended" categories, which are limited to 1 and 5 minutes, respectively. Saxxy winners will receive a rare "Saxxy" weapon for use in Team Fortress 2 while "Best Overall" winners will also...

[UPDATE 2]

Valve is now planning to make the move in September.

[UPDATE 1]

In January 2017, Gabe Newell said in a Reddit AmA that Valve was going to move on July 22, 2017.

[ORIGINAL]

Under construction just two blocks away from Valve's current digs at Skyline Tower, the Lincoln Square Expansion project will feature a new tower with 710,000 square-feet of office space.


That's according to Kemper Development Company. This is a 100,000...

Phew! We've had four really busy weeks in between this Round-Up and our last episode. Although we weren't able to get any new episodes out, that doesn't mean we've skipped on news as our most recent episode recaps everything you might have missed in the absence of our Round-Ups. As for more recent news, expect to learn more about the unfolding outcome of the CS:GO gambling scandal, the on-going International 2016 tournament for Dota 2, and new VR updates for Dota 2 and...

With the Wild Card event for The International 2016 Dota 2 tournament starting in just a few days on Tuesday August 2nd, Valve have opened the event's official website. Like previous years, the event hub features as an overview for the tournament, including details about how to watch games live and via replays, how the $19+ prize pool will be distributed, how each team will be participating, and how you can keep up with all the real world action via social media.

Like last year, the extremely large prize pool will be broken up in such a way that every participating team is given something for their troubles, with positions 13th through 16th receiving a...

While those of us in the know fully understood Valve played no role with third-party gambling and betting websites, particularly those related to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and recent scandals, the company released a statement earlier today condemning their activities. In a blog post and press release by Erik Johnson, Valve confirms that they have never had any direct or indirect interactions with any of these sites, with the site owners instead simply taking advantage of the Steam OpenID API and bot accounts.


These actions, in particular the shady use of the OpenID API, are not permitted by Valve or the Steam User Agreement, permitting Valve to now clamp down hard on gambling sites and to take legal action against them where necessary. Thanks to recent shenanigans, which we discussed on...

Well, this was unexpected. It's been 7 years since Team Fortress 2 played host to all-out class warfare, but it would now seem the winner of 2007's WAR Update is fueling a brand new conflict - this time between the Pyro and the Heavy. The origins of this particular war, known as "Meat vs. Match", are unraveled in a new comic, showing the Heavy breaking into one of the Administrator's compounds to demand more weapons, only to have been beaten there by the Pyro.

Like the previous WAR Update between the Soldier and the Demoman, points earned in-game will be used as votes contributing to either Team Heavy or Team Pyro. However, unlike the previous update, it seems all points earned will contribute to...

We've all known it was coming for a long while now, but after a lengthy closed beta, Valve is now ready to release the highly anticipated competitive matchmaking mode into Team Fortress 2. As you might expect, the "Meet Your Match" update primarily focused on launching this new game type which enables users to enjoy TF2 in a more structured and balanced 6v6 format. Here's a short trailer!



Like competitive modes in other modern titles, TF2's competitive mode will feature a visible ranking system used to pit players, both playing solo and in teams, against those of equal standing in the hopes of making a fair fight. By participating in matches, players are then given a rank associated with their skill level, from the Rank 1 "Fresh Meat" to Rank...

After over a decade of designing and shipping t-shirts, hats, and toys for many of Valve's beloved franchises, the company recently revealed they would be shutting down their own merchandise store to focus all eyes on a new partnership with long-time partner WeLoveFine. With their own store now closed, the primary place to get your hands on Valve-themed merchandise will be "www.valvestore.welovefine.com", with WeLoveFine themselves seemingly handling all of the paperwork, assets, and distribution.

Given the increasing popularity of third-party sites like WeLoveFine and a shifting focus towards community-created merchandise, this transition makes a lot of sense both for Valve as a business and for all of us as consumers. WeLoveFine should now be able to focus on providing even more merchandise than ever...

In this week's slightly belated Round-Up, we're investigating a recently discovered reference to Left 4 Dead 3 in a Destinations VR tutorial and running through all the details of the biggest CS:GO gambling scandal to date.

With news of a new TF2 update coming thick and fast, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to catch all the latest details! Thanks for watching!

Valve's Tristan Reidford has lightly teased Left 4 Dead 3 in a tutorial for the Destinations Workshop Tools.

The eighth image in the tutorial, titled "08_directory_fun.png," showed a conveniently placed folder called "left4dead3."


From the pessimist's perspective, this was just a mistake. It's funny, though, that the folder viewport was scrolled in such a way that left4dead3 was shown first.

According to Tristan's Valve Developer Wiki contribution history, the image was first uploaded on June 28, and then about 24 hours later - after the community had been teased - it was replaced by an edited version to remove the Left 4 Dead 3 reference.

The arrival of this year's Steam Summer Sales also brought about several other minor talking points. These include the release of new Immortal Treasures for Dota 2, the start of CS:GO's ESL One Cologne 2016 Pick'Em Challenge, and a behind-the-scenes discussion with Valve engineers about early prototypes for SteamVR and the HTC Vive!

To stay up to date with all things Valve, subscribe to our...

With the first wave of modern virtual reality headsets now out in the wild, the number of people who have yet to try the HTC Vive or any of its competitors is quickly shrinking. Although a large number of people have now tried or purchased a Vive, the same can definitely not be said of Valve's early and extremely rare internal prototypes. First shown off at Steam Dev Days 2014 and GDC 2015, these early prototypes were extremely rough, hacked-together pieces of equipment designed exclusively to test functionality and new ideas.

While it's been a while since we've seen any of these headset concepts shown off or discussed by Valve themselves, YouTube channel "Make" recently uploaded a new video featuring Valve engineers Alan...

As confirmed by leaks some time ago, this evening has brought about the start of the 2016 Steam Summer Sale, dubbed the "Steam Summer Picnic Sale". From June 23rd through July 4th 2016, Steam users will be able to view and purchase over 12,000 pieces of discounted content, including games, software, and DLC.

Aside from a few new sections to highlight Steam Hardware devices and virtual reality, the sale and its layout are largely unchanged from previous years, with a "Highlighted Deals" area showing off some of the biggest discounts on a daily basis and an updated Discovery Queue which provides up to three Steam Trading Cards per day for those who explore it.

The simplification of these big...

After one big mess-up and three short weeks, we're finally back with a new episode of the ValveTime News Round-Up! In this episode, we're talking about Steam Dev Days 2016, The International 2016, the Steam Controller, Dota 2, The Lab, Destinations,...