valve posts

Last December, Valve announced that their zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead 2 had sold over 2 million copies in retail stores in the game's first two weeks of release. This week, Electronic Arts, which distributed the game in retail stores, announced during their conference call to investors that the game has sold over 2.9 million copies worldwide for both the PC and Xbox 360 ports.

Naturally both these numbers do not include the number of PC copies of the game that have been sold directly via Valve's Steam client. Valve has kept those numbers completely secret but its likely that if added to the retail sales it would increase the total unit sales to well over 3 million copies.

While we wait for the next major content update for Left 4 Dead 2 to be released, Valve continues to push out new updates for their zombie co-op shooter via Steam. Today a new patch was made available and while it's mainly bug fixes it does have something interesting; a way for banned players to get a little reprieve.

Folks who Valve banned from playing the multiplayer portion of Left 4 Dead 2 via Valve's own VAC anti-cheat system can now play the game again . . . but that access is limited to the game's single player campaigns. They can also check out the end credits and even Valve's extensive in-game commentary. All in all it's a nice thing to offer people who can't play fair in multiplayer games.

The patch also has some other fixes and changes including enabling PZ bots and fixing some issues in the Left 4 Dead 2 SDK release.

Just a reminder for all of the folks who might want to use Steam later this evening. Valve has announced that the PC game download service will have several of its features shut down beginning at 6 pm Pacific Ttme (9 pm Eastern time) for Valve to go in and do some server maintenance. The downtime should last until 9 pm Pacific time (Midnight Eastern time).

You won't be able to download or purchase games via Steam during the down time period. There will also be no access to the Steam community features and games that use the Steamworks matchmaking features won't be playable.

Valve can still give its players some small little surprises, even in an update for Team Fortress 2 that technically doesn't add any new content to the multiplayer shooter. The latest update, delivered automatically via Steam, adds a new gameplay mode called Highlander. It's a 9v9 team play mode where each team has to pick one of the nine classes to play as, hence "Highlander" in that "In the end there can be only one."

The update also has some bug fixes and some changes and improvements to two of the game's maps. Oh and while you are downloading the update, you can also go to the game's official web page and check out the terrific work done in the recent Propaganda poster contest.

Last week Valve stated that their Steam PC game download service had over 25 million active users in 2009. That's a lot of folks and all of them are going to be inconvenienced on Thursday. Valve has announced that some planned maintenance work will take a number of Steam services down for a few hours that day.

While games that don't rely on Steam matchmaking will still be playable those that do will be unavailable starting at 9 pm Eastern time on Thursday. The down time should only last until Midnight Eastern time. During that time people will also not be able to purchase and/or download games on Steam. The Steam Community features will also not work during the maintenance period.

The recent Soldier-Demoman War in Team Fortress 2 resulted in the Soldier class getting an extra cool item to use in Valve's recent content update to their multiplayer shooter. But was there some shenanigans in the final war results? In a tongue-in-cheek style, the game's official web site seems to suggest the answer is "Yes".

While they are quick to say they have no proof cheating took place, the web site produced numbers that show the Soldier class was killing a Demoman every 2.5 seconds for a week during the war. As they state, "In other words, he is either cheating, or he is a hallucinating sleep-deprived psychotic with severe constipation and unerringly good aim. In either event, I am confident he is ashamed of himself." Indeed.

[Via Blue's News]

Valve has been notorious for keeping sales numbers generated from their Steam service to themselves. Today, however, they opened the door just a little bit on those figures. The company announced today that in 2009 unit sales of games sold on Steam went up 205 percent. Valve also said that since Steam launched in 2004 the service has experienced over 100 percent growth every year since. Steam now has over 1,000 games to download from over 100 developers and publishers.

Of course those numbers, while impressive, mean less when you consider that we have no idea exactly how many unit sales have occurred on Steam since its launch. In terms of Steam user numbers, Valve said that Steam went up to 25 million active user accounts in 2009, a 25 percent increase. 10 million users have profiles in Valve's Steam community service. In December 2009, Steam reached a peak of 2.5 million concurrent users with a monthly total of over 13 billion player minutes. All in all there are clearly a lot of folks who use Steam to download and purchase PC games and the massive growth seems to be continuing.

It's a game that perhaps gets more updates and patches than any other PC game in history and Valve is doing it again with the latest patch, delivered via Steam, for Team Fortress 2. Tonight Valve has give players of the game a little new content to play with. No it's not the long awaited Engineer update but players will get access to (wait for it) three new hats.

Yes, we know you are excited to learn that TF2 players will now be able to put on the Towering Pillar of Hats, Noble Amassment of Hats and the Modest Pile of Hats (hey, talk with Valve; we didn't name them). In addition the special one-of-a-kind hats for the winners of the recent Propoganda poster contest are now available for those winners. There's also a ton of bug fixes in this update and Valve has also put in a few requests from the TF2 community in the new patch including new options for the Invade CTF mode.

Leave it to Valve to make a seemlingly minor bug fix seem cool and important. The latest update to the Team Fortress 2 web site talks about fixing an issue in the Scout player class that let the player animations go all weird while the player attempts the Double Crouch Jump.

Yes, we know: "Double Crouch Jump" sounds like a new position for . . . intimate relations or the title for the new Lady GaGa song. But Valve has some fun with the whole bug fixing in their post. We don't want to give their story away but buses are involved.

Valve's Steam service has been popularizing the idea of buying a "four pack" game bundle. Games like Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Shattered Horizon and others have offered such four packs on Steam and they seem to be pretty popular with Steam users. This week the latest game to have a four pack offer on Steam is Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter.

Now you can purchase the recently released graphical remake of Croteam's first person shooter in a four pack for just $59.97. Again that means you are getting four copies of the game for the price of three. Hopefully the upcoming release of Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter will also offer a "four pack" deal.