Valve News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend an in-person deposition regarding an antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.

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Steam has introduced a new way to spot which PC games support PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense controllers, as well as being able to search by specific controllers.

Half-Life turns 25 years old tomorrow, with new maps and updates to celebrate. Valve also reunited the game's original developers for an hour-long making-of documentary in which its original programmers and artists reminisce about creating the first-person classic at a time when many of them had never shipped a game before.

Half-Life came out 25 years ago tomorrow and to celebrate Valve ahve released an anniversary update. It includes four new multiplayer maps, updated graphics settings, and fully verified Steam Deck support. It also includes some new multiplayer models and skins, including proto-Barney and the original design for Gordon Freeman, pictured above.

As we gear up for the end of the year and The Steam Awards, Valve wants you to know it'll have «tens of thousands of discounted games awaiting you» when the Steam Autumn Sale goes live on 21st November.

Valve is celebrating the birthday of one of its most beloved games (and there are a lot of them to pick from) this weekend as it’s the, and the original game is getting a big update.

Valve has released a new update for Half-Life to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Along with the legendary first-person shooter being available to claim free on Steam until November 20th, the update adds Steam Deck support, controller support and even the Half-Life: Uplink demo. If that weren’t enough, a one-hour documentary is live with the original development team. Check it out below.

Seminal first-person shooter Half-Life turns 25 this weekend, and developer Valve is celebrating the occasion with a special anniversary update adding new and restored content, alongside a bunch of other things. Oh, and it's made the game free to claim and keep starting today.

Valve has released a major new update for the operating system that runs on the Steam Deck—SteamOS. Numbered at 3.5.5, the update brings with it a host of new features, including support for variable refresh rate displays, an updated Arch Linux base, and improved controller firmware.

Don’t mind me, just pressing my face through the bars of my Black Friday cell to bark a reminder that the Steam Deck OLED is on sale now via the Steam Store. Unlike with the original Steam Deck’s launch, Valve say the much-upgraded OLED version arrives with ample stock, so buyers can hopefully get theirs posted out without delay. The familiar reservation system is "ready to switch on", though, should demand overwhelm supply.

Steam Deck OLED, Valve's updated handheld gaming device, is launching later this week. Ahead of the Steam-powered console's release, Valve has unveiled release timings. The handheld gaming device will be available to purchase November 16 at 10am PST in the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe via the Steam store. To combat scalpers who purchase newly launched devices in bulk to resell them at a markup, the company has limited purchases so each customer can only buy one model per week. Additionally, the company has announced a limited-edition version, featuring a smoky translucent case, available for $679 (about Rs. 56,500). This is available only in the US and Canada.

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Prior to the Steam Deck’s launch, Valve said that it intended to sell “millions” of units of the handheld device, and it certainly looks like the company is hitting those targets.

It's not quite the Steam Deck 2, but Valve's just announced Steam Deck refresh comes with a brand new OLED screen and a couple notable hardware improvements.

Valve recently announced the Steam Deck OLED, a lighter version of its gaming handheld equipped with Wi-Fi 6E and a longer battery life. However, as with the Nintendo Switch when it received its OLED model, one has to ask: What about a true successor to the Steam Deck? What about the Steam Deck 2?

Valve revealed the first major update to its handheld gaming device on Thursday when it announced the , an upgraded version of the original handheld that launched in 2022.

Out of nowhere, Valve has announced the Steam Deck OLED. It’s out on November 16th and offers a 7.4 inch OLED screen, improved battery life and a lighter design. Check out the announcement trailer.

While the Steam Deck OLED is awash with upgrades over the original handheld PC, it’s not a full replacement, and Valve still reckon that anyone wanting a proper Steam Deck 2 will be waiting a while.

Valve love their surprise hardware announcements, and there’s just been a doozy in the Steam Deck OLED. It’s a "definitive" refresh of the existing Steam Deck handheld PC that swaps the underwhelming IPS display for a brighter, more vibrant OLED panel, while making numerous battery life improvements – up to and including a new, more efficient AMD APU – that promise significantly more time away from the mains. It’s not far off either: the Steam Deck OLED’s release date is November 16th, just one week away.

Don't expect Steam Deck 2.0 anytime soon, Valve has said, as the technology to launch a handheld with an adequately beefy jump in power just doesn't yet exist.

Valve has announced Steam Deck OLED, a revamped version of its popular handheld PC which boasts — as you might guess — a shiny new OLED screen as its star feature.

It turns out that legendary first-person shooter Half-Life could have been named Free Radical or Fallout back when it was still in development in 1997. As caught by VideoGamesChronicle, former Valve developer Dario Casali, who worked on Half-Life as a level designer, revealed a few of the proposed names for Half-Life.

Devolver have released a Let's Play for robo-philosophical puzzler The Talos Principle 2 in which the Let's Player is GLaDOS, nemesis of Valve's Portal games, with which The Talos Principle has a few things in common. They've brought on original Portal voice actress Ellen McClain to narrate the footage, and the result is genuinely quite funny. As you'd expect, GlaDOS isn't that impressed by Croteam's work. I score this a 7/10 on the Hoot And/Or Holler scale.

Counter-Strike 2 now allows for players to use custom maps in their games. As part of a new update, the Maps workshop is now live, allowing community map makers to upload their custom maps for Counter-Strike 2.

Over a month since the game's release, community maps finally return to Counter-Strike with the launch of the newly revamped maps workshop.

The Steam Deck has been quite a success for Valve, having essentially defined the handheld gaming PC since its release. As caught by GamingOnLinux, the Steam Deck now has more than 12,000 games available on Steam that have been marked as at least playable on the system.

Valve has launched its much-awaited SteamVR 2.0 update, following a one-month beta testing period in September. While it's unclear whether the company is laying the groundwork for a new virtual reality headset, the update brings a complete overhaul to the user interface, in a way that matches the current Steam Big Picture mode. The store prioritises new and major VR releases at the top, in addition to making it easy to navigate through a consistent experience across the desktop app, the Steam Deck, and other devices. The update was originally supposed to drop in 2020.

Valve has announced the release of a new major version of SteamVR. The update, SteamVR 2.0, brings with it a completely revamped new interface, and is available to all VR users playing games on Steam.

Valve has introduced new security measures for developers to crack down on cyberattacks that revolve around malicious actors and hackers taking over Steam developer accounts in order to add malware to game builds. As part of the new security measures, developers will now need to confirm their identity to Valve through SMS when deploying new builds for their games.

Players looking forward to enjoying a few rounds of on macOS or an older Windows PC will soon be out of luck, as Valve announces that support for both platforms will be dropped moving forward. The announcement comes just weeks after the launch of Valve’s long-awaited shooter sequel on the developer and publisher’s wildly successful Steam platform.

Since its release back in September, Counter-Strike 2 has gone on to become one of the rare titles for developer Valve where the critical reception doesn’t match expectations. At the time of publishing, the game currently sits at an aggregate of mixed user reviews on Steam.

Valve has released a new statement revealing its plans for Counter-Strike 2 moving forward. The studio has revealed that, owing to the technological needs of the recently-released titles, the game will only support 64-bit Windows and Linux.

Valve has been doing a great job with its Steam Next Fest, which allows players to get a taste of upcoming games without having to attend in-person events or even pay the price of admission. The fest will be making a return this month as well, and Steam has released a trailer for the same that you can check out down below.

Diablo IV is coming to Steam, merely four months after its multi-platform launch. The devilish loot RPG is headed to Valve's game storefront on October 17, keeping with creator Blizzard's promise to bring more of its PC catalogue to the commonly preferred choice of platform. You see, all PC games from Blizzard are restricted to its proprietary Battle.net launcher, making it a nuisance for players to jump between and log into different accounts. It's a hot topic among the community, who'd much rather have their entire library on Steam, for easy access. The free-to-play shooter Overwatch 2 was the first to break this tradition in August, albeit that ended poorly.

Counter-Strike 2 is finally available on Steam, after spending months in limited testing. Billed as the ‘largest technical leap' in the perennial shooter's history, CS2 replaces the original CS:GO and is ready for download on the platform. Running on the Source 2 Engine, which powered the acclaimed Half-Life: Alyx, the successor now gets a graphical facelift with redesigns to certain maps, alongside some technical upgrades that strengthen the overall gunplay. Interestingly, while Valve never openly announced a release date, the official Counter-Strike Twitter account updated its header image with cryptic phrases like “Dawn of the Final Day” to signal its imminent launch.

Counter-Strike 2 is now available for PC via Steam as a free-to-play title, Valve announced.

Counter-Strike 2 is not out officially. Announced earlier this year, the game was handed a Summer 2023 launch window by Valve at the time, and recent activity on social media by the company that its sequel’s release was around the corner. Now, the company has confirmed that the free-to-play multiplayer shooter is available to download and play on Steam. A launch trailer has also been released to commemorate the game’s release. Check it out below.

Since its launch about a year and a half ago, the Steam Deck has proven to be a massive success for Valve, and has been adopted fairly quickly (and widely) by the gaming audiences. Valve has, of course, previously said that it views Steam Deck as a “multi-generational product line”, and that it intends to release new and improved iterations of the hardware down the line. But will any of those iterations be coming anytime soon?

Valve has begun teasing that Counter-Strike 2 might be seeing a release soon. Taking to social media platform X, the studio has started teasing a potential release for Counter-Strike 2 on Wednesday next week.

Valve has announced an update to Steam that will make it easier for developers to reveal if a game features support for the DualSense controller. With the update to Steamworks, developers and publishers will be able to more easily describe a game’s controller support.

Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 is making big changes to its systems, from overhauling Smoke Grenades into dynamic volumetric objects and sub-tick updates for servers. That extends to the skill rating and Competitive rules. In a new video, the developer outlined CS Rating, a “precise display” of one’s skill, complete with regional and global leaderboards.

Valve has announced that it has now started selling Steam Decks that have been officially refurbished. In a blog post making the announcement, Valve has stated that it will be certifying refurbished Steam Deck to ensure that they have been put through extensive examination with over 100 tests.

Update: As it turns out, the companion app is outdated and has since been removed from the Google Play Store. So no Half-Life-related news at Gamescom (yet).

Gamescom is the next big gaming expo and takes place later in August from Koelnmesse GmbH in Cologne, Germany. Several big companies like Bandai Namco, NetEase, Xbox, Bethesda and Nintendo have been confirmed, but it seems that Valve Corporation is also appearing, potentially for something Half-Life related.

There was quite a shock for the game emulation community at the end of May, as the planned Steam release for popular GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin was abruptly cancelled under the looming shadow of Nintendo’s legal opinions. At the time there was some confusion as to whether it was a DMCA takedown notice, an opinion, and a lack of clarity over what this meant for the Dolphin project as a whole, but the team behind the emulator has now explained exactly what happened and what comes next.

Blizzard is bringing a selection of its PC games over to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2. The free-to-play team-based shooter is headed to Valve's gaming client on August 10, in what appears to be a change in Blizzard's strategy due to its impending acquisition by Microsoft and the low player engagement the game has garnered in recent times. The Windows PC version of Overwatch 2 and other games from the publisher is largely restricted to its Battle.net launcher — a hot topic for most PC gamers, who prefer having all their games on one platform and hate having to juggle between them. The Steam version will also include the niceties of unlockable achievements and cross-platform multiplayer.

There was quite a shock for the game emulation community at the end of May, as the planned Steam release for popular GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin was abruptly cancelled under the looming shadow of Nintendo’s legal opinions. At the time there was some confusion as to whether it was a DMCA takedown notice, an opinion, and a lack of clarity over what this meant for the Dolphin project as a whole, but the team behind the emulator has now explained exactly what happened and what comes next.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that Overwatch 2 will release on August 10th for Steam. Currently exclusive to Battle.net on PC, the hero shooter is the first of several planned releases for Valve’s platform.