valve-software posts

With over 1,200 PC and Mac games now available to download on Steam with more added every day, it can get hard for its users to find games that they might like. Today Steam's creators at Valve have launched a new tool called "Recommended For You" that is designed to give its users suggestions for games and downloadable content based on the user's likes and purchases The tool also uses recommendations from your Steam friends.

The games themselves will show up on the Steam "Recommended for You" web page. The game choices also appear in a user's Steam Community News blotter page. Each game on the service will also have a Recommended iist of other related game titles.

Portal 2 is getting a couple of extra months of development. It's maker Valve just sent over word that the long awaited sequel to the acclaimed puzzle-shooter will be delayed once again. First announced in 2009 for a fall 2009 release and then pushed back to early February, Valve says the game will now be releassed the week of April 18, 2011

Valve makes light of the new delay, saying in its email press release, "This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve's proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date." Valve also has another game, DOTA 2, planned for release sometime in 2011.

Update: Shacknews reports that Portal 2 will be out on April 20 in the US and Australia and on April 22 for Europe

Super Meat Boy for the PC finally has a release date. The too-cool-for-school indie platform game from the two man dev studio Team Meat will be out for our platform on November 30. Pre-orders via Steam will be priced at $10 rather than the game's regular price of $15.

Steam owners also get their own exclusive character; the headcrab from Valve's Half-Life games (not quite an indie game but it's still cool). And if you get the non-Steam PC version of the game, don't worry. It gets its own exclusive character; a Goo Ball from 2D Boy's World of Goo game. There's still two more PC characters from the indie world that are yet to be revealed for Super Meat Boy's PC port.

Forbes magazine isn't exactly known for its PC gaming coverage but for a new feature about business people that they fell you need to know in 2011 they picked Valve founder Gabe Newell as one of them.

Not surprisingly the wave from Forbes is not about Newell leading a company behind Portal 2, DOTA 2 or the next update for Left 4 Dead 2. It is about Valve's continuing success with its Steam PC game download service which Forbes speculates is generating hundreds of millions of dollars for Valve. There's nothing in the article that most PC gamers didn't know but it's still nice to see that our industry gets some attention from the mainstream now and again.

Is Steam killing the PC game market? That's what two separate stories on the MCV web site are claiming this morning. The articles quote two anonymous sources, one from a digital download retailer and the other from a UK-based brick-and-mortar games retailer, that claim Valve's PC game download service is making things too hard for its rivals.

The stories also claim, again via anonymous sources, that "at least two big-name digital retailers are facing financial difficulties" due to Steam's current dominance of the PC game download market. Digital retailers are supposedly asking game publishers to offer PC games without Steamworks with one saying, "I've fought hard for my customer, and never before have I had to give my customers away. Steam is killing the PC market and it is no wonder digital retailers are failing."

Meanwhile on the retail side, MCV claims two UK-based retailers "... will demand that publishers remove Steam from their games – or they will not sell them in any form." It quotes one of them as saying, "If we have a digital service, then I don't want to start selling a rival in-store." It has to be said that, at least in the US, not everyone feels that way. GameStop offers Steamworks-based PC games in both its stores and via digital download while the PC game download service Direct2Drive also offers Steamworks-based PC games.

Players of Valve's multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 will notice a few odd things if they play the game at a certain time period on Tuesday. The game's official web site has announced that from 4-5:30 pm Eastern time on Tuesday a number of features in Team Fortress 2 will be unavailable due to maintenance.

While the game itself will still be working, certain elements like crafting, trading, backpacks, loadouts and the in-game Mann Co item store will not be working during the maintenance time period. There's also some changes being made for the third party developers who are working with the Team Fortress 2 Item Web API.

Last July a trailer for a Half-Life universe fan short file called Beyond Black Mesa hit the interwebs and we definitely liked what we saw. The action-packed trailer was made even more impressive by the fact that it was made by a circle of fans for only $1,200.

This week a second trailer for Beyond Black Mesa was released which showed us even more of the fight against the Combine. It also makes us want that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 game even more (how about it, Valve?). The film's official web site says the full short movie has been making rounds on the film festive circuit. Hopefully they will release the full version of this project on the net sooner rather than later.

Left 4 Dead 2's weekly choice for a new mutation gameplay mode is all about healing ... and carrying what some would consider to be a creepy looking figurine. The newest mutation mode for Valve's zombie shooter is called Healing Gnome.
As you might guess the mode, played in co-op, is all about holding a garden gnome to gain health. It's the only way for players to gain health in the matches so the key to success is sharing the gnome (and no, that's not a metaphor ... at least we don't think it is).

Next week's mutation mode is up for grabs as Valve will pick from one of the previous five modes: Bleedout Versus, Hunting Party, Lone Gunman, Taaannkk and of course Healing Gnome.

A few weeks after its official reveal, Valve has now launched its official web site for DOTA 2. There's still no official screenshots of this upcoming remake of the Defense of the Ancients mod but the site does feature a Q&A with answers provided by the mysterious "IceFrog."

Some of the questions deal with spectating in matches, how the new game will handle online lag, if there will be a beta test (in short, yes) and more. One question that Valve has yet to address publicly is the issue of the company trying to secure the trademark for DOTA 2 which is an issue of contention with former Defense of the Ancients developers as well as Blizzard who made the game (Warcraft III) which was used as the basis of the original DOTA game.

It's the Friday before Halloween and the already pretty scary Left 4 Dead 2 is going to get a lot scarier if you and your buddies decide to try out Valve's zombie co-op shooter's newest weekly Mutation gameplay mode.

From now until next Friday you can play a variation of the Versus team mode called Bleed Out Versus. As some of you might have figured out this version of Versus has players dealing with the fact that there is no permanent health for them. it's all temporary which means players will be pretty much frantic to find pain pills or adrenaline to keep their health up.