Tim, Tom Francis and Chris Thursten talk through the latest Steam charts, discuss Batman: Arkham City and its DLC (really, this time), worry that PC gaming has become too connected, answer some good questions from Twitter, and – with a lot of warning and only at the very end – discuss an exciting level-35 Imperial spoiler for The Old Republic. There are also spoilers for KOTOR and eventually Arkham City in this section.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.

Then I remembered. The Steam app! I whipped out my phone and unlocked it with a quick thumb-flick. “Hey!” I said to my friend “STEAM APP! You can finish your story!” I waited a moment, and the reply came. “And then I threw the bear off the cliff!” he said. “lol” I said. We haven’t spoken since.

Still, the main thing is that the app worked beautifully. It’s free now on the App Store and the Android Marketplace. I haven’t bought any games on it mind, and I’m sure it could benefit from a few extra features, but what do you think? Have you been using it? What would you like to see Valve add in the future?

EA’s Financial Results report also mentions that Origin has generated “more than $100 million in non-GAAP revenue since launch.” Origin-only pre-order deals and Origin digital exclusives like Star Wars: The Old Republic and the Battlefield 3 beta will have helped the service enormously in its early months. Its future prospects are none too shabby, either.

The big numbers recently encouraged 11 third party publishers to sign on, including Rift creators, Trion, Witcher 2 devs, CD Project Red, Paradox Interactive and Orcs Must Die! creators, Robot Enterteinment. That’ll give Origin’s library a bit of breadth in the coming months, and Mass Effect 3′s Origin requirement will grow that already-impressive registered users figure.

Origin still has a long way to go before it’s starting to challenge Steam. It’ll need a much bigger library, deeper community features and much more generous sales to start competing, but it’s a big start nonetheless, and a bit of competition could be a very healthy thing for digital distribution.

It’s now freely available to everyone with an iPhone or Android device on the App Store and Android Market respectively. It’ll let you access Steam chat and buy games through Steam on the fly. A vital tool for Steam sales to come.

Lord of Valve, Gabe Newell seems keen: “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”

The app is currently in closed beta. To express interest, download the app for iOS or Android, then log into your account from within. Valve will send out more invites as the “service ramps up.”

I can imagine the drunken 3G purchases/messages already. Apologies in advance friends list.

Sales have grown by 100% for the seventh year in a row in 2011. There are now 1800 games on Steam. 40 million people have registered for accounts (though not all will be active), and 780 Petabytes of data has been distributed to customers over the course of the year. 19 million items have also been traded. Valve don’t mention how many of those were hats.

Valve’s Steamworks service for publishers and developers is also gaining plenty of traction. Steamworks provides secure DRM, cloud saving, statistical feedback and achievement support, and is now used by 400 of Steam’s 1800 games. 14.5 million Steamworks games have been shifted in the past year, 67% more than in 2010.

If Steam keeps on growing at this rate, it will have consumed the known universe by 2031. Before that happens, Valve are planning to release a Big Picture UI mode designed to fit Steam to large screens.

Not a bad result in a year that saw EA launch a serious competitor in the form of their Origin client. Origin don’t make their user numbers public, but it’s the only place to get hold of The Old Republic digitally. Both services must be rolling in Christmas cash. It looks like digital distribution is going to continue to grow in 2012. What did you pick up from the Steam sale?

Alan Wake was published on the Xbox 360 by Microsoft, so it seems a little odd that Remedy are publishing it themselves on the PC. We assumed that Microsoft’s vested interest in PC gaming (after all, they make that Windows thing) would put them at the forefront of publishing it, just as they have with Fable 3.

Matias Myllyrinne – Remedy’s chief executive officer – assures us that there’s no bad blood between the two companies, though. Microsoft have given Remedy free reign when it comes to publishing the game. “We were thrilled when Microsoft gave us the freedom to pursue this opportunity,” says Myllyrinne.

Alan Wake was planned for the PC since its inception, but Microsoft infamously said that the game was better suited to a “couch experience”. Remedy beg to differ, saying that many gamers asked for a PC version. “So many people have reached out to us and asked to be able to play Alan Wake on the PC,” says Myllyrinne. “That’s where our roots are – in PC gaming- starting with Death Rally and Max Payne one and two. So, of course, this is a great thing for us – sadly it took a little longer. But this is still something that is close to our hearts.”

The biggest concern about any console port onto the PC is that it’s going to fall flat on its face, with low-resolution textures and poorly-mapped controls. Remedy is working hard to ensure it plays as smoothly on a keyboard and mouse as it does on an Xbox 360 controller. “The biggest things that we want to nail down are things like controls,” says Myllyrinne. “If this is not tuned to perfection, all the visuals are lost and the emotional touchstones are missed. A smooth camera and tight controls are crucial and some of the things that we need to look at from a different perspective when compared to a console game.”

The holiday sale’s also hosting a meta game that involves collecting coal. Basically, if you complete daily objectives, you’ll walk away with free games. But if you commit the naughtiest act of all – failure – you’ll receive a lump of coal. That coal, however, can be used to enter the Epic Holiday Giveaway. And if you win? Well, you’ll find every game on Steam waiting under your virtual tree. So then, make with the indiscriminate purchasing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to fish my beggar’s clothes out of the dumpster. And probably some days-old pizza. May as well get a head start.

It’s also currently sitting at number 15 in the Steam charts, making it the second most popular free-to-play game after the evergreen Team Fortress 2. 3 million isn’t such a bad number, too – it’s obviously dwarfed by the likes of Skyrim, but it’s almost up there with Battlefield 3′s 5 million copies. It’s also just over a quarter of the uber-popular League of Legends’ player base, too.

In addition, a retail version of APB Reloaded has launched in the US. Containing $50 worth of virtual goods, the boxed edition is priced at $29.99. To celebrate, publishers GamersFirst have introduced a “Fight Club” mode into the game, but we can’t talk about it because of, y’know, the first rule and all that.

GamersFirst have essentially republished APB with tighter vehicle controls and on a free-to-play model, which has obviously paid off for players who want to dip in and see what it’s all about. We’ve found the core experience of APB to be much the same – its in-depth customisation and social networking systems are not to be overlooked, but the running and gunning remains flawed.

How many of Reloaded’s 3 million will stick around remains to be seen – it could steadily decrease to a huddle of enthusiasts, or it could carry on gathering players. But the Reloaded team have certainly done enough to ensure it’s not going to dramatically collapse like Realtime Worlds’ previous incarnation of the game.

We’re sure at least one of those 3 million players will be reading this – what do you reckon to the reboot?

“Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam’s history” said Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development (via IndustryGamers). “Bethesda’s commitment to and understanding of the PC as a gaming platform shows in the great review scores, spectacular launch, and continued high player numbers that Skyrim has received.”

Impressive? Certainly. But, uh, Holtman and I apparently didn’t fumble through the same wonky PC UI, whose convoluted layers made about as much sense as purchasing a plane ticket to visit your next door neighbors. Still though, a grand total of 10 million units shipped (not sold) and $650 million at retail on all platforms only serve to hammer home an obvious point: Skyrim’s kind of a big deal. Something tells me Tiny Tim the crippled Mudcrab is gonna have a magical Christmas after all. Well, until someone shouts him off a cliff, anyway.

Valve haven’t officially announced the coupon system yet. The FAQ is the only indication that they’ve been added, but the timing is good. It arrives ahead of the seemingly inevitable Steam Christmas Sale.

Ridiculously pretty co-op platformer, Trine 2 will be hitting Steam tomorrow. The standard edition will cost £11.99 / $14.99 , and there’s also a digital special edition. It comes with a digital art book and the soundtrack and will set you back £17.99 / $24.99 USD. If you pre-order them now, you’ll get two bonus Team Fortress 2 items, a wizard hat and a spiky “War Head” helmet to “protect your thought-horde from dragons, sorcery, and other make-believe dangers.”

Trine 2 can be played solo, but if it’s anything like the original, it’ll be much, much more fun in co-op. The three playable archetypes, wizard, warrior and thief have different specialities, and must muddle through the fights and physics puzzles with hastily improvised solutions, many of which would involve the warrior throwing the wizard around while the thief casually grapples past all danger. A new online co-op more will make it easier to play with friends as well. It looks stunning, too. Just check out these Trine 2 screenshots. You’ll find a picture of the bonus TF2 items just below.

If you’re interested in picking up Terraria , check out our Terraria review, and the many improvements made since then in the 1.1 update. If you’ve just bought it, check out our Terraria beginner’s guide for some early pointers, like how to survive the night without getting killed by a flying evil eyeball.

Terraria’s also part of Steam’s new Daily Wishlist Giveaway. If you have a set of ten games in your wishlist you’ll be entered into a draw to win them just by clicking on the Steam Terraria page, so make sure you’re logged into Steam while checking out the deal.

Art director and executive producer at UberEnt (the team behind Super Monday Night Combat) posted the photo above on Twitter with the message “All I’m saying is I saw this at a local game developer event worn by a Valve employee,” sensibly attaching a #ValveTrolling hashtag. He couldn’t get any more info out of Valve’s man but he confirms that “I did try to smother my face in his chest on the HL3 logo.” This did not help.

A long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Valve announced that they’d release three follow up episodes for Half-Life 2, allowing them to put out shorter stories at a faster clip. The episodes so far have taken longer and longer to develop, and Episode 2 ended up being longer than most modern shooter campaigns. Years on from Episode 2′s release, it would make sense for the next game to ditch the episode format and become Half Life 3. Recently, the Cambridge Student asked Gabe Newell whether he considers releasing Half-Life 2 sequels in an episodic form a mistake. “Not yet,” he said.

Valve have repeatedly said that they’re still committed to the Half Life series. We’ll surely see another one one day. WE JUST WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS.

Brink never quite got off the ground when it launched back in May, though it showed plenty of promise, with characterful avatars, spectacular settings, varied classes and some destructive gadgets. Find out more in our Brink review. It’ll go free at 10AM PST, in about an hour, giving everyone the opportunity to find out how Brink plays six months on. If you like it, Brink will be on sale at 75% off for the duration of the free trial.

Wait, there’s more? Gravity mangling platformer VVVVVV, for just 99p / $1.24? That’s less than I paid for my cup of coffee this morning. The slick shouting-at-people-until-they-crack simulator LA Noire, which has only been out for two minutes, is half price. And Fallout: New Vegas and all its DLC packs are available at prices that make the upcoming Ultimate Edition seem a little redundant.

Also on sale today:

• Red Orchestra series
• Operation Flashpoint franchise
• RIFT
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior
• The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
• Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Platinum
• Two Worlds franchise

 
The deals will change around again in six hours time, so keep an eye on the Steam front page. The Autumn sale will wrap up on Sunday, giving us some time to play everything we’ve bought before the big Christmas sale kicks off.

In the US, titles like Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Metro 2033 and Starcraft II have all been heavily discounted. In the UK the deals have been limited to games like Assassin’s Creed and Saints Row 3 – but only on consoles. Hardware has been similarly disappointing, with overpriced Logitech webcams and mice being reduced so they’re priced normally.

The reason the US can discount so many games seems to be that it offers PC games as downloads, a service that isn’t available in the UK. Try and buy a game on amazon.com from the UK, and you’re greeted with the following message: “Game Downloads are only available to US customers. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.” Well, your apology just isn’t good enough Amazon. We’re very upset.

Fortunately there are a host of download services offering great deals to us Brits, so Amazon can just stuff it. Steam has got an epic sale on at the moment, but GamersGate and Impulse both have similarly awesome discounts on PC games. We’ll post a complete round-up of the day’s deals later today, so keep an eye out.

Incidentally, it’s weird that Black Friday seems to officially be a thing in the UK now – traditionally, it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. In the UK, most people only know what Thanksgiving is because of certain episodes of Friends, usually broadcast around Easter. Are we going to start celebrating Thanksgiving in the UK next?

Cave Story comes from the mind of developer Daisuke Amaya, and was originally made available for free. The free version is still out there if you want to give it a whirl before a full purchase (don’t forget to install the English translation patch before playing). Cave Story+ is available with a 15% discount this week on Steam, which means you can grab it now for £5.94 / $8.49.

It’s very much a closed beta, though. To be in with a chance of playing you’ll need to have grabbed a key from PAX Prime or the Eurogamer Expo. There are likely to be beta key giveaways on certain popular gaming sites in the near future, too.

Don’t panic if you haven’t got a key. This initial closed beta is merely to nip any problems in the bud, and the testing period “will start small and grow until eventually everyone is in,” according to the Twitter feed. The Counter-Strike Global Offensive team are very open to feedback, too. “Everything. Everything is open to change in the beta,” they said.

Once again, we wish we knew why steam is being affected by these absences and no-one else is, but we’re being kept in the dark as much as you are. Rest assured, if we ever find out, we’ll let you know.

Just go here to download it.

According to a Stardock press release, Sins is the first of several Stardock games that will be making their way to Steam in the near future, though the specific list of games has yet to be confirmed or denied by Stardock PR.

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell says, “With the sale of our former PC digital download technology to GameStop earlier this year, we no longer have any conflicts of interest in offering our titles to other digital distribution channels. We are starting with Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity with other titles being made available over the coming weeks.”

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity combines the original game with its two expansions, Entrenchment and Diplomacy, both of which substantially changed the game and made it much more of a 4X strategy game than a traditional RTS. While the game plays out in real-time, the scope steadily increases as players begin managing empires with several colonies and dozens of star systems, and battles go from small skirmishes to titanic fleet actions. Fair warning: I’ve known some Sins multiplayer matches to last several hours, so clear your schedule before diving into an interplanetary conflict.

If you want to learn more about Sins and how these expansions evolved the game, you can listen to me, Troy Goodfellow, Tom Chick, and Julian Murdoch discuss it on Three Moves Ahead last year.

Waves is powered by Unreal Engine 3, so it looks pretty damn nice, even if it did make my laptop heat up to the melting point of the sun. There’s also a slow-mo mode for when things inevitably get too intense. I do like slo-mo, but I still think the only game to get it right is FEAR. When you slow everything down, bullets should travel at the same speed they normally would. That’s basic physics.

Although Bastion was intended to be an indie release, the game was picked up by uber-publishers Warner Bros. Interactive. However, Supergiant chose not to accept any money from Warner Bros., instead relying on their clout as publishers. “It’s important to note that they did not give us any money,” said Amir Rao, Supergiant’s co-founder and studio director. “They certainly paid for things, but it was one of those things early on where we decided we weren’t going to take money.”

Signing with Warner Bros. was a savvy move on Supergiant’s part. We’ve heard rumours that big publishers get paid more than indie ones through Steam, so the profits could have been shared more equally – and Supergiant could have even scored a bigger cut of Bastion’s sales. To date the game’s shifted over 350,000 copies on Steam and Xbox Live, and the soundtrack album’s sold a whopping 30,000 copies – both of which will undoubtedly feed into Supergiant’s next title.

Supergiant is keen to hold onto the Bastion IP, though, stating that as soon as a publisher owns your IP they seem more than happy to just sit on it and watch the bucks roll in rather than invest in making a follow-up. “A lot of times, if you give up your IP, the publishers aren’t willing to do anything else with it,” he said.

Rao says it would be all too easy to follow up Bastion with a publisher-funded project, but they’re going to stick to their indie guns for the time being. “You’re only as good as your next game,” he said. What that next game will be is presently unknown, but don’t hold your breath. “Too early to say what’s next though we’re sticking together and intend to press on, which is just what we wanted,” said Supergiant’s writer and designer, Greg Kasavin, in a Q&A on Reddit. “We didn’t announce Bastion until more than a year into its development so it’ll probably be a while before we talk about anything new.”

It could be set to get a lot bigger, too: developers Trendy Entertainment have just released Dungeon Defenders’ SDK as free DLC on Steam. The game’s cel-shaded graphical loveliness was built in Unreal Engine 3, and Trendy has included all the game’s source assets in the SDK. Which is jolly nice of them.

Trendy reckons you’ll be able to take Dungeon Defenders’ assets and do just about anything with them, from creating an FPS to a third-person RPG. You’ll also be able to tweak the game to your heart’s content, or create entirely new dungeons to defend.

To demonstrate the benefits of the SDK, Trendy has also released a 16-player Capture the Flag mode as free DLC. It’s currently in pre-alpha, so Trendy wants to know your thoughts and feedback as you play

The bonuses take the form of a new outfit for the Heavy, giving him a diamond encrusted Lucha Libre mask, a pair of bling covered boxing gloves and a Saints Row fleur-de-lis badge (which can also be worn by other classes). The TF2 blog claims it’s a faithful recreation of the outfit Mikhail Gorbachev wore when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990… er… indeed.

Sadly, getting hold of this outfit will be problematic for UK users, as Saints Row: The Third is yet another game that is inexplicably missing from steam in the UK. As ever, we’re trying to get to the bottom of this story, but no-one is willing to talk to us about it.

According to Steam’s tracker, Skyrim’s rocketed to 231,593 players (as of writing) during its first 24 hours. For reference, Modern Warfare 3′s currently in distant second at 78,161. That’s sort of, you know, insane. It’s probably also a record number of people concurrently falling to their knees, gazing up into the falling rain, and cursing a single interface designer’s name.

But now we have some sales figures! Good Old Games’ Guillaume Rambourg has been talking to Gamesindustry.biz about The Witcher 2′s sales on GOG.com, Direct2Drive, Impulse, Gamersgate, and Steam.

Click through for the stats.

Direct2Drive, Impulse and Gamersgate’s combined sales combined hit only 10,000 sales of CD Projekt’s RPG, whereas GOG managed to shift a cool 40,000 copies.

Then there’s Steam. Valve’s digital distribution service managed to shift 200,000 copies in the same time period. That’s 4x it’s competitor’s sales figures combined. Impressive stats, but Steam’s dominance over the digital distribution market isn’t that surprising, Tom discussed the very subject with GPG’s Chris Taylor earlier this year. The Supreme Commander dev thinks the “playing field’s gonna level out” over the next five years. His seminal RTS was released on Steam in October this year.

Last night we heard the sad news that Steam’s database has been hacked. You might want to change your password if you haven’t already.

An IM is being sent out to all Steam users. Here are the details straight from Gabe:

“Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked.”

Valve are investigating the situation. They mention that there’s been no evidence of illegal credit card activity as yet, and that it’s probably a good idea to change both your Steam passwords. To do that, access Settings from the Steam menu within the client.

Newell signs off his IM with sincerity: “I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Steam joins a long list of high profile targets who have recently been targeted by hackers. Sony, Codemasters and Bioware have all taken the hit. Valve recently announced Steam Guard, designed to increase account security; Gabe even gave out his password to show off its true power. That makes us extra sad.

Click through for the IM in full.

A screenshot of the Steam forums before the hack shows that the official notices section at the top of the page had been altered to promote a site called Fkn0wned. The hack is a worrying breach of Steam’s usually watertight security, and is especially concerning for users whose Steam login details are the same as their Steam account username and password. Valve haven’t commented on the breach yet.

Bad news, superfast mouse clickers, the update has “fixed potential double-upgrade bug with superfast mouseclicks,” you might want to try and find a way onto the Diablo 3 beta where your clicking prowess will serve you better. There have also been some chunky nerfs to the Spooktacular “Van Wolfstein” weapon, the Huntress’ piercing shot, the bowling ball turret and the harpoon turret. Nyooo! Get the full patch notes below, as seen on Steam.

Bug fixes / Feature Additions:

• Rebalanced/redesigned Spooktacular spawns and added Leaderboard & Stats collection – Thanks Tsuda!
• Made Spooktacular skins unlockable by beating Spooktacular on hard (per hero class), though second set of weapons remain Insane-only
• Fixed various Spooktacular mission bugs
• Fixed chatbox getting stuck during level transitions
• Make costume unlock requirements clear in the costume selection
• Allowed mission unlocking/downloads at the mission selection screen
• Reduced self-heal mana cost ramp (cheaper to heal at high HP’s now)
• Added “Drop All Mana” key, default “M” key, and keybinding added to configuration tool
• Fixed problem with Familiar attack rate being effectively capped (there was indeed a bug with this), and renamed the Familiar Attack Rate stat to “Attack Speed Bonus”. Now high-Attack-Rate familars are way, way, way more effective.
• Made practice dummies average DPS over 5 seconds for a more accurate reading
• Fixed potential double-upgrade bug with superfast mouseclicks
• Moved bonus-item crates back into the main section of the Halloween Tavern, out from the Secret Room
• Added Pause menu option to “Hide Game”, which delists the game and prevents anyone else from joining it. Useful for turning public match into a private match, or making a private match totally unjoinable even by your friends.
• Fixed bug in algorithm to determine gear stat allocations, that was making high-end gear less likely to have Defense Damage and Defense AoE stats.
• Removed Non-Infinite Build Time Option for Easy, Medium, Hard
• Fixed bug where Squire would turn around when entering block in Chase Cam
• Pets will now attack one of the Practice Dummies in the Tavern so you can check your Pet DPS
• Added button (Default “G”) to remote-activate your Eternia Crystal so you can begin the Combat phase from wherever you are

 
Balancing Changes:

• Made Genie pet’s “Grant Mana Bonus” upgradeable, and made him grant more Mana proportionate to how much its “Grant Mana Bonus” is upgraded
• Nerfed Spooktacular “Van Wolfstein” weapon about 40%, and Huntress Ability ‘Piercing Shot’ about 30%
• Increased speed of Apprentice Staff “knockback” animation by 40%, and increased its maximum (fully charged) damage output by 50%
• Nerfed Bowling Ball & Harpoon Turrets a bit more: bowling ball & harpoon damages reduced by about 33%, attack rate reduced by about 25%, bowling ball projectiles now limited to 6 hits before breaking, harpoon projectiles now limited to 12 hits before breaking.
• Slice and Dice Tower no longer has such a vertical sweep to be effective against enemies above it
• Reduced Energy Drain rates on Electric and Ensnare Monk Auras
• Increased Insane/Post-Insane Kobold Damage by 20% and Kobold Explosion Damage radius by 20%
• 20% increase to Spike Blockade HP & its exponential HP ramp
• 30% better exponential damage ramp on Squire Circular Slice
• 40% reduction on Imp/Engy repair costs

Valve are constantly surprising. One month they’re making one of their most popular games, Team Fortress 2, free to play, and the next they’re running a $1 million tournament for the upcoming Dota 2.

That makes any chance to speak to company co-founder Gabe Newell a pleasure, because you never know what you’re going to get. I sat down with him during the Dota 2 tournament to talk about his obsession with his company’s new game, his thoughts on EA’s Steam-rival Origin, and what motivates him to come into work each day.

PC Gamer: You’ve said in the past that Valve’s model is to experiment at every point. Is that still what’s going on at Valve with Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive?

Gabe Newell: Absolutely. For example, we’re here at Gamescom and this is the first time we’ve brought our own tournament, and in order to do that we’ve built a lot of client-side and server-side technology that allows us to host this.

Depending upon how it goes today, there are probably some changes we’ll make, some improvements we’ll make. Then it’ll move into some of our other games to make sure we’ve thought through the issues.

You know, if something works in an action RTS, how does it work in a first-person game? And as that evolves, it’ll go into Steamworks so it’s available for all our partners to use as well. So we see ourselves always thinking about what the opportunities are to do a better job for our customers and our partners.

PC Gamer: With The International, the million-dollar Dota 2 tournament, was it your goal to cement it in people’s minds as a competitive e-sport?

Gabe Newell: We think that we will really benefit as games developers from running this tournament. We already have. There’s a very strong group of testers that IceFrog has been using throughout the development of Dota. We’ve been working with them on Dota 2 to address their issues and incorporate their feedback into the game, so we’ve already been through four or five different versions of the user interface. It’s evolved. You’d try something, they’d react and then we’d go back to the drawing board.

For The International, it made a lot of sense at the point in time, where we were in development, to get a bunch of people who play at this level and make sure that we address all their concerns. That’s going to get fed back – the stuff that we’re learning today is going to impact builds that we do next week. It’s just part of that process of iterating through development.

For the next step, we’ve opened up signups for our beta. We’ll go through that and have an invitation beta, and then we’ll have an open beta, and then the game will go out and we’ll continue to iterate from there on out.
It’s something that Valve have always done with our games and, if you look at IceFrog’s history, it’s the same thing. There are all these differences between Defense of the Ancients 647 and 631 where he’s continued to evolve. This, for us, is the right step. It has already been a very valuable experience for the entire development team to put this tournament on.

PC Gamer: Do you think of Defense of the Ancients is a genre, considering how many games use it as a template? That includes League of Legends, Blizzard’s upcoming DotA. What’s your opinion on that?

Gabe Newell: I think that the action RTS genre is a great genre, so we’re excited – we’re fans of it. We got into this because a bunch of people at Valve were huge fans of what IceFrog had done, and it was great to find out that he was interested in doing the sequel that removed some of the constraints he’d been living with.

But you know, we’re fans of the genre – we love to play these games ourselves, so we think it’s great that there’s more attention being paid and a lot of games are going to get developed.

PC Gamer: So you don’t mind that you’ll be competing alongside the already established League of Legends?

Gabe Newell: We’ve been around for a long time and there’s always this assumption that videogames are a zero sum game; that if Quake does really well, Duke Nukem will suffer, and that’s never the case. Gamers who play a good game want to play more games, not fewer games. So you’re never hurt by the success of another games developer – you almost always benefit.

You know, when Zynga go out and gets 100 million people playing one of their games in two months, I think every game developer is benefiting. Not everyone should throw in the towel and say: “We’ve been defeated.”

PC Gamer: Does the same apply to digital distribution platforms? Does the existence of EA’s Origin mean you’re going to make more money?

Gabe Newell: I think right now there’s always this temptation to assume that the way things are today is the way things are going to be, and having been through this long enough in the games industry, I think I and everyone at Valve know that you’re only as successful as what you’ve done lately. So the idea that Steam is somehow the answer to digital distribution ignores the fact that every two or three years, something is going to change dramatically.

It’s like, along comes the Wii and that overthrows a bunch of ideas; along comes social gaming and that throws over a bunch of ideas. If you stand still and you’re not doing the things that you need to do to be valuable in the future, you’re going to be left behind really rapidly.

But we’re left with a dilemma. Do we get it off-Steam for £3.34 with three other games thrown in via Indie Royale? Or do we head to Steam and pay almost twice as much for the single game, plus achievements to brag to our mates about? This is probably the most important thing we’ll ever have to think about. What are you going to do, dear reader?

EDIT: According to Indie Royale’s Twitter, the pack does include a Steam code for Gemini Rue – but you’ll only get it once the bundle’s finished. Thanks Random2323, another dilemma solved!

And Episode 5 doesn’t end there – it may be our biggest yet, so now is an especially superb time to find out how PC Gamer itself has built on its classic roots by downloading the free PC Gamer Digital base application and checking it out. We’ll see you there!

Here’s more on what you’ll find in Episode 5…

PCG Plays: Diablo III
Editors Dan Stapleton and Tyler Wilde jump into the Diablo III beta for a click-happy go at each of its five unique character classes: Witch Doctor, Wizard, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, and Monk. See which were Dan and Tyler’s favorites, and get prepared for your first run when the game releases early next year.

Tribes: Ascend – GameView Interactive Preview
Survey the upcoming free-to-play shooter Tribes: Ascend in a self-guided, interactive tour of one of its expansive maps, and get a strategic head start before the beta launches!

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – The Remaking of Dust
See the reimagining of Counter-Strike’s most iconic map in our interactive comparison of CS: Source and Global Offensive, with commentary from PC Gamer Senior Editor Evan Lahti.

Art of the Shooter – Interactive Gallery
Discover the artwork which became the foundation for some of most celebrated PC shooters ever made, with insights from the artists and developers themselves. Inspect every detail, or sit back and soak it all in – it’s up to you!

World of Warcraft Protip: Critter Achievements
Learn how to snag three World of Warcraft Achievements with ease! It all depends on how much malice you harbor for small animals.

“Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market,” Newell was quoted as saying on Geekwire. Presumably this also means the UK is Valve’s largest continental European market, unless Pantelleria has a huge amount of PC gamers. But Newell’s statement also indicates that Russia eclipses France, Spain and Scandinavian countries in terms of profits.

It seems other games companies who had tried to penetrate Russia hadn’t done so due to a the infamous levels of piracy. “The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia,” said Newell. “It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.”

Although the Russian market may have been a particularly tough nut to crack, it’s not hard to see where Valve’s new customers are coming from. With a population of 141.8 million, it’s far bigger than Germany (81.8 million) and the UK (61.8 million). But, only 42.8% of Russians have internet access, compared to the UK’s 82%, making it pretty much an even playing field in terms of numbers of gamers.

Of course, a lack of internet access could have contributed to Russia’s sky-high piracy levels, with cracked black-market DVDs offering many an offline gaming experience. But the inevitable, interminable spread of internet access across the country comes with improved anti-piracy measures on most titles.

This wasn’t Valve’s approach, though – it offered the carrot instead of the crowbar. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work,” Newell said. “It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

Valve recently struck a deal with Xsolla so gamers in Russia could use real rubles to buy games on Steam.

During the course of the seven minute aside, covered on Geekwire, Newell also revealed that the conversion rate of the number of free players who go on to buy something is “20 to 30 percent” for Team Fortress 2, much higher than the 2-3% conversion rate seen by other free-to-play games.

Newell said that he thinks the announcement of Team Fortress 2 as a “free-to-play” game, and not just outright “free” was part of TF2′s successful shift of payment model, perhaps underestimating the power of the raw, uncontrollable human drive to acquire and hoard sweet new hats.

“Why is free and free to play so different? Well then you have to start thinking about how value creation actually occurs, and what it is that people are valuing, and what the statement that something is free to play implies about the future value of the experience that they’re going to have,” Newell said, suggesting that the implication that a free-to-play Team Fortress 2 would exist as a continuing service was a key motivation for new players.

It’s likely that Valve’s reputation for providing free updates and ongoing support was even more of a factor than the “free-to-play” label, but Newell admits that Valve are generally stumped by their observations. As an example, Newell commented on the remarkable but confusing success that Valve saw early on with Steam sales, saying “we do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40.

“Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40, Which is completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation.”

“We don’t understand what’s going on,” he added. “All we know is we’re going to keep running these experiments to try and understand better what it is that our customers are telling us.”

Team Fortress 2 players are currently gearing up for the incoming Halloween Update, which among other things, is sure to add new hats.

The move will allow Russia’s 38 million gamers to buy games with real cash through the country’s 450,000 cash kiosks in an effort to make it easier to buy games legally in a country with very high rates of PC game piracy.

Apparently cash is still the de facto form of payment in Russia, so transforming it into a virtual currency will be something of a boon for Valve in the country with the greatest landmass on earth.

Xsolla also runs monetisation systems around the world, so you could potentially use your physical pounds, dollars or meticals to purchase virtual goods.

“Steam revolutionized the way games are distributed and experienced,” said Xsolla’s vice-president and co-founder Albert Donahue. “Not only are players able to enjoy over 1500 games through Steam, but they are also able to enjoy the experience with friends and other gamers via the Steam Community, which has over 30 million players.”

Pre-order the title on Steam and you’ll get Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic 3 and Knuckles chucked in, gratis. If you weren’t alive in the 1990s, 3D Blast is the uncontrollable isometric one, but Sonic 3 and Knuckles still stands up, with Knuckles as a Moriarty to Sonic’s Holmes.

That’s on top of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, which is an unlockable within Sonic Generations itself. That’s like meta-meta textuality.

Generations runs and rolls onto Steam on 4 November for £19.99.

PC Gamer Digital Episode 4 keeps up the pace. In this week’s edition, you’ll crash-land in the world of WildStar for a 360-degree interactive preview of the upcoming MMO, hear Ken Levine and other top developers sound off on what makes PC gamers unique, join us as we test our classic-shooter skills against the developers of GoldenEye: Source, and much more.

If you’re new to PC Gamer Digital, you really have to try its original hands-on experiences for yourself to know what it is, so grab the free base application on Steam and check out the included episode. And once you have, we’d absolutely love to hear what you think, so if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail pcgdfeedback@pcgamer.com and speak your mind.

Here’s more about what you’ll find in Episode 4…

WildStar – GameView Interactive Preview
Explore Carbine Studios’ upcoming MMO in this panoramic recreation of one of WildStar’s starting areas on the planet Nexus. Guide your own tour of the perilous Northern Wilds, or follow Associate Editor Josh Augustine’s commentary for a step-by-step walkthrough of the game’s explosive first moments.

PCG Plays: GoldenEye Source
GoldenEye Source is a total-conversion Half-Life 2 mod which recreates the spirit and feel of classic N64 shooter GoldenEye 007 with lovingly recreated maps, weapons, and modes. It may be one of the most faithful remakes on the PC, so we put the spotlight on it by challenging the developers to a round of team deathmatch in Casino Royale.

Ask! What Makes PC Gamers Different?
We asked six of our favorite developers what sets PC gamers apart from console gamers. See what Irrational’s Ken Levine, id Software’s Tim Willits, and other game industry luminaries had to say. Their answers may surprise you!

Playlist: Classic Shooters
PC Gamer’s editors stand behind the old-school FPSes they still play today, and they’re not what you might expect. See which five games made it to their must-play lists and compare your own collection. Is your favorite on the list?

Note: Erroneous image fixed! (Additional note: “erroneous” is a funny word.)

High-Res Texture Packs – Direct Quality Comparison
In this interactive slider gallery, compare the effects of popular high resolution texture packs for Dragon Age II, Fallout 3, Minecraft, and more to see exactly how they’ll affect your games’ visuals, which ones you can live without, and which you absolutely must have.

That’s where Costume Quest comes in. It’s a delightfully whimsical Halloween RPG from Double Fine, the makers of Psychonauts, and – one year after its console release – it’s finally donning the guise of a PC game. You can grab it on Steam right this very second for $14.99.

Better still, you’ll also nab the free Grubbins on Ice DLC pack. I’m not actually sure what a Grubbin is, but then, I didn’t know what a Psychonaut or a Grim Fandango was either, and look how those turned out.

For that reason and many more, Valve’s Gabe Newell doesn’t like the recent turn toward all things proprietary that the tech world’s taken. He voiced his concerns during a game panel at the WTIA TechNW conference:

“On the platform side, it’s sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms,” he said, according to a post on The Seattle Times.

“I’m worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going – there’s going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say ‘I’m tired of competing with Google, I’m tired of competing with Facebook, I’ll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don’t like from my world.’”

Ultimately, he declared a closed model the “wrong philosophical approach,” but also noted that you can’t argue with the success of movers and shakers like Apple. Well, you can, but when there’s this much money on the table, Newell doesn’t believe other companies will argue for long.

“I consider Apple to be very closed,” Newell said. “Let’s say you have a book business and you are charging 5 to 7 percent gross margins. You can’t exist in an Apple world because they want 30 percent and they don’t care that you only have 7 percent to play with.”

“I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people’s expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he added.

What about Steam, though? With just a couple wrong moves to tarnish its golden image and thin mustache, couldn’t it also be the next Evil Empire? Newell retorted by noting that Steam’s tools are free to developers, but “we don’t take anything” if developers decide to peddle their game someplace aside from Steam. He also said that – if Valve made its own console – it’d be open to services aside from Steam.

Right then. So I suppose this means I can finally stop having those recurring, sweat-soaked nightmares where Half-Life 2: Episode 3′s an iPhone exclusive.

Update: Sorry for the trouble our international fans had launching PC Gamer Digital. We patched it up with Valve’s help and everything is good to go now, so you can jump in whenever you’re ready! If you have any other technical issues, please contact support at pcgdigitalsupport@pcgamer.com. We’d also love to hear what you think about Digital in general, and you can tell us by e-mailing pcgdfeedback@pcgamer.com. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm!

In this episode, you’ll explore the brilliant L4D2 map Helm’s Deep Reborn in an interactive 360-degree strategy guide, join us on a daring Warsong Gulch flag run in our World of Warcraft Three-Way, learn how to shoot down a helicopter in Arma 2 (seriously, helicopters are jerks), and more. Read on for all the details…

L4D2: Helm’s Deep Reborn – Interactive GameView Strategy Guide
Explore our annotated virtual guide to Helm’s Deep Reborn, Team Chivalry and SeriouS Samurai’s epic LOTR-based survival map for Left 4 Dead 2.

World of Warcraft – Three-Way!
Josh, Chris, and Tyler form an almost-cohesive unit as they play a nailbiting round of capture-the-flag in Warsong Gulch.

Arma 2 Protip – How to Shoot Down a Helicopter
In this week’s Protip, Senior Editor Evan Lahti walks us through his elegant method of dealing with pesky helicopters in Arma 2.

PCG Plays: Dungeons of Dredmor
This week, PC Gamer editors Evan Lahti and Chris Comiskey play indie roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. See why this $5 RPG has devoured so many hours of their precious, precious gaming time.

Then vs. Now – Comparison Gallery
Oh, how things have changed! In this slider gallery, originals go head-to-head with their modern counterparts.

The rest of this week will see special daily deals, including 33 percent off THQ’s entire Steam catalog (minus Saints Row: The Third and Space Marine, for some reason), and newly added cloud support for many older titles.

Mostly, though, Metro’s the best game about Russian train zombies you’ll ever play. So you know what to do.

“There’s really nothing to report. We’ve got a strong relationship with Valve, but we don’t have anything new to announce on this,” an EA spokesperson told IndustryGamers.

So if you recently turned your frown upside-down, you probably ought to return it to its full upright position. Anyone want to join me in the Sadness Corner? It’s got room for 64 people, but unlimited supportive hugs.

Purchasing PC Gamer Digital Episode 2 also scores you the Killer Exclusive hat in Team Fortress 2. (It’s extremely sexy!)

If you haven’t checked out Digital yet, it’s a brand-new interactive environment which houses all-original games coverage and strategy guides from the editors of PC Gamer. There’s nothing else like it, so if you want to really know what it is, we highly recommend that you grab the free base application (which includes Episode 0 with free content) to experience the future of games coverage for yourself. PC Gamer Digital is currently only available in the US, but we’re working through legal stuff and load testing as quickly as possible so that we can launch elsewhere – we’ll let you know as soon as we have an international release date. For answers to more questions, give our announcement FAQ a glance.

Here’s a little more about what you’ll get in Episode 2:

BioShock Infinite – Step into Columbia’s Downfall
You’ve seen the trailers, but you’ve never seen BioShock Infinite like this. Experience the beauty and discord of Columbia as you explore 360-degree panoramas with commentary informed by Creative Director Ken Levine.

PCG Plays: Frozen Synapse – Tactical Showdown!
This week, we’re playing Frozen Synapse, an elegant game of tactics and psychology from indie developer Mode 7 Games. Not only that, PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti got to test his wits against one of the game’s creators, Mode 7 co-founder Ian Hardingham. See how he fared!

Tribes: Ascend – Interview with Todd Harris
We visited indie developer Hi-Rez Studios to talk to Executive Producer Todd Harris about Tribes: Ascend, which promises to bring back the large-scale, kinetic CTF action the series pioneered, as well as introduce new facets, not the least of which is a free-to-play model.

StarCraft II – Protip: The Baneling Bust
Are your Zerg rushes running up against pesky buildings? Damn industrious jerks. Learn how to clear the path with a tactic that’s as explosive as it is gooey: the Baneling bust.

Video Settings Explained: Part 2 of 2 – Advanced Settings Demystified
How does ambient occlusion work? What is tessellation? Discover the effects of five rarely-explained graphics settings with our direct on/off comparisons and narration.

On the digital distribution front, though, EA insists that all is not as it seems. Valve and EA aren’t at each others’ throats, performing incredible feats of corporate espionage and strategically placing cat hairs in each others’ food. It’s a brave new world, insist EA’s Peter Moore and Jens Uwe Intat – and a big one, at that.

“I don’t even know if Steam Vs. Origin is a proper battle. I would rephrase that a little,” EA Europe leader Jens Uwe Intat told GamesIndustry.biz. “I would say that we’re introducing Origin as our consumer relationship platform. We want to build a platform that allows consumers to have the best experience you could ever had with EA games. It’s going to be one of the offerings that consumers can use. There’s a space for Steam, there’s a space for Origin, there’s a space for third party etailers. Both pure etailers and traditional retailers that are entering the digital distribution space.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s not a competitor to Steam, I’m just saying that there’s more people out there than just Steam and Origin. While with Battlefield and Call of Duty, it’s really just about those two, that’s the difference.”

EA COO Peter Moore, meanwhile, described the two companies’ relationship as complimentary, noting that EA’s main goal is to interact directly with its customers. Origin, then, exists to fill in the gaps where Steam and like services don’t allow it to do that.

“We have a long history of distributing Valve products and I think for every title they will look for who will do the best job,” Moore continued. “There’s no strain on that relationship because we’re competing in one space. We’re basically competing and working with a lot of people. Every first party manufacturer is a partner of ours when we’re distributing their product, and a competitor of ours with their own software. I think, as an industry, we’re pretty good at competing and co-operating at the same time.”

Meanwhile, Valve’s Gabe Newell – when asked about Origin – kept his thumb so perfectly horizontal as to make people wonder if he’s actually a robot. Those people were never heard from again.

At any rate, what’s your take? After all, Valve and EA can say that their services skip hand-in-hand across the Internet, but if it’s still a pain in consumers’ asses, then they’ve got a problem on their hands. So, Origin vs Steam: Fatality or friendship?

You can get your copy of Windows 8 to try out here, although you should be warned that it’s not stable enough to use as an everyday OS just yet.

We’ve already talked a bit about the integration of Xbox Live into Windows 8, and what ARM compatibility means for gaming. There is one more big change coming through, though: the Windows Store.

Just like Apple’s App Store, which started on the iPhone and is now an integral part of the OSX desktop, this is designed to be a simple shop front for a software repository. It’s not the first time Microsoft has tried something similar – Games for Windows and Windows Vista Ultimate Extras spring to mind – but the world knows how to do these things properly now, and from what we’ve seen so far the Windows Store is a vast improvement over its predecessors.

The main purpose of the Windows Store is to provide apps for the Metro interface. That’s the tile-based, touch screen friendly tablet part of Windows 8 which is proving rather controversial among the gaming community. Indeed, it will be the only way to install Metro apps on a PC or tablet, and work as a one click to buy and install model, just like the App Store and Marketplace. Similarly, there will be quality control and approvals to go through to get an app published, plus – Microsoft says – a much more secure installation model compared to traditional desktop programs.

But that isn’t it’s exclusive purpose. There aren’t many details about how the Store will work with the more traditional side of Windows, but there will definitely be an area for downloading x86 programs too. Microsoft talks about “the tools you know and love” being in the store, which presumably includes games as well as stuff like Office and Quicken (which was demoed on stage).

What’s interesting for games publishers is that Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows and Windows Live, has said that there’ll be no requirements to change licensing models for existing programs.

For Metro apps, at least, you’ll be have access to all the programs you’ve paid for on up to five client machines – and the assumption is that you’ll be able to do the same thing with desktop programs too. That will make Windows Store a pretty strong competitor for Steam and other download services like Direct2Drive.

The only thing is that right now, Microsoft’s attention seems to be focussed on using the Store to deliver tablet apps. Which is great, but since programs compiled for Windows on ARM won’t run on Windows x86 and vice versa, the desktop shopfront may yet end up as an afterthought, and it’ll need to be much more than that if it’s to attract people away from the established services.

So one year on, how has the Mann-conomy changed Team Fortress 2? One thing’s obvious. There are quite a lot of hats in TF2 these days. Team Fortress 2′s transition into a hat wearing simulator with some added shooting is almost complete, and it’s easy to forget now that hats were the most controversial and surprising part of the update. Controversial because of their hefty price tags. Surprising because of the enormous number of players happy to pay up for a smart piece of virtual headwear.

It’s fair to say that the community’s goodwill towards Valve was an important factor in the update’s success. Valve have been adding major updates to the game for free since launch, and for those who get Team Fortress 2 as part of the Orange Box, it’s turned into an exceptional deal. Players pouring dozens of hours a week into the game were happy to spend a lot of money to play with new items, and show support for a game they loved. This has allowed Valve to get away with more than you might expect. The addition of crates, which can only be unlocked with a bought key, still feels like a mean addition.

Still, the Mann-conomy has almost certainly been a huge success financially, not just for Valve, but for community members who design the new items that sell in the Mann-Co Store. The creators of the Polycount Pack made a fortune. The five community members scored paychecks between $39,000 and $47,000 after just two weeks of the items going on sale. The amounts were too large to be processed by Paypal, so Valve flew out some of the item creators to Valve HQ to pay them in person.

One story that recently appeared on Reddit tells the story of one community member who says he made $15 from sales of the Southern Hospitality when it was released with the Engineer update. Pleased to have his item featured in the game, he emailed Valve boss Gabe Newell to say thanks. Next month, he got a cheque for more than $5,000. Newell had apparently bought close to ten thousand wrenches.

The Mann-conomy has also been used for charitable purposes. A series of items went on sale earlier this year to raise money for the victims of the Japan earthquake. $430,543.65 went to the Japanese Red Cross as a result.

The Mann-conomy is here to stay, and it’s growing beyond the borders of TF2. Steam trading now lets players swap hats for unredeemed Steam games. Third party publishers are starting to add their support. By the second year Manniversary, we could be trading TF2 hats for Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC.

Now, Team Fortress 2 is free. Valve have used TF2 as a testing ground for a lot of new ideas, not least the addition of micro-transactions. The ongoing TF2 beta regularly tests mad new weapons. But unlike most mad experiments, TF2 has turned out surprisingly well. the explosion of new items cluttering up everyone’s backpacks makes your average TF2 server a confusing, bizarre but hilarious place to spend some time. We re-reviewed it when it went free to play a few months ago. It’s better than ever. We can’t wait to see what Valve do with TF2 next.

Need more TF2 hats? Claim your free Killer Exclusive cap in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK.

Some fans are threatening to boycott the series until the online activation requirement is removed. Sega tell Eurogamer that Football Manager has moved to Steam to combat piracy.

“Make no mistake, if a quarter of the people that usually pirate the game switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double,” they say.

“This would lead to increased development budgets and more benefits for all of you who do buy the game.”

“We’ve taken this decision because we believe that the steps the consumer has to take are not excessive, and that as a one-time only measure with no tracking or reporting it is not too intrusive. Having worked with Steam for a few years now we also believe that their system is ever improving and gives Football Manager players a good service of free auto-updating, achievements and other great benefits without cost or hassle.”

In the scheme of things, a one-time online activation system seems relatively tame, especially in the light of Ubisoft’s always-online DRM system, and games like Diablo 3, which cannot be played offline, even in single player.

For many hardcore FM players, Football Manager will be one of the only games they play. It’s interesting to see the reaction of fans from a community less less desensitized to the growing extremity of many publishers’ anti-piracy solutions.

Are you a Football Manager player? Let us know what you think about FM 2012′s move to Steam.

Both bundles clock in at $9.99 a piece – one focusing on strategy games and the other on 2D, well, anything. This isn’t just some bottom-of-the-barrel bargain bin deal, either. Among many others, the bundles include the likes of Bit.Trip Runner, World of Goo, Revenge of the Titans, and Sanctum. Basically, if you’re looking to dive into indie gaming’s deep waters but don’t know where to start, look no further. Now then, go! The deal only lasts until September 22, at which point the games will turn back into pumpkins. Or, you know, get their normal price tags back. One of those.

Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games explains how Zeboyd’s Cthulu Saves the World did a disappointing 16,000 sales on Xbox Live Indie Games, “which means it’s earned just about the same amount of money as our first game – even though we spent so much more time creating it.”

Zeboyd switched their focus to Steam, bundled Cthulu with their first game, and sold the package for $3 apiece on Steam starting in July. Five days later, they had already made more money on Steam than their annual revenue on XBLIG.

There are other benefits to developers, according to Braid creator Jonathan Blow.
“[I can] live a comfortable life and just put my game on Steam without that much of a hassle, or I can have the XBLA business people dick me around and give me asshole contracts that I need to spend three months negotiating back to somewhere reasonable … it’s like, at some point, the question ‘Why should I do that?’ arises.”

Perhaps developers shouldn’t. Introversion software enjoyed huge success on PC with the superb DEFCON and Darwinia, and were poised to press on with new projects when they took a detour into XBLA development. It took them three years to finish the project and get certification, during which the company hit financial straits. Rather than guaranteeing Interversion’s future, however, the Xbox release of Darwinia nearly destroyed it. An 11th-hour Steam sale for DEFCON produced enough revenue to keep the company going.

The Gamasutra piece points out that XBLA is a tougher market for indies now than it used to be, and with a high-bar to entry just to make it into the store, Xbox might be offering more risk to indie developers than it does in rewards.

With Borderlands 2 announced for April next year, it seems likely the data collected will have some influence on the development of the sequel.

It’s pretty, too. The PC exclusive shooter is built on Flying Wild Hog’s own Road Hog engine, designed from the ground up to render Hard Reset’s glistening urban cityscapes. While you’re waiting for the download to finish, have a read more about the devs’ design philosophy in our Hard Reset interview.

It’s out on September 13 and will cost just £22.99 / $29.99. You can pre-order now from Steam to get a 10% discount.

Valve announced the launch of the Steam trading beta on the Team Fortress 2 blog, where they also mention that more than a million items have been traded in the beta period. “To celebrate, items are on sale in the Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Spiral Knights in-game stores,” the blog post says. To invite someone to trade, open up a Steam chat window, open up the drop down menu next to their name and select “invite to trade.” For a full run down of how trading works, check out Valve’s Steam Trading FAQ.

The word ‘probably’ is important there, and he goes on to say that Mojang is talking with Valve to see if there’s any way to make it happen. If not though, it won’t just be EA games not putting in an appearance due to DLC and item store content. Will Valve be prepared to sacrifice their piece of the after-sales pie in the game of getting hot games on their platform, or will developers and publishers have to bite the bullet and cut them in? Let’s hope they come up with a good answer before too many games go AWOL.

The birthday celebrations also see the return of some familiar old birthday items. The Team Fortress Birthday Beach Ball is back, and for the duration of today’s celebrations, players will explode in a shower of balloons and confetti. The blog post doesn’t mention exactly when the birthday celebrations will end, but I just logged in and scooped a birthday cap. Looks like the party’s set to continue a little while longer.

It’s unclear why Space Marine has vanished, but it reminds us of Brink’s recent disappearance. That game didn’t turn up until weeks after launch. Hopefully Space Marine won’t suffer the same fate.

If the demo isn’t enough to tide you over until Space Marine’s release on September 6 in the US (September 9 in Europe), then check out the video interview with Space Marine’s lead voice actor above. He offers various arguments supporting his decision to voice a Space Marine, though we all know the real reason. His name is MARK STRONG.

Origin is a revamped version of the EA store that can be run from a downloadable client. It’s the only place players will be able to buy the digital version of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it was recently confirmed that retail copies of Battlefield 3 will require Origin to be installed in order to run. It seems to be positioning itself as a direct competitor to Valve’s Steam service, but what does Gabe Newell think of it?

“I got an account before I came here and was trying it out,” he says. “So yeah, I’ve tried it.”

“It does some things well, I think there’s still some areas where as a customer I’d like to see it improve, it’s not that different from any other system like this. There are positive things and negative things,” he says.

“I don’t really know what they’re referring to by that,” he replied. “In general with Steam and Steam partners its incumbent on us to create value for those partners, whether it’s EA or Ubisoft or Take Two or any of the other developers who are using it, so that’s our goal, to create enough value so that is makes sense for partners to use the technology, the tools, services and community that we’ve created.

“We’re going to keep trying to do that with EA and trying to convince them that it’s worth it to have their games on Steam.”

One of the pleasant side effects of the enormous Steam sales is that you’ll often buy a bundle that contains a copy of a game you already own. Most of the time you’re able to gift this spare game to anyone with a Steam account. The Steam trading beta now lets you exchange a Team Fortress 2 item, say, a tower of hats, for one of those spares.

If you want, you can also buy a new game purely for the purpose of trading. As long as you don’t add the game to your Steam library, it’s swappable, and this is just the beginning. The trading system looks set to items in other games as well.

The wording on the Team Fortress 2 blog post states that “Steam Trading Beta lets you securely trade your in-game items for other in-game items from participating games.” That suggests we might eventually be able to trade TF2 items for Portal 2 items, or even in-game items from third party games that opt into the trading system.

You can opt into the beta by selecting “Steam Settings” in the Steam menu, then picking the trading beta from the drop-down menu. For more information, check out Valve’s Steam trading beta FAQ. We’ve tried it out. Here’s how it works.

You can invite a friend to trade from their drop down menu in your friends list.

Next, simply drag and drop the items you want to trade into the trading zone.

Once both players have confirmed the trade, the swap goes ahead.

You can drag items into Steam chat to show them off. Tom rejects my offer of Vintage Sandvich :(

The particular terms of service EA are conflicting with aren’t known, but there’s no sign that EA and Steam will resolve their differences any time soon. “We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3,” say EA.

Battlefield 3 is still available to pre-order on other major digital retailers, including Direct2Drive, Gamersgate and EA’s Origin. You’ll find the full list on the Battlefield 3 site.

Pre-order Skyrim to get the Heavy Nord helmet, pre-order Rage to get the Wingstick for the Engineer and buy Quake IV to get the Quake launcher for the Soldier. Owners of Fallout: New Vegas will get a Pip Boy for the Engineer and owners of Brink will pick up a hood and mask for the Sniper.

The deal ends with Quakecon, so you’ll be sure to buy or pre-order the games you want before 10:00 PDT / 18:00 BST on August 8

In the same blog post, Robin Walker also talks about Team Fortress’ debt to id Software and Quake in particular. Team Fortress started out as a Quake mod in 1996.

“At the time it only had five playable classes, no maps, and–believe it or not–no hats, writes Robin. “There wasn’t even a concept of teams yet.”

“That’s right, we didn’t actually get teams into a game called Team Fortress until a couple of releases after the initial launch. (The next time someone says their game isn’t ready to release yet because they’re missing a core feature, you can helpfully point this out to them.)”

“When Quake celebrated its 15th birthday this past June 22nd, we realized just how damn many of us at Valve are here because of id software. Some of us were inspired by their games’ technical prowess, and others by getting their first taste of game development thanks to Doom and Quake’s revolutionary approach to user-generated content.”

Quakecon is happening right now in Dallas, Texas. To celebrate, you can play Brink for free this weekend and loads of id’s game are on sale on Steam where you can also download and play Team Fortress 2 for free.

These unnamed restrictions “limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content,” writes EA’s senior VP of e-commerce, David DeMartini. “No other download service has adopted this practice. Consequently some of our games have been removed by Steam.”

“We hope to work out an agreement to keep our games on Steam,” he adds.

The statement is similar to EA’s response to the disappearance of Crysis 2 from the Steam store earlier this year, which they later put down to a conflict with a DLC agreement with Direct2Drive.

Dragon Age 2 disappeared from the Steam store on the eve of the release of its first DLC expansion pack, Legacy, which can be bought now from the in-game Bioware store.

There’s been no official explanation for the removal, but Eurogamer note that it coincides with the release of the Dragon Age 2: Legacy expansion pack, which is available to buy now from an in-game store.

If you already own a Steam copy of Dragon Age 2, it’ll still work fine, it’s just been removed from the Steam shop. It’s still available to buy from Direct2Drive, GamersGate and EA’s own Origin store.

Crysis 2 was also removed from Steam recently. EA later said that it was Valve who made the decision to pull the game, and attributed the decision to a DLC agreement with Direct2Drive.

EA have also been busy promoting Origin. Star Wars: The Old Republic will only be available digitally through EA’s store, and current indications suggest that Battlefield 3 will be an Origin exclusive as well. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with other big EA releases like Mass Effect 3.

The Stronghold games are all about building a medieval complex capable of withstanding any enemy attack. While keeping external forces at bay, you’ll have to satisfy the peasants within by throwing jousting festivals, or holding public executions if you’re a meanie. The third game is set to add new building tech to streamline fortress construction, and night-time battles will add some extra drama, because war is scarier in the dark. You’ll find some fresh Stronghold 3 screenshots below.

Today, developer Garry Newman posts on his his site to announce that Garry’s Mod has now sold more than a million copies since its launch on Steam in 2007.

“This is a pretty big deal for me considering this all started off as a tiny tiny modification about 6 years ago,” writes Garry. “This is more than I could have ever expected or wished for!”

“Even though my name is on the Mod there are a lot of people that have helped out over the years – and GMod wouldn’t be where it is now without them. Particularly Valve & Steam – which made Garry’s Mod technically feasible”

Garry’s Mod is available to buy on Steam now for £6 / $10. Garry’s Mod 9, an older version with less features, can be downloaded from Steam for free.

In the case of Dragon Age 2, once the product key key had been validated on Origin, it was possible to launch the Steam version of the game from the Origin client, complete with Steam overlay and chat functions.

Not all of the keys we tried worked. Origin didn’t recognise product code for Mass Effect, for example, but most of the recently released EA titles we tried could be redeemed successfully. The result is that it’s possible to export a portion of your EA games from Steam into EA’s new system.

The Origin client already tries to auto-detect EA games installed on the user’s PC, it’ll be interesting to see if future updates will allow it to recognise EA titles in your Steam library. The fact that Origin can launch the Steam version of Dragon Age 2 suggests that it’s already able to reach into Steam’s directories.

It’s an interesting quirk of synergy in a period of strained relations between Valve and EA. Crysis 2 was removed from Steam earlier this year over negotiations around a DLC exclusivity deal, and current indications suggest that Battlefield 3 won’t be available on Valve’s service when it comes out on October 25.

Zeboyd’s games are affectionate parodies of 16-bit era JRPGs. Cthulhu Saves the World casts you in the role of the Lovecraftian beast on a quest to break free of a sorcerer’s curse. In order to consume the world, Cthulhu must first save it. “Romance” and “redemption” are promised. Breath of Death VII teams you up with a ghost historian and a vampire techie to uncover the secrets of the past. Kind of like Time Team, but with more turn based combat. Both are currently on sale at 10% off on Steam and Gamersgate.

EA recently briefly published a list of retailers for Battlefield 3, from which Steam was conspicuously absent. Other digital download sites like Gamersgate, Direct2Drive and EA’s own Origin were on the list, however, and an unnamed Gamestop executive tells Develop that Battlefield 3 will be coming to digital retailers other than Gamestop. It looks as though it’s just Steam who are being frozen out.

This is the latest in a series of conflicts between EA and Valve. Last month, Crysis 2 was removed from Steam, apparently due a clash over a DLC exclusivity agreement with Direct2Drive. EA recently announced that Mass Effect 3 will get its own Origin exclusive pre-order bonuses and Star Wars: The Old Republic will only be available through EA’s download service. Hopefully Valve and EA will resolve their differences, otherwise we might see other future EA releases like Mass Effect 3 shunning Valve’s store as well.

More importantly, this update will make the patches you download smaller. The way the current system works, if there’s a 1MB patch to a 10MB file, you have to download the full 10MB file. The new system will reduce your download burden to just the 1MB difference. So the next time you go to launch a game and find that it needs to download a patch before it’ll start, that time may be significantly reduced.

But wait, there’s more! Further down the line, Valve says this system will allow Steam to finally implement some requested features, “like download scheduling, bandwidth throttling, and prioritizing which games get downloaded first. You’ll also be able to download an update to a game while you’re playing that game; Steam will apply the update after you exit the game.” And on that day, one of our biggest gripes with Steam will finally evaporate forever.

No longer: Reddit user benmatth took a page from Google’s playbook and created an EXE that, when run, picks a game from your list at random and starts it up. In our first test on Evan’s PC it ran Arma 2 – which, let’s face it, he was gonna do anyway – but this is a great way to make sure that none of your games feel neglected.

Download it here, give it a shot, and let us know what it runs in the comments!

Note: the program’s only been around for less than a day at the time of this writing, so it might still have a few bugs. On one of our PCs it just crashes every time, which is neither random nor lucky.

Update: Version 4 fixed our problem.

EA have since said that it was not their decision to take remove Crysis 2. They recently explained that Crysis 2 was removed because Steam’s terms of service conflicted with the exclusive release of DLC on Direct2Drive. Could a similar situation stop Battlefield 3 from appearing on Steam? Would the lack of a Steam version put you off buying the game?

“If we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve. At present, there is only one download service that will not allow this relationship. This is not our choice, and unfortunately it is their customer base that is most impacted by this decision. We are working diligently to find a mutually agreeable solution.”

In the same post, DeMartini clarified EA’s position on distributing to other download services and retail outlets. “We want our products available to as many players as possible, which means we make them available in all the places that gamers go to download games and services. To be very clear, except under extremely special circumstances we offer our games to every major download service including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam.”

Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of those “extremely special circumstances.” EA have already announced that Bioware’s upcoming MMO will only be available digitally through Origin, though it won’t require the Origin client to run. President of EA games Frank Gibeau told GamesIndustry.biz that “in the case of Star Wars we’re trying to build an audience for Origin. And it’s also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing.”

Gibeau also echoed DeMartini’s comments on the likelihood of future Origin exclusives, saying “long-term you’ll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for our products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible,” but also said “if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we’re going to do that because we’re growing a platform.”

“People complain to publishers that there are only sequels on the market, but that’s because retailers want to see sequels, because they can do their chart diagrams for how things sell and things like that. So one of the things preventing more creative gaming has been the retail challenge.”

“I can only say this now because we’re not depending on them, so it’s really relieving to be able to say that.”

Wester told us that Steam is Paradox’ main partner, followed by Gamersgate. Paradox has recently had big success with Magicka, which as sold more than 600,000 copies since release, and is set to hit a million sales before the end of the year. The entire Paradox catalogue is currently enjoying a 90% as part of the Steam summer sale. You can grab the lot for $74.99 / £55.

Every achievement you earn counts as an entry into a prize draw. 100 people in the draw will win their top 10 Steam wish-list games. So if you don’t have a Steam wish-list now is the time to make one. We take a look at some of the prizes and the easiest way to get them inside.

Each prize takes three achievements to earn. It’s worth noting you can claim prizes for games you don’t own yet if you’re planning on picking them up later down the line.

• Alien Breed 2: Assault – free game
• Homefront – Fire Sale map pack
• Dwarfs!? – Carnival DLC
• Monday Night Combat – summer gear
• Space Chem – 63 Corvi Mission
• Dawn of War 2: Retribution – Blood Raven’s veteran’s helmet
• Guardians of Graxia – map pack
• AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity – Brutal Concussion mission pack
• Killing Floor – Steampunk character pack
• Delve Deeper – Treasures and Tunnels map pack
• Test Drive Unlimited – 2010 Audi RS 5 Coupe
• AI War: Fleet Command – Zenith Remnant expansion
• Zombie Driver – Summer of Slaughter map
• Winter Voices – Secret of the Norn quest
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda – Beserker suit
• Magicka – The Lonely Cruise map
• Men of War: Assault Squad – MP Supply Pack Alpha
• Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter – Serious 8 character pack
• Fate of the World – Denial Campaign mission
• Beat Hazard – The Golden Ship mission
• X3: Terran Conflict – A Sunny Place mission
• Team Fortress 2 – Summer Shades
• Portal 2 – Goo Gear Snorkles
• Defense Grid: The Awakening – Resurgence map packs

The whole of Alien Breed 2: Assault can be bought in exchange for some of your achievements. There are four map packs available for Defense Grid: The Awakening. AI War: Fleet Command has an entire expansion pack up for grabs, which features “122 new ships, 12 new AI types and several new map styles.”

You can also get items include some spiffing shades for Team Fortress 2, cool skins for Killing Floor, new Gear for Men of War and Dawn of War: Retribution and new maps for Magicka and AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.

But how do you get all this neat stuff? Steam is revealing around seven new achievements a day on the Summer Camp Page. But don’t worry, you don’t have to do them that day. You can get the achievements at any point during the sale.

The Steam Community achievements are the easiest to earn:

• Say Cheese – There are two separate entries asking you to post a screenshot. Just press print screen while playing a Steam game and you’ll get the opportunity to upload your shots when you quit out.
• Write Home – Recommend a game to your friends, go to the bottom of the Steam recommended page, and write something nice about a game you own.
• Welcome to Camp – Just join the Steam Summer Camp group. It’s as easy as that.
• Find Your Friends – Link your Facebook profile to Steam. You can do this by editing your Steam Community Profile. You can always unlink this later on if you like.
• Play Time – Play a free demo. Here is the demo list, just about anyone should be able to find something.

 
That’s five achievements you can get without even owning a game. Here are some simple game-specific ones:

• Escape the Heat (Team Fortress 2) – Since TF2 is free, this is easy. Play on a map with some water (like Well or 2Fort) get lit on fire, and jump into the water for an easy ticket.
• Promethean Summer (Dawn of War: Retribution) – Killing 50 enemies with a flamer is easy if you take a Mekboy or Lord General into the Last Stand mode. This also works with the Last Standalone version of the game.
• Swedish Summer (Magicka) – Swedish summers must be even worse than British ones! You need to set off rain or blizzard 20 times in a versus match to get this. It’s pretty simple if you and a friend or two co-operate to farm chests instead of fighting. Sooner or later one will drop rain and you can set it off over and over.
• Lady of the Lake (Mount and Blade: Warband) – This one is easy. Just play as a female character, buy yourself a Great Sword from a merchant and give it to a companion (you can find them in pubs).

 
There are a lot more achievements out there but these are all simple and will net you plenty of points. With more to be revealed as the sale goes on, it shouldn’t be too hard to get all the prizes you want.

RPS noticed the shooter lounging around on Steam as though it had never been away. It’s reappeared just in time, as the new DLC is set to arrive sometime this month. When that hits, the game will go free for two weeks to celebrate. The game’s currently 25% off at £22.49.

What’re you picking up first? Let us know in the comments.

Edit: And yes, you can also win prizes by earning in-game achievements. Today’s roster is Beat.Trip.Beat, DoW2: Retribution, Lead and Gold, AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Toki Tori, and Swords and Soldiers HD.

It’s a resounding indication of the success of TF2′s move to free-to-play. Counter-Strike is routinely the most played game on Steam, often boasting twice the number of players of its nearest rivals. For a four-year-old online shooter to suddenly leapfrog the Counter-Strike is a big deal.

Team Fortress 2 already had a big player-base before it went free-to-play, and it might have been fair to assume that everyone who wanted to play the game already owned it, especially given the incredibly low prices it’s been sold for in some of Valve’s Steam sales, and the regular free weekends that were thrown after every major update. In practice, removing the barrier of entry completely has had an impressive effect.

Does this mean Valve will be making more of their catalogue free? Speaking to Develop, Team Fortress 2 lead Robin Walker said “with just the data from a single product, it seems dangerous to assume that it would be true for all our products.”

“The data we got back from the Mann-conomy Update leads us to believe that TF2 would be more successful as a completely free product,” he said. “Either way, we’ll know a heck of a lot more in a couple of months, and that’s the kind of thing that gets us excited around the office.”

According to the publishing director, the recent growth in digital distribution was inevitable: “I think of it as less a revolution, more a filling of a void. A new government coming in to a territory that has been pretty much ungoverned for the previous few years.”

1C publish the Men of War, IL-2 Sturmovik, and King’s Bounty series’, among other PC stalwarts.

Still credits PC with the industry’s technical advancements of late, saying: “The PC has been at the forefront of most technology shifts in the market. I was very aware of this at Nvidia. Most breakthroughs in console technology have their roots in the PC market. Most leaps in games development come to the PC first and then work their way into the SDK’s of the console manufacturers.”

He also says that PC gaming is still in a strong position, and that customer’s lack of demand for boxed products is vastly exaggerated: “For the longest time we’ve been told by retail, in the UK and US especially, that PC games is a dying market.

“It has been getting less and less shelf space and less and less focus in store, but in all that time we, as a PC publisher have seen absolutely no drop off in demand. In fact the dichotomy between us being told by retail there is no demand for our product and us being asked by customers – by e-mail, phone etc. – where they can find our games is quite shocking.

“My favourite example is when one of our UK publishers came to explain why they had only managed to get 30 copies into the UK’s largest retail chain. He passed on: ‘They told us there was hardly any demand for the title.’

“At that time I had my digital sales reporting tool open, which tracks download sales instantly as they happen, I hit refresh and informed our partner: ‘In the few seconds that’s it has taken you to explain there is only demand for 30 units in the UK, we have sold twice as many as that digitally,’” concluded Still.

Digital distribution, and Steam’s dominance over the market is a contentious issue. E.A’s own download service, Origin has been creating all kinds of headlines over the past few weeks. When was the last time you bought a game in-store? Rich claims Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was his last boxed game, whereas Tom S, Tim and I all bought Starcraft II in-store thanks to the “nice box.”

This week is all controversy! Free-to-play games on Steam?! I mean, really Valve?! Oh, right. Well, that’s actually pretty good news, but other than that, controversy! Josh, Dan, Tyler, and Lucas weave through Duke Nukem Forever’s critical assassination and PR gaff attack, Battlefield 3 preorder bonus nonsense, EA’s digital exclusivity ambitions, and the rampant hax0ring of boxes. Plus, feel free to laugh at Tyler’s first attempt to host a PCG podcast (excluding E3). Just keep in mind that he can hear you listening. That’s how the internet works.

PC Gamer US Podcast 276: Duking it out

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

Subscribe the podcast RSS feed.

Follow us on Twitter:
@PCGamer
@logandecker (Logan)
@Havoc06 (Chris)
@DanStapleton (Dan)
@ELahti (Evan)
@jaugustine (Josh)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler)
@andybauman (Andy)
@Ljrepresent (Lucas)

Today, a couple of days after launch, Alice: Madness Returns has popped up on Steam without notice – so apparently whatever breech of agreement that resulted in the removal of Crysis 2 from Steam has not prevented EA from putting up new games. EA PR Director Amanda Taggart sent over this not-very-revealing statement:

“EA Partners and Spicy Horse Games appreciate Steam’s decision to sell Alice: Madness Returns.   The game is also available on several other download services including Amazon, Gamestop and Origin.com.”

My personal pet theory is that EA simply wants to own all of the pre-orders on its games, without splitting that sweet, sweet cash with Valve. I expect to see most EA games – including Battlefield 3 – pop up on Steam after launch.

“Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam.

“Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more.”

The nature of the change in terms that prompted Crytek to remove Crysis 2 from Steam is unclear, as is the identity of the other download service. We’ve contacted EA and Valve for comment. People who have bought Crysis 2 over Steam can still boot up Crysis 2 and play as normal.

Initially, news of Crysis 2′s removal suggested that EA might be moving towards releasing their future games exclusively through Origin. EA have already announced that The digital edition of The Old Republic will only be available to buy through Origin, and the service is currently listing Alice: Madness Returns as an origin exclusive until tomorrow. President of EA Games Frank Gibeau has been dropping hints about EA’s future direction, who says “if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we’re going to do that because we’re growing a platform.”

Starting tomorrow, each of the five games will offer exclusive in-game content to those players who try out the “free-to-play game of the day.” That likely means Champions Online will soon be inundated with new players wearing Pyro masks or wielding Gordon’s crowbar, which can only be a good thing for all involved.

Read on for a few more thoughts.

You can find all five games in the new free-to-play section of the Steam store.

The news here is that Steamworks’ micropayment functionality is being used across all the games. The tech was originally rolled out for Team Fortress 2′s Mannconomy update, and it has been generating wads of money for Valve and prompting occasional ire from gamers ever since. Given that these games were already free-to-play with micropayments though, it seems like little cause for further consternation.

Instead, it seems like a good thing. Free-to-play games vary in quality wildly, and there’s so many of them from so many developers that it’s difficult to work out which are worth your time. Having a bunch of them in a central place like Steam, where you can see what your friends are playing, should make it easier to work out what’s worth your time. It’ll also stop these games being so marginalised and take away a little of the stigma of playing them. If that results in the good free-to-play games getting the attention they deserve, then that’s great.

The dark and gorgeous indie platformer, Limbo might just be getting a PC release, according to a trailer for the game that’s appeared on Steam. Indiegames discovered a post on NeoGaf pointing out that clicking on this link causes the video above to download straight to your Steam account.

The puzzle platformer was originally released on Xbox Live Arcade last summer, combining a brooding aesthetic with physics-driven platforming, and a wide variety of surprisingly violent and occasionally hilarious ways to die. A PC version of the game would be a Very Good Thing. Find out more about the game on the Limbo site.

In future Origin plans to spread to smartphones, providing additional downloadable mini-games alongside their major game releases. EA have already followed a similar tactic with games like Dead Space, but Origin plans to consolidate these games into a more convenient single service. It’s unclear at the moment whether Origin will replace the EA Store, but we’ll know more when EA make the official announcement later today.

Read on for screens and the details.

The online adaptation lets you create your own personal town which reflects your choice of tactics. There’ll be a Rampage mode that supplies a non-stop zombie attack, complete with leaderboards. It sounds as though Popcap are going for a similar vibe to their Facebook/iOS adaptation of Bejewelled Blitz – quick, competitive bursts of play through a browser.

We’re intrigued by the weekly challenges, items, and zombies teased by Popcap, but the prospect of an online Zen Garden-esque town that your friends can come and visit is even more exciting. Upsettingly, Popcap have also confirmed that Plants vs. Zombies Social Edition will be exclusive to Renren.com for the time being. Boo to language barriers.

The 15,000 word multimedia experience/interactive documentary/digital book was created by Geoff Keighley during Portal 2′s development. Valve gave him “fly on the wall” access to their offices, resulting in a “gripping and dramatic story brought to life by exclusive photos, videos, interviews, interactive experiences, and other surprises.”

Read on for the details and Craig’s mini-review.

According to Steam, The Final hours of Portal 2 reveals:

• That Portal 2 actually began as a prequel to the first game without portals or GLaDOS.
• The Directed Design Experiments created after Half-Life 2: Episode 2, including video of a never-before-disclosed project, Two Bots, One Wrench.
• How the story of Portal 2 evolved during development. See images and read surprising details.
• How it worked with Jonathan Coulton to create “Want You Gone,” the closing song to the game.

 
The interactive bits from the iPad version are also intact for the Steam release, albeit with less fingerprints/smudging. You’ll get to:

• Play with portals in an interactive diagram where you learn how portals work.
• Muck about with a 360 degree panorama photos of the Valve office and design labs.
• Listen to the songs that inspired the Portal 2 development team.
• Hear Jonathan Coulton’s Portal 2 song in various stages of development.
• Puppet Wheatley in an interactive experience
• Destroy Aperture Science by wiping your fingers over the screen (we assume you’ll need a touch screen for that)
• Interact with fans and voice your opinion via polls and a feedback form.

 
Craig was fiddling with the iPad version, back when it was hot on the App Store. He says that Keighley’s “Access to Valve is remarkable, giving a glimpse into the surprising number of failures that goes into making their impeccable games. Buy it if you want to know everything about Portal 2.” He also mentions that it took him about an hour and half to read the whole thing.

Yesterday, you could pick up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising with a massive 75% off. Today’s offer will be revealed in about seven hours time. The discounts will be highlighted on Steam’s homepage, Facebook, twitter feed, and in PC Gamer’s And in other PC gaming news posts.

Do you buy the majority of your games in Steam’s sales or are you more of a pre-order/pre-load kind of gamer?

In a recent interview we spoke with creative director of Microsoft and former head of Lionhead, Peter Molyneux, about his views on Steam and Games for Windows Live. “Steam is such a great service, I use it all the time, they did such a great pioneering job,” he says, adding that “with Steam and Games for Windows Live. There’s a lot of direct to disc, there’s lots of services that mean the PC is really pioneering the way.”

We also asked him about the future of Games for Windows Live. “My hope is that things will change around because there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. It’s something that needs a bit more focus, I’m sure there’s some very smart people working on it. Fable will definitely be coming out on Games for Windows Live.”

We’ll be bringing you more from our interview with Peter Molyneux next week, including his take on Alan Wake’s PC cancellation, the future of social gaming, and which platforms he considers to be the most exciting to develop for. Fable 3 is available to pre-order on Games for Windows Marketplace now.

Speaking to MCV, Jason Holtman said “The idea of a chart is old. It came from people trying to aggregate disaggregated information.” He also claimed that charting sales proves “less useful in the digital space.”

Read on for the details.

However, Jason isn’t against the idea of supplying sales figures to specific publishers. He pointed out that Valve provide partners with “Much more rapid and perfected information.” From the moment of release, Steam supplies exhaustive data to help track the success of promotional campaigns, along with detailed figures to help track customer’s buying habits.

The UKIE were hoping to create a PC Games download chart with the data but, according to Holtman, devs should be more interested in purely tracking the sales of their own products, not their competitor’s: “The point is, it’s not super important for a publisher or developer to know how well everyone is doing. What’s important is to know is exactly how your game is doing – why it’s climbing and why it’s falling. Your daily sales, your daily swing, your rewards for online campaign number three. That’s what we provide.”

If this news story has got you in the mood for some Steam stats, click here. You won’t find any sales figures though. No chance.

Shattered Horizon is a first person multiplayer shooter set in space. Each player is locked into a space suit, and participate in zero-G combat across sprawling interstellar maps like space stations and shattered asteroids high above the Earth’s surface.

Until now, Shattered Horizon has been a multiplayer only game. The challenge of mastering the suit’s propulsion systems and the innovative weapons like the vision-obscuring ice grenade means a steep learning curve for newcomers. The latest update adds bots to Shattered Horizon, giving new players a way to get plenty of practice before hitting live servers. The patch also adds a Last Stand mode, in which four players must co-operate to fend off waves of attackers. The update coincides with a sale this weekend, in which Shattered Horizon will be half price on Steam. Head over to the official Shattered Horizon site for more info.

This isn’t just an ordinary sale, thought. There’s something weird and potato related happening. Several games in the potato pack have received some unusual updates. Egyptian hieroglyphics have been found in Amnesia, potato references have been found in Defence Grid: The Awakening, and plugging a Razer peripheral in to Kick It! will trigger one of fifteen potato related phrases like this one “never trust a potato…they have eyes everywhere. They are always listening…we never went to space! SPUDnik was a Russet Conspiracy!” What the spud is going on?

VG247 note that a wiki has been set up to collect the mounting clues, though nobody has any idea where any of it is leading. Valve revealed Portal 2 through a series of encoded images and radio messages patched into Portal 1. Could there be another reveal on the cards, or is it all an elaborate, long running April fools hoax?

Here’s a list of the games that are part of the potato sack sale. Head over to Steam to take advantage of the deals. There’s no end date for the sale yet.

• 1… 2… 3… KICK IT!
• AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• AudioSurf
• BIT.TRIP BEAT
• Cogs
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Killing Floor
• RUSH
• Super Meat Boy
• The Ball
• The Wonderful End of the World
• Toki Tori

As well as the upgraded audio functions, it looks as though Valve will be adding video recording features to Steam in the near future. The news comes from Valve fan Political Gamer’s visit to the Valve offices. While there he spoke to Valve CEO Gabe Newell. Political Gamer says that he “confirmed that Steam will get a video recorder very soon.”

Steam video isn’t the only news to come from Political Gamer’s visit to Valve. He also discovered that Valve are making Meet the Medic, and photographed a wall of extraordinary new concept art that doesn’t match the style of any of their previous games.

Steam Guard will take advantage of upcoming Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT), an encrypted, hardware-based feature available with the new 2nd Generation Intel® CoreT and Intel® CoreT vProT processors.

Valve’s president, Gabe Newell has said “”Account phishing and hijacking are our #1 support issues. With Intel’s IPT and Steam Guard, we’ve taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods.”

Valve are due to release Portal 2 on April 21 this year. The PS3 build will feature cross-platform play with PC, and Steamworks features. Sony’s console has suffered from a few serious security issues in the past few weeks, as reported on by our friends at CVG.

“Steam understands that if the game is out on more platforms, it will sell more on Steam,” explained Cheng at his talk. He went on to say that having a title platform exclusive does not help to increase the sale of digital codes. Read on for more details.

It’s a controversial topic: developers approaching publishers who will only deal if they sign an exclusivity contract. It’s a story that has never been mirrored at Valve though, as a huge proportion of it’s library comprises of multi-platform titles. Shank – available on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and Steam – continues to sell well, and Cheng cites Steam as having a “really long tail, [that] just keeps on going.” He argues that Valve know that the wider reach the game has by being featured on multiple platforms, the more it is likely to sell, and the more potential consumers will choose to play it on PC.

Good ol’ Steam, eh?