Strategy Reminder: Only buy Flash Sales, Daily Deals, and Community Choice!
If a game isn't any of these by the final few days, purchase away!
Welcome to the Steam Summer Sale 2014! In a season of exhausting hot weather, Valve is here to quench our thirst...for massive savings. It's the glorious time of year that PC gaming truly pays off. Day 1 has already begun, so let's check out what's on sale today!
Oh Valve, you always know exactly what we need. In this case, it's an incredible 15-minute cinematic called "Expiration Date", introducing us to the newest Team Fortress 2 update Love & War.
"Fantasy Dota is a game that you can play with up to nine of your friends, where each of you forms teams made up of pro players to compete against each other, earning points for your team based on how each of your pro players performs in tournament matches."
Valve introduced and tested this out back in February, and now it’s ready for action. Starting on May 19th, Season 1 of Fantasy Dota runs for 70 days until July 28th. If you have a Fantasy Ticket from the The International Compendium, you can start drafting your fantasy teams now.
Valve has been relatively quiet with its plans on how to distribute the upcoming SteamOS. Enter CES 2014 and Valve is making headlines once again. While it was certain that a first-party "Steam Machine" was in the works, little was known about Valve's plans to expand past partnering with iBuyPower and Digital Storm. Yesterday it was unveiled that Valve has partnered with 14 third-party companies in order to make and distribute Steam Machines.
On Friday, Valve released a video showing off how the new Steam Controller is used in a number of already released games. In the corner of the video, you will see the controller cam showing off how the controller is used to control the demonstrated games (Portal 2, Civilization 5, CS:GO and Papers, Please).
When Gabe Newell talks, he almost always has something interesting to say. It was no different for the Valve co-founder this weekend at the Spike's VGA Awards. How does a Steam "console" for your living room sound?
It seems to be a ritual that MMO connoisseurs go through every few years. We moan and gripe about the lack of quality MMO gaming on consoles, about how our favorite genre never seems to escape the shackles of the desktop. But is this a dream worthy of pursuing, or are there strong reasons for massively multiplayer gaming to remain blocked from our console-bound friends?
Recently there’s been a plausible rumor (since denied) that Valve was working on a Steam-powered games console of its own. This represented a slight about-face for the developer and publisher, after CEO Gabe Newell stated that "We'd rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do [hardware]." That tone softened in a more recent interview, with Newell later adding "if we have to sell hardware we will."
The rumor went further, suggesting that the Alienware x51 slim-line desktop could have been an early mock-up or prototype of a Steam Engine console. It’s easy to see why, with the sleek design looking more at home underneath the TV than on the desk. Plus, with Steam’s "Big Picture" mode handling TV and control pad conversion, it seemed like the hard work was already done.
