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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:
Gabe once again took the spotlight last week after appearing at the DICE 2013 Summit in Las Vegas.
Gabe appeared on the stage with film director and producer J.J. Abrams on Wednesday this week
to discuss "Storytelling Across Platforms."
While the majority of the talk revolved around their experience with providing engaging narratives across films and games,
the most interesting segment of the discussion occurred towards the end.
Both J.J. and Gabe mentioned being interested in potentially working with each other
on game and film related projects.
While no official announcements or reveals were made, Abrams was quoted as saying,
"There's an idea for a game that we'd really like to work with Valve on,"
while Gabe responded by explaining how he'd like to work with Abrams on a Portal or Half-Life movie.
While no details regarding any of these hypothetical projects were shared,
you can understand that we're pretty excited to see what the outcome of these potential partnerships could be.
The following day, Gabe took the stage for his keynote presentation,
where he spent a short period of time discussing "A view on the next steps"
relevant to the future of Valve and the continuing development of the game industry.
At around 35 minutes, there is quite a lot of information to talk about,
so we'll include a link to a video of his full keynote presentation on-screen now,
as well as at the end of this episode.
While no new heroes were introduced with Dota 2's weekly update,
the patch did include a wealth of new changes including
bug fixes, the arrival of team matchmaking, and language filters,
alongside the release of new cosmetic item sets for
Death Prophet, Doom, Rubick, Phantom Lancer, Sand King, and a pair of new themed wards.
A pair of new unreleased couriers were also introduced to the game's files
along with a host of updates to currently unreleased heroes Tusk, Bristlebog, and Skywrath Mage.
As usual, there was more included in this update than we can realistically talk about,
so head on over to Cyborgmatt's blog via a link in the description for a full changelog analysis.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also received a sizeable update last week,
which introduced an updated version of the classic cs_assault map
alongside the inclusion of Steam Workshop support which allows users to download, rate, and play maps
in a manner similar to Portal 2.
At the time of writing, which admittedly was 2 days ago,
around 300 maps have already been submitted to the workshop, including brand new levels,
recreations of classic maps, and the odd custom game mode.
Valve has released the most recent set of Steam Consumer Survey results,
which provided the community with a variety of new information.
We were particularly surprised to find that already around 1.12% of Steam users
are running a Linux operating system,
while Microsoft Windows 8 system has already scooped up around 8.76% of the Steam user base.
Windows 7 remains top dog in regards to operating systems,
as it still occupies around 70% of the total user base,
while Apple's OS X platform continues to sit low down with only around 3.56% of all users
running it as their primary operating system.
If you love data as much as I do, you can head on over to our website via a link in the description to learn more.
Community member Nathan Andrews uploaded a video to YouTube earlier last week
showing himself playing Half-Life 2 using a self-made mod
which provides the game with support for the upcoming Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
The mod provides a setup which allows the user to independently look around
using the headset's built in head-tracking system,
while the player's aim and gun position is based on motion trackers
attached directly to a modified Xbox 360 Top Shot Elite Gun.
As you can see by the footage currently on screen, the mod is pretty breathtaking from a technical standpoint
and we definitely can't wait to see how this kind of hardware innovation may continue to improve games,
especially in the hands of professional game developers.
Good job, Nathan.
To watch his full video, you can click on the screen now and we highly recommend it.
Also, while this isn't really a news story,
we thought you might want to check out Valve's new staircase decals they recently had added to their office.
The decals include a few great nods to Valve characters in a variety of their game series,
so be sure to check out the full album of images over at the Valve Store's Facebook page,
a link to which is provided in the video description.
And now, ValveTime NewsTime TriviaTime!
Last week, we asked you for the date that saw the condemnation and closure
of Aperture Science's Test Shaft 09, aka "Zulu Bunson."
We were surprised by the amount of correct answers,
so be sure to congratulate yourself if you got this one right.
According to Portal 2 lore, the test shaft was closed temporarily on the 15th of June 1961
due to it being filled with unsafe quantities of cosmic ray spallation elements.
The test shaft was later reopened in the 1970s before being closed permanently in the 1980s or 1990s after--
and this does contain game spoilers--
Cave Johnson's death and the final fall of old Aperture.
Now, for this week's question:
What were the names of the three main gels available for gameplay purposes in Portal 2?
The cleansing gel (a.k.a. water) doesn't count.
Bonus points go to the first person to mention the cut fourth gel
which was included in Tag: The Power of Paint, one of Portal 2's predecessors.
We'll reveal both answers on next week's episode, so stay tuned!
That'll do it for another week of Valve news.
Thanks for watching and bye for now.