During an interview at E3, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed that the company hopes to add a movie making function to Left 4 Dead at some point after the launch of the core game. He loosely described features that would allow players to record, edit, play back, and possibly share their virtual near-death experiences. Sadly, that functionality probably will not be available for a while; we didn't see it in our own hands-on experience with the game.Lombardi also mentioned that Valve went to Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks when it was first conceptualizing Steam, but was told by all that such a service would only exist "10, 15 years in the future." Of course, now Microsoft operates the separate and struggling Games for Windows Live service, which shares some features with Steam.And yes, we know the above screenshot features the old, now-replaced Left 4 Dead characters. But how about a little nostalgia?...

Valve Software's Gabe Newell took the stage at EA's E3 press conference to present the cooperative horror game Left 4 Dead. We have the video of that presentation on the other side of the jump, but here are the Cliff's Notes.All four current player character models will be replaced with the above-pictured folks. This was probably a good change; the old ones weren't very likable or varied. In addition to that bit of info, Newell talked about the game's AI director, which will adjust the gameplay to match players' playstyles, positions, and status.He also said the game is coming out on November 4th, but that news ain't new. Anyway, the game seems to be coming along swimmingly. Be sure and check out the video after the break!...

This year's E3 manifests the industry's dearth of creativity via the rampant case of sequel-itis running wild throughout the development world, but that doesn't mean you can't continue creating your own unique creations with flexible tools such as the popular Garry's Mod. A new update to Garry's Mod is now available over Steam and will be applied upon restarting Valve's digital distribution service. The update includes fixes such as the shotgun having unintentionally decreased damage, TF2'2 blood overriding Half-Life 2's, and a crash that occurred "when prop's physics object couldn't be created," according to the official Steam website....

Valve's Steam service has now posted up their weekend sales deal and once again it's a good one. For this weekend only you can download and purchase Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Death, Episode One for just $9.99. That's a savings of $10 from the regular $19.99 price.Developed by Hothead Games, the downloadable only title got some mixed reviews but most were fairly positive for the first episode in this "M" rated adventure-RPG series based on the popular Penny Arcade comics. The second episode is currently in development but no release date has been revealed....

PC owners get another new update for Valve's popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 this week. This update, which as always is available when signing on via Valve's Steam client, is mostly to deal with a number of minor bug fixed in the game.While this update is a small one this week, Valve does have plans to release a more substantial patch in the near future. As we reported earlier this month the Heavy character class will be the next in the game to gain new unlockable achievements and weapons to use in the game. At the moment there's no word on when the Heavy update will be released....

Strategy game developer Tilted Mill Entertainment has announced a partnership with Valve that brings Children of the Nile: Extended Edition to the popular Steam digital distribution service. Gamers who already own Children of the Nile can upgrade to the Extended Edition free of charge when the update is released."Tilted Mill is committed to advancing the Children of the Nile franchise as an independent studio with the release of the Enhanced Edition, and we are bringing the CotN experience to a whole new audience of players by expanding our distribution network with the leading online platform for PC Games, Steam," said Chris Beatrice, founder and president of Tilted Mill Entertainment, in a press release Big Download received via email.In Children of the Nile, players control a Pharoah tasked with guiding "uour people through thousands of years of history: from simple hunter-gatherers to the creation of an immortal civilization. Guide your people well and you will build breathtaking pyramids, explore the ancient world and wage war against your enemies," according to the game's official Steam site....

The recently launched official Team Fortress 2 web site looks like it's going to be something a bit different than the normal marketing for a game title. The web site is giving folks a back door into the development process and one of the ways is showing off some unused artwork made for Valve's first person shooter.The artwork comes in the form of trading cards that Valve team members designed near the end of Team Fortress 2's development. They never went into mass production but the web site is now showing off the designs for the cards. So far four have been revealed for the Engineer, the Demoman, the Heavy and the Medic. The other character classes will get their own trading cards and they will be revealed on the site in the coming weeks....

It's a digital fire sale on Steam where the Weekend Deal features Sin Episodes: Emergence for 66% off -- which rings up to $4.99. Valve's original leap into the episodic market, SiN Episodes was originally scheduled as a nine-part series but was canceled at the end of 2006 after numerous internal issues - including staff departures - at developer Ritual Entertainment. While the game received generally favorable review scores (Metacritic: 75) we wonder, does it bother you that you'll never get to see how it all ends - even for $5? The promotional price ends on July 7....

It seems a tad appropriate that the Fourth of July holiday weekend will also have a new major update for Day of Defeat Source, the WWII multiplayer shooter from Valve. The developer just released that update to the game via their Steam client, adding a lot of new content and features.The new version adds a new map to the game, Palermo, which is based loosely on the real Italian city that was the site of one of US General George S Patton's victories (it' also based on a popular community made map Sarleno). The update also adds 51 new achievements to the game, player stats, Steam Community integration and a new freeze cam that will let players look to see who killed them (and even take a screenshot of the event). Some new visual effects to the game have been added as well. People who haven't player Day of Defeat Source will be happy to know that from July 4-6 you will be able to play the full game for free....

Valve continues to tweak their extremely popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 and on Monday the developer released a new patch that may (or may not) upset fans of the Pyro class. The update, released via Steam, has two changes to the flamethrower using character . One of the issues "fixed" is "backburner's flame critical hits not being recalculated after collision. This meant that it would check if the target was looking away once and after that the flame could score a critical hit again even if the orientation change" Yet another "fix" in the update "added back some damage falloff to the Pyro's flamethrower. Not nearly as extreme as it was before the Pyro class pack." Head to the Steam web site for the full change list....

Those crazy game publishers from Austin, Texas have now invaded Valve's Steam service. We are speaking of course of Gamecock, the relatively new organization devoted to releasing new original games and holding wild press events. Now PC gamers who use the Steam service will be able to download current and upcoming Gamecock titles.Currently you can download Firefly Studios' RTS game Stronghold Crusader Extreme and the first of two episodes of the Crackpot Entertainment action-adventure title Insecticide. The second episode of the game, along with the WWII stealth action game Velvet Assassin and the first person shooter Legendary will be released later this year via Steam....

A 20-year-old hacker who had stolen private information from Valve and Activision has been arrested and will face numerous charges. According to ITExaminer, the "evildoer is being charged and questioned for downloading Activision's video game Enemy Territory: Quake War whilst it was still in development."The hacker known as MaddoxX is also responsible for infiltrating "a third-party site used by Valve to handle the Cyber Café business partner program, which is part of the game distribution network Steam."In a literal display of abject foolishness, MaddoxX "distributed photos of his Valve hack as proof." Completing his hacking resume is a charge for "stealing credit card data of 50.000 customers from an English tickets site. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the hacker managed to burn 13 million Euros playing poker online and shopping for notebooks, flat screens and MP3 players."...

Last month Valve head honcho Gabe Newell invited a bunch of journalists from around the globe to their HQ in Seattle. Part of the reason was to hype Steam Cloud, their service for remote storage of game data. But there was another reason. They wanted to spread the word far and wide that the PC is the gaming platform of the future. Period. Dot. Exclamation point.He was quick to point out that the big guns like Intel and Microsoft should be the ones trumpeting the greatness of the PC, not companies like his, Blizzard or GameTap. It's no secret that Newell doesn't much care for the whole Games for Windows concept, or rather Microsoft's apparent lack of promotion and backing for their own initiative. Perhaps it was Newell's goading that made Microsoft respond as they did yesterday in San Francisco....

Kevin Unangst, Games for Windows global director, gave an upbeat speech today regarding PC gaming. He used all the right buzz words (i.e., "exponential growth") and tossed out some impressive numbers (PC gaming made $11.3 billion while consoles raked in $14 billion) that seem to indicate PC gaming is anything but dead. Standard stuff for the most part. What wasn't normal was the praise Unangst lavished on Valve's digital distribution network, Steam. Sure, it started off as backhand praise ("There were some rough edges early on, they took a beating,but they've done a good job."), but praise is praise. Unangst went on to say that their role is to improve the gaming experience by adding community connectivity, achievements, and "where it makes sense to add commerce on--whether it's full game distribution, whether it's selling add-ons to games, et cetera." During the speech he addressed the 900-pound gorilla of PC gaming -- piracy. Microsoft is looking at it hard, and while they definitely want to do something about it they're just not sure how to go about doing it. Unangast mentioned how well Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire is doing, but doesn't think the no anti-piracy feature "is the end-all, be-all answer." He assured gamers that we'll be hearing a lot more from Microsoft after E3. Let's hope so....

If you need a game that shows cute little cartoon characters killed in various bloody ways, you are in luck. As we reported last week, the game based on the cult cartoon hit Happy Tree Friends is now available for download and purchase. Currently the only place you can get the game is via Valve's Steam service.The game, developed by Stainless Games and published by Sega, is titled Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm and lets you keep the cute characters in the series from being killed in a number of levels Lemmings-style. It also features new animation cut scenes as well. The game costs $19.99 to download via Steam....