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Hi, and welcome to the ValveTime News.
Each week, we'll bring you the biggest talking points regarding Valve Software and the community.
Now, the news.
Valve celebrated the official release of Big Picture Mode earlier this week.
The optional Steam UI redesign was released in beta earlier this year
as part of Valve's continued push to see PC gaming become more open and accessible for users.
The controller focused design allows gamers who prefer controller setups
to play their favorite titles and navigate all of Steam's features.
During the announcement, Valve were keen to mention that over 800 Steam titles
now feature partial controller support
while around 70 games feature full controller support,
including the majority of Valve's game library, which--
well, we'll get to in a minute.
The announcement was accompanied by a 10 day long Steam sale dubbed the "Celebration Sale,"
which ended on December the 10th, 2012.
The sale celebrated the large variety of games
which now feature full controller support on Steam,
with many deals featuring reductions of around 75% off.
In case you missed the sale because this episode is late
and you rely on us for up-to-date news, fret not!
You will have just over a week before the Steam Winter Sale begins.
How will we all cope??
Speaking of Big Picture Mode,
Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
all received full controller support last week.
The update, which arrived on December the 4th,
follows the previous two weeks of updates for
Portal, Portal 2, Half-Life 2, and the sequel Episodes,
which have all been updated with support for Big Picture Mode.
Oh, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive and the Left 4 Dead games
have had controller support for a while--
we just...never talked about it.
This also marks the first ever time we mentioned
Day of Defeat or Half-Life 2: Deathmatch on the show.
Yay!
I'm surprised it took us this long,
considering how much we seem to mention Ricochet, of all things...
In a follow-up story to last week, the winning video of the Saxxy for "Best Overall"
was revealed on Friday the 7th of December
at the Video Games Awards on Spike and GameTrailers.com.
The winner of the category is Soimon with "Story of a Sentry."
Congratulations to Soimon!
You can check out his video at the link available on-screen now.
It was also a big day for Valve,
as Half-Life 2 was announced as the official VGA game of the decade.
And then a presenter from actor Zachary Levi's Nerd Machine accidentally called Gabe "Garry."
Ouch...
Garry...
Anyway, congratulations to Valve on winning.
It's kind of an amazing achievement and a testament to the game's quality
that the title is still receiving awards over 8 years after the game's release.
Now, go, Valve!
Go and do it all over again!
Do it for us.
Love, ValveTime.
Dota 2 received an update this week,
which once again brought a number of visual and behind-the-scenes changes
to several elements of the game.
Death Prophet, Silencer, and Wisp all received skin changes
which modified their color palettes to make them more distinctive on the battlefield.
A collection catalog was also added,
allowing players to display all cosmetic items, couriers, tools, and pennants
currently within the game and compare them against items they own.
The upcoming tutorial mode received a temporary mini-map overlay,
which show how a brand new tailored map and the shopkeeper's bird Roquelaire
will be used to help teach new players about the game's mechanics.
Several of the unreleased heroes also received content updates,
including Medusa, Tuskarr, and Shredder,
who has recently been renamed "Timbersaw" during his transition to Dota 2.
Most exciting of all is the inclusion of the snow-themed winter map,
which was added to the game files in a similar manner to how the Halloween-themed map
was added several weeks before the update went live.
Several images and animations were also added, which hint at the upcoming game mode,
including the appearance of a new Greevil and some presents.
Yay Christmas.
A link to the full update analysis on Cyborgmatt's Blog
will be available in the video description.
Not to be outdone, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team also released an update
earlier this week which buffed the decoy grenade and made a few significant changes to GOTV.
More interestingly than this, however, is the release of a new video in the CS:GO Pro-Tips series.
This latest video focuses on Fifflaren,
a professional Swedish player currently a member of NiP,
which stands for Ninjas in Pajamas.
No joke.
Throughout the video, Fifflaren demonstrates a variety of popular tactics
he and his teammates use on the classic map de_nuke.
A link to the video will be available on-screen now and at the end of this episode.
Reddit was at it again this week, as the community somehow unearthed knowledge
of some of Valve's potential future plans.
It was discovered that Valve's IT manager, Chris Grinstead,
had registered 3 separate domains for the company in August this year.
The 3 web domains are:
But what does this all mean?
Well, what we do know is that Valve are currently working on a video documentary
which followed the events of the 2011 International tournament
as revealed by GT.TV earlier this year.
We don't know anything else regarding these web domains,
so whether or not these projects are related is another story altogether.
We look forward to seeing what could potentially materialize from Valve in the near future.
The Left 4 Dead ongoing content team announced via their Twitter page this week
that the first invites to the Left 4 Dead 2 workshop beta were being distributed.
Sadly, we didn't get any.
But apparently Glenn got invited to the Steam Linux Beta, so I guess that's something.
We'll keep you posted if we learn anything else about how Left 4 Dead 2
and the Workshop will work together to provide Steam users with maps, campaigns, and mods.
In merchandise news, Gaming Heads, Valve's official statuette partner,
have revealed the Sniper,
the most recent addition to their Team Fortress 2 statue range.
A teaser trailer and image released alongside the announcement
have shown off the two different varieties of statue that will become available,
including both RED and BLU team variants,
as well as exclusive versions with an added Razorback.
Pre-orders for the statue are going live on Tuesday the 11th of December,
so head on over to GamingHeads.com via the link in the description to keep up to date.
Pre-orders are being taken on a first come first serve basis.
NECA, another of Valve's official merchandise partners,
released a feature on their website earlier this week
which provided fans with a behind-the-scenes look at the development
of the upcoming fully-posable Pyro and Demoman action figures.
The figures feature over 25 points of articulation
and both come packaged with an in-game unlockable item code upon their release in January 2013.
There isn't really a whole lot more to say other than
a link will be provided in the video description if you want to go check it ou-
Oh my god, Pyro!
What did they do to your hand!?
I think we'll leave it there for another week of Valve news.
Don't forget to subscribe and share our videos with your friends.
Head on over to our website to get involved with the community.
Oh, and just in case you follow our news updates on Facebook,
you might want to head on over and subscribe to our page,
since the kind people at Facebook enjoy limiting the user reach
of specific posts for groups unless we pay them some money.
Well, tough luck, Mr. Zuckerberg.
You aren't getting any of Glenn's retirement fund!
Last week, as part of ValveTime's NewsTime TriviaTime,
we asked you what year Valve was founded.
Many of you, as always, commented with the correct answer, which was 1996.
Yup, Valve was founded 16 years ago,
and during that time, Valve have built up quite a library of games,
but how many total games have they worked on?
Leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
We'll reveal the answer on next week's episode.
Thanks for watching.
Stay tuned for more ValveTime videos, news, and reviews coming soon and
bye for now.