Steam Leaked Onto The Mac

Although having condensed water vapor on your computer is usually a bad thing, this time, it's great news!
Valve is working on releasing a Mac version of their popular digital distribution client, Steam, which should be out very soon.
However, what kind of tech announcement would this be without a good old fashion video leak?

As you can see the client looks pretty much the exact same as it does on a PC, which is by no means a bad thing. Apart from having this awesome client to download tons of great games, Mac users who participate in the client beta will also get a free copy of Portal, one of my favorite games!

The Best Game Related April Fools Pranks

 I'm sure some of you have encountered numerous April Fools jokes today, but searching for the funny ones is rather time-consuming. So I decided to make a list of some of the best April Fools jokes around, enjoy 'em while you can!


SC2 Pro Mod  -New way to play Starcraft 2
Sega's Blog -Ecco: Water Wars 2
Think Geek  -iPad arcade cabinet
VG 247  -Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker mix.
1Up -Pokemon Kart
File Planet -Duke Nukem Forever Demo
Blizzard Store -Battle.net Neural Interface
Blizzard Entertainment -X-Treme Gamer Blanket
Blizzard Entertainment -Deckard Cain GPS
Blizzard Entertainment -New Mobile Games
Battle.net -Match making service
Razer -Razer Venom
Alan Wake -Alan Wake Wars
IGN - Halo Movie Trailer
Kotaku -Koticku
Destructiod -Video comments
Bungie -Halo: Reach ViDoc
Bioware -New Star Wars: The Old Republic Class
Valve -Law Abiding Engineer
Bioware- Cerberus Daily News
Destructoid -Deadly Premonition Collectors Edition
TellTale Games -Monkey Island goes virtual

Thanks to Neogaf for making this list a lot easier to make. I hope you all enjoy these jokes as much as I did. :)

Half Life 2 Episode 3 Should Scare You

Recently Edge magazine had the opportunity to talk to Valve's founder and president, Gabe Newell, who had some interesting things to say about Valve's next steps.
When Gabe was asked "if the Half-Life series deliberately matured with its audience as part of a special look at the franchise", he replied:
"I feel like we've gotten away from genuinely scaring the player more than I'd like, and it's something we need to think about, in addition to broadening the emotional palette we can draw on."
After that, Gabe was asked  "what scares [Valve gamers] the most" he had a pretty intense response,"the death of their children. The fading of their own abilities."

 I never saw Valve as a studio who's into making scary games, but after I thought about it for a couple of seconds I realized that all the way back in Ravenholm from Half-Life 2, Valve has included some "scary" thing in their games (TF2 had a special Halloween patch). I'm always one to enjoy a good scare in video games, so I fully embrace Gabe's vision, and I'm sure many others will too.
On a side note:
I gotta say, Gabe is always spot on with his humor to the point where you can't tell if he's joking or not, and I love it!

Gordon Freeman No Longer Confined To The PC

Last week Vavle showed us all some clever ads announcing the popular Steam client for Macs. Today however, we get some more in-depth news from Valve themselves. Jason Holtman, Vavle's Director of Business Development, cleared up something about Steam on Macs.

"Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."

The one thing I was kind of worried about, having to own two copies of a game for each platform, is no longer an issue!
Now we can all play Team Fortress 2 as one big happy Vavle-loving family. :)

Portal 2 Confirmed For Mac

After last weeks clever Steam on Mac ads, it seems that Vavle is showing some more love for Mac users. A scan of the popular Game Informer magazine shows us that Portal 2 will indeed be coming out for Mac and PC users alike.

The scan also shows us that Portal 2 will indeed have multiplayer aspects. For now that's all I know, but I'm sure we'll hear a lot more out of GDC later this week. So stay tuned!
Its not the biggest surprise after the announcement of Steam on Macs, but its nice to know that everyone can enjoy the beauty of Portal this time around.

Steam Coming To The Mac

Valve just won't stop being clever. First their Portal update, and now this, ads for the Steam client coming to the mac.
There's quite a few of these surfing around on the internet, but here are two of my favorite ads:

I hope you enjoy them, as much as I did. In the mean time you mac users might want to clear up a couple gigs of HDD space. My steamapps folder has recently reached 153GB!

Portal Gets A Sneaky Update

A couple hours ago I was busy creating the TeamTwie Facebook group (Join it!) when a Steam pop-up said "Portal has finished downloading". I thought it was one of Vavle's usual updates involving some computer science-ish coding problems or something.  However, When I went to check out the patch note(s) I was pleasantly surprised. Here's what the note says:
  "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations"
If you're new to Valve games you might think this is a legitimate issue that needed to be fixed in order to prevent a law-suit of some kind, but as someone who has experienced many of Vavle's comical tips/hints over the years, I think there's something different going on here.

The radio transmission was put on Youtube, so I'll let you try to figure it out yourself. My guess is that this will lead to the official announcement of the Portal Prequel we were told about oh so long ago.

Update: There's also a new achievement in Portal, but there's no real solution to getting it yet, the most popular rumor seems to be that you need to carry the radio out of the chamber 26 times...weird...

Brand New Steam UI Update Goes Into Open Beta

Steam, Vavle's digital distribution and community client, has been around since 2003 and it's starting to show...that is...until now. Steam has just gotten a complete UI overhaul, and dare is say it, it looks "sexy".
For starters Steam has gone with the "Apple approach" in a sense that it looks a lot rounder and more user friendly, think Windows XP to Windows Vista or 7. Along with that everything seems to be bigger, the text sizes, the store front, and even your game list icons. This new UI also allows you too see what your friends are up to, for example, on the store front there's a new window which shows the newest game that some of your friends have bought (sneaky sneaky marketing). The new UI also takes some new liberties with Steam's achievement system, your achievements are much easier to get to, so you can finally show off how big of an "E-peen" you have.

Valve has made a whole site to explain every new update in great detail, which I strongly encourage you to check out here. You might also want to know how to actually get a hold of this new UI since it is still in beta, but don't worry this beta is open to everyone. :)
All you have to do is:
*Open your current steam window
*Click on the Steam tab in the top left corner
*Go to settings
*Under the "Beta Participation" segment click the button that says "change"
*Scroll down to New UI, and your done!
Feel free to leave plenty of comments about your thoughts on the new UI bellow, I'll be sure to check them out.

Vavle Is Seriously Considering PS3 Development

Since the PS3's launch multiple studios have been reluctant to develop on it due to a number of hurdles developers must jump in order to develop on it. Valve has been one of those companies. Over the years the only Valve game to make it on the PS3 was a crappy port of the Orange Box. The game suffered from bad frame rate issues, inconsistent multiplayer, and an overall lack of support from Valve themselves.
Several employees at Valve have poked fun at the PS3's lack of games supported by other 3rd parties. It seems today however, that Valve has changed their mind about Sony's system.

Chet Faliszek, writer for Left 4 Dead, said ""Before we do anything on the PS3 we need to be able to support it in the right way," explains the Left 4 Dead writer. "But we’ll look at it, and I’m sure down the road we’ll do it."
I hope Chet is right, PS3 owners should be able to experience some of Valve's great hits sooner rather than later.

Also, Valve had a writer for Left 4 Dead???

[X10] Left 4 Dead 2 to Recieve New Content

Valve announced today at Microsoft's X10 event, that there will be some new Left 4 Dead 2 content coming up soon. The content will for the both of the game's platforms, PC and Xbox 360.

The announcement also stated that in this new level "The Passing" the Left 4 Dead 2 crew will have a chance to interact with our beloved Left 4 Dead 1 gang. The Passing will also have some new enemies in store for us, including a new special infected call the Fallen Survivor. "The Passing" is scheduled for a "late March" release, but when you convert that to Valve-time, it might as well be coming out 2012.