Audiosurf Rides the Update Wave

Yet another update for Steam’s Mozart title; Audiosurf:

• Updates

Valve on Google Buyout: “Complete Fabrication”

Valve’s Dough Lombardi has “denied” the Google buy-out rumors and tagged them as “Complete Fabrication”. It should be noted that Valve may be under an NDA that prohibits them from talking about the buyout deal - It’s also possible that the deal hasn’t finalised yet. For the time being though, It seems that Inquirer pulled this out from where the sun don’t shine.

Valve says Google isn’t buying the company.

Google’s Response to Valve Takeover

Following up on the fresh Valve and Google merger, Google was contacted by MCV regarding the takeover, Google had this to say:

We do not comment on rumour and speculation

It isn’t much, but it certainly makes the rumor all more interesting.

Is Google Buying Valve Software?

The shit-fest site Inquirer has picked up a story that says Valve is getting acquired by Google. Now, even if put the source and the douchebag author (Charlie Demerjian) aside, you cannot help but think how much this can and will affect the gaming industy. While one can argue that Google doesn’t know crap about operating Steam or distributing games, you cannot deny that being backed up by Google will solidify the decorated developer even more and who knows, it might also attract developers/publishers that have yet to receive any Steam-full loving. We’ll keep you posted!

WELL PLACED SOURCES tell us that Google is going to be buying Valve any second now.

Steam Client Updates Inbound

A nice update for Valve’s Steam client that adds plenty of new things. Restart your Steam client to reflect the latest update.

Steam Client

• Changed Subscription signup wizard page to not allow the Finish button until the launch button for the signup page is clicked
• Added a right-click “View game account” menu option for subscription based games
• Added firewall support for Games for Windows apps
• Achievement localization support added for future titles
• Flipped the command line arguments order for Red Orchestra to be <-mod>
• Made the server sponsor URL update when viewed from a GoldSrc game
• Fixed a possible memory leak
• Fixed error about missing mss32_s.dll when launching some games
• Added support for upcoming games
• Includes several Steamworks API improvements for future titles

Left 4 Dead Demo Confirmed, Coming Next Month?

Valve’s mastermind Gabe Newell has confirmed a playable demo of Left 4 Dead for both PC and Xbox360 platforms. The demo will contain the first part of one of four campaign movies. The demo will showcase both co-operative play and single player. Mr Newell couldn’t a tell solid release date for the demo, however, given the game’s November 21st launch, we’d reckon we should be seeing it sometime in October.

Team Fortress 2 Tiny Fixes

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed startup crash related to loading the tf2_playerstats.dmx file
• Fixed material system crash
• Added -noborder command line option to play windowed-mode with no border

Team Fortress 2 - Arena Mode Unveiled

Valve has revealed the all-new gameplay mode for Team Fortress 2; Arena. In the simplest terms, Arena is team-deathmatch with capture points thrown in for good measure.That’s not all, Arena mode will also feature 2 brand new maps - Lumberyard and Ravine alongside 3 old maps (Well, Granary, Badlands) that have been re-worked for Arena mode. While Ravine keeps the familiar dust/industrial feel of other TF2 maps, Lumberyard has a completely different jungle-type environment! Check out full details as well as screenshots after the jump.

TF2 Arena keeps the class diversity of Team Fortress 2 while focusing goals around combat between two teams. Where other game modes lean towards a broad overall strategy for the team over a number of lives, Arena concentrates on the specific tactical choices the teams make in a single fight.

Read more

Half Life 2: Episode 3 First Concept Art

The first piece of Half Life 2: Episode 3 concept art, created by Ted Backman, Jeremy Bennett, and Tristan Redford of Valve Software.