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Hi, and welcome to the ValveTime news.
Each week, we'll bring you the biggest talking points regarding Valve and the community.
Now, the news:
As previously promised, the Operation Bravo event
for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive concluded earlier this week on February 5th 2014.
A rather large update was released to not only shut down the map pack,
but to also introduce several new features in the form of cosmetic stickers,
gameplay mechanics, bug fixes, and weapon balances.
The Cobblestone and Overpass maps have both been made available to all users on official Valve servers,
as the Operation Bravo-only beta period for both of these new maps has now expired.
If you’re a fan of the community map packs, fear not!
You can now vote for which of the previously featured maps you would like to see return
in the recently revealed “Operation Charlie” event,
which will most likely arrive sometime soon after a short voting period.
To vote, simply head on over to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive main menu
and enter the voting screen by clicking the notification icon in the top-right of the screen.
Anyway, now let’s get onto the new content.
Stickers, as the name suggests, appear as cosmetic add-ons which can be applied to any gun in the game,
and a single gun can be covered with multiple stickers,
providing an additional layer of visual flare to a unique weapon.
As you might imagine,
stickers can be obtained by using the appropriate key to open new “Sticker Capsule” cases,
which can be found via random drops at the end of matches.
An announcement post on the Counter-Strike website mentioned that
Steam Workshop contributors will soon be able to design and upload their own stickers
in the hopes of having them added to the game as official decals
should they receive significant community support.
On the gameplay side of things,
the update introduced a series of rather important balance tweaks for several weapons,
including improved accuracy for the Desert Eagle,
improved rate of fire and scope control for the SG553 and AUG rifles,
and a general increase to the movement inaccuracy on all automatic weapons by 50%,
making automatic weapons such as rifles or submachine guns less effective
when attempting to strafe and shoot.
A brand new grenade throwing mechanic was also introduced for the first time,
as players can now use their secondary fire key to underhand-toss a grenade a short distance in front of them,
just like the grenades from Half-Life 2.
The game’s map and radar systems have been updated
to feature more useful and identifiable color-coded player icons,
which should be useful for those playing together in a competitive environment.
Finally, five of the game’s most popular maps, including Dust 2, Assault, and Inferno,
were updated with a variety of bug fixes and minor tweaks,
which you can check out in more detail over in the update changelog.
As usual, helpful links to the official changelog, our full write-up on ValveTime.net, and the blog post
can be found alongside links to everything else we’re talking about this week in the video description.
Dota 2’s New Bloom Festival continued this week,
as the Year Beast and the new event-specific gamemode
both arrived for the first time on Wednesday.
The gamemode pits a team of 5 players against the deadly Year Beast
as they attempt to damage him as much as possible over a 25-minute duration.
The more damage the team is able to deal to the beast,
the more Jade Tokens the players will receive when the round is over
after all five heroes are defeated or the Year Beast retreats.
Jade Tokens can then be exchanged for keyless chests in a manner similar to the Wraith-Night update.
Players will be able to enjoy the gamemode in a normal match or a practice game,
which provides all players with 25,000 gold as standard.
Normal matches, on the other hand, convert collected Flamesalt ingots into in-game gold at a ratio of 1 to 40.
This gold can then be used to purchase items to help defeat the Year Beast,
including the majority of the game’s core weapons and several brand new items
which can be used to scare the beast and to increase the damage he takes.
Players who deal a maximum total of damage in the top 10% of all players
will be provided with a special Redhoof courier,
while players in the top 1% will instead be rewarded with the sparkling Jadehoof courier.
For the remainder of the event, players will receive “significantly” more ingots upon completing a match,
improving the chances users have for gathering enough money and weapons
to be able to deal large amounts of damage to the Year Beast.
After originally arriving on Wednesday, the Year Beast left after around a day or so
before once more arriving on Friday for around 26 hours.
We imagine he’ll continue to make appearances until the conclusion of the event... whenever that may be.
Try to use the time in between his arrivals as recuperation time to rebuild your ingot collection
before challenging him upon his return.
For a closer look at all of the details of the ongoing New Bloom Festival for Dota 2,
be sure to head on over to the game’s official blog
or Cyborgmatt’s changelog analysis posts over on the OnGamers website.
While it’s been pretty quiet for Team Fortress 2 over the past few months,
the silence was broken earlier this week with the arrival of a rather substantial patch
which introduced a series of rather important balance changes to several of the game’s weapons.
These include a 40% reduction to the knockback penalty for The Shortstop,
added mini-crits for the Cleaner’s Carbine, an added 50% total extra ammo capacity for Natascha,
and an increased clip size for the Reserve Shooter, among others.
43 brand new community-created gold star items were also introduced for the Strongbox crate,
proving that the special crate type is, in fact, not actually related to a new major update
of any kind like previously thought.
Last, but definitely not least, the update also introduced a number of previously-missing voice lines
for the Soldier, Medic, Demoman, and Spy,
who lacked response lines for the Payload gamemode,
unlike the rest of the game’s character classes.
[Soldier] Push, you butter-muffins!
[Medic] Push, damn you! Push!
[Demoman] Put your backs into it, lads!
[Spy] Push, you idiots!
If you’re interested in learning more about the wide variety of bug fixes,
we highly recommend checking out the official changelog on the game’s wiki.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that the lawsuit by the German Consumer Advocacy Group,
a.k.a. VZBV, against Valve was recently dismissed.
For those who may not remember, this is the second time the group was battling to force Valve
into offering users the ability to resell their digital games to other Steam users,
something which had the potential to devalue the platform if it had been instigated.
However, the case was dismissed by the regional court of Berlin after VZBV
was unable to convince the courts that a principle of law known as the “doctrine of exhaustion,”
which is used for the reselling of physical games,
could be applied to digital and non-physical titles.
A statement by law firm Osborne Clarke reads,
“The judges’ comments at the oral hearing held a few days before the verdict transpired...”
“...do indicate that they do not consider the doctrine of exhaustion...”
“...to be applicable to digitally distributed computer games at all.”
Basically, this means you won’t be able to re-sell games from your Steam library anytime soon,
so it might be best not to get your hopes up.
Then again, this is the second time VZBV have tried to force Valve into making a move and,
as Glenn rightfully put it in his news post,
we seriously wouldn’t be surprised if they came back for another attempt sometime in the future.
This past Friday, Valve rolled out an update for the Steam platform
which introduced a whole new section to the storefront known as “Recently Updated.”
This new feature allows developers to better advertise recent patches for games on Steam
by uploading brief Twitter-style preview messages to the main store page.
This new “Recently Updated” page can then be accessed for a closer look
at recent changelogs and patch notes.
Valve hopes this new section will allow Steam users to more easily find and identify game titles
which offer ongoing value and consistent developer involvement.
The “Recently Updated” section takes pride of place on the main Steam store page
between the “Featured Games” and the panel featuring the New Releases, Top Sellers, etc,
so be sure to head on over to check it out if you’re interested.
As viewers of last week’s episode may remember,
Valve recently revealed the brand new Steam Music service,
which we announced was set to enter a closed beta period soon.
Well it turned out “soon” was actually a lot sooner than we expected,
as the first wave of invites for the Steam Music beta were sent out
only several hours after our last episode went live.
We were lucky enough to get invited into the beta in the first wave of invites,
so we decided to create a special ValveTime Spotlight Exclusive
to cover the service and explain how it works.
Be sure to check out the video at the end of this episode if you’re interested in learning more.
Remember: if you’re looking to join in with the beta,
be sure to join the new Steam Music community group to be in with a chance of getting sent an email invite.
Speaking of Steam betas, the In-Home Streaming beta was expanded earlier this week
to include every current member of the In-Home Streaming group,
regardless of whether an individual previously received an invite or not.
Any new users who joined after the invites were sent out will not be added to the beta
and will instead have to wait for future waves of invites.
Luckily, we believe the beta will most likely be opened up to the entire Steam community sometime soon,
so don’t fret if you’re not included just yet.
And that brings us to the end of another week of Valve news.
Don’t forget to check out and rate our Dota 2 Announcer Pack over on the Steam Workshop,
to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
As usual, thanks for watching and bye for now.