Hi, and welcome to the ValveTime news.
Each week, we’ll bring you the biggest talking
points regarding Valve and the community.
Now, the news:
Gabe Newell returned to Reddit earlier this week
to fulfill a promise he made back in January.
Previously, Gabe agreed to take part in
an ‘Ask Me Anything’ event on Reddit
should the “Heart of Racing” charity drive,
pardon the pun, surpass $500,000.
Shortly after the milestone was met and
announced on the Heart of Racing website,
Gabe revealed his AMA would begin
at 1:00pm PST on March 3rd 2014.
Unfortunately, Gabe failed to make an appearance
the first time around before then reappearing
the following day to announce the start of a
larger scale AMA which would not only involve himself,
but other key Valve employees Erik Wolpaw,
Erik Johnson, Ido Magal, and Greg Coomer.
This new AMA began at 2:00pm PST
on March 4th and, surprisingly enough,
didn’t just focus on spamming Gabe and the others
with constant, repetitive jokes or queries about Half-Life 3.
During the event, Gabe spoke with the Reddit
community on a massive number of different topics,
including Steam Greenlight, Linux compatibility,
possible Spotify support for Steam Music,
and Gabe’s own personal hobbies, which
include Machining and Motorsports, of course.
Other, much larger talking points
were also discussed during the event,
including how increasing the productivity of
content creation and user generated content
is currently Valve’s biggest focus for the Source 2 engine,
how a Linux version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
is currently in development with an unknown ETA,
and why Valve continues to remain silent and secretive
about the development of “Ricochet 2”
...even though we all know it’s on the way.
For those who may not be aware,
Gabe has regularly used “Ricochet 2” as
a disguise while discussing Half-Life 3,
a notion which was further enhanced as he
reiterated how Valve doesn’t wish to announce
or discuss upcoming projects years ahead of time
in order to avoid missing agreed release dates,
something which has let the community down in the past.
Elsewhere in the AMA, Gabe responded
to a query regarding Dota 2’s
currently unannounced International 4 tournament,
which is rumored to take place in July this year.
While Gabe noted that nothing has been particularly
finalized regarding The International 4,
it is likely the event will be held at the Key Arena in Seattle,
a basketball stadium capable of housing up to a
maximum of around 17,000 seated spectators.
Weirdly, Gabe announced that he would
be taking a break for a short period
before returning to find out which questions had been upvoted.
Now, well over four days after this message,
Gabe still hasn’t returned.
We’re not entirely sure if the AMA is actually over yet,
but we have included a nicely-formatted PDF
with all of the currently submitted responses
in our full write-up on ValveTime.net,
which you should definitely check out
if you want to stay up-to-date with
everything discussed during the event.
The write-up and the PDF be added
to the video description as links
alongside links for everything else we’re discussing this week.
A new update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive this past week
introduced the first themed sticker capsules.
The two new capsules, known as “Legends” and “Challengers,”
are both themed after the upcoming
ESL One Katowice tournament
set to begin on Tuesday, March 13th.
Each capsule contains various logos
themed after the event itself
and the teams set to compete for the $250,000 prize pool.
Both capsules are classed as “Lockless” and can be opened
without purchasing a key from the CS:GO store.
But, there is a catch:
the capsules themselves cannot be found via random drops
and must be purchased from the store instead of a key.
However, proceeds from each
capsule sale will be equally distributed
to the teams and players featured within them.
The update which introduced the capsules
also featured a small number
of miscellaneous bug fixes and map tweaks
to Mirage, Overpass, and Dust2.
If you’re looking to learn more, we highly recommend
checking out the announcement blog post
on the CS:GO website and the official changelog.
In merchandise news, tabletop game
publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment
recently revealed a Portal-themed
board game currently referred to
by the work-in-progress name of
“Portal: Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game.”
While details regarding how the game will be
played are relatively limited at this point,
we do know that the board game is
designed for between 2 to 4 players
and will be released in the final few
months of this year for around $50.
After the game was revealed at the
International Toy Fair a few weeks ago,
Polygon have come to learn that the concept of
the game actually originated from within Valve,
rather than Cryptozoic Entertainment.
The project was developed within Valve’s walls for a year
before they attempted to approach Cryptozoic in early 2013,
who helped to lend additional expertise
and to “add a final layer of polish.”
The core mechanic is reportedly “unique and compelling,”
as Valve hope the concept will
appeal to not only core Portal fans,
but also to anyone else who plays
the board game for the first time.
As Valve’s first officially licensed board game,
we’ll be sure to provide more details
about the game should we learn more
prior to the launch later this year.
On Friday of this week, the fine folks over at TF2Maps.net
revealed their latest themed custom content pack,
created by forum users E-Arkham and Cinnamon.
The new pack, known as the Japan Content Pack,
contains various models, textures, and particle effects
themed around classic Japanese architecture.
All of the assets included within the pack can be
used to create custom Team Fortress 2 maps
within the Hammer Editor and to create
scenes inside Source Filmmaker.
The pack is currently entirely custom content
not yet featured in the game,
but we imagine it might catch Valve’s eye rather soon
should it attract the same sort of buzz
given to the previously released Construction
and Swamp packs created by TF2Maps.net,
the latter of which was included in the game with
the release of the Mountain Lab map in 2010.
However, while you probably won’t see the contents of the pack
included in any official map anytime soon,
a new King of the Hill and Arena map known as “Suijin”
was released as a means of showing off
how the different models and textures
can be used to make stunning and visually
unique levels for Team Fortress 2.
The map, created by forum user Cinnamon,
is currently available for download on the official
announcement page over on the TF2Maps.net website.
After posting about the Japan Content Pack on our front page,
Nick and John got together with some of the
TF2Maps.net staff and fans from both communities
on Saturday afternoon to check out
how the new custom map plays.
I’m told the event was a lot of fun,
but I actually wasn’t invited. Thanks, Nick!
And staff from both sites are looking to try and
collaborate again sometime in the future.
If you took part in the event, be sure to leave a
comment below to let us know if you enjoyed it
and if you think we should run similar events in the future.
And that brings us to the end of another
relatively quiet week of Valve news.
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Thanks for watching and bye for now.
