Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up for some breaking news, Left 4 Dead is going on tour. Starting with the Leipzig GDC next week the zombie-horror game will be playable to both public and press. The Penny Arcade Expo at the end of the month will see the worldwide debut of the Xbox 360 version of the game. Finally from the 26th September you will get to see Left 4 Dead in action at the Festival du Jeu in France and at the PC Gamer Showdown here in the UK.

“The shared experience of Left 4 Dead is unlike that of any other action game,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “That’s what we’ve experienced playing the game, and from showing the game to the press and our partners. It sounds cliché, but in many ways you have to play this one to truly appreciate what we’re attempting. So, to give gamers a chance to sample this new type of experience first hand, we’re taking Left 4 Dead on the road.”

This is a great way to big up the excitement for the game, I just wish I was able to go to the PC Gamer Showdown. Damnation!

Some of you may have thought that the Pyro Update for Team Fortress 2 packed in a whole heap of new stuff. While that was true at the time, the Heavy Update is going to come along and change the way we view Team Fortress 2 updates for ever. The update is going to be so big that a new Heavy Update website had to be created to pack in all the news that will be drip fed to us over the next week with the update being planned to go live next Tuesday.

The update will feature three unlockable weapons and thirty-five all new achievements for the Heavy. In addition you can expect to see a whole new game mode along with five maps for it to launch. Furthermore there will be a new Payload map which will have more open spaces than Goldrush, and if that is not enough the community map, cp_steel will also feature in the update.

Keep your eyes peeled here for new information, screenshots and a special installment of the ‘Meet The Team’ videos. For now, check out this page for the lowdown on cp_steel.

I always think of Valve as being a totally independent developer which runs its own show and does its own thing. That is true to an extent, but it must be remembered that EA has been involved in the publishing in several console releases of Valve games. The question must arise, would Valve be interested in being acquired by another company? In an interview with Gamasutra Doug Lombardi reveals that it isn’t out of the question.

If anyone is interested in acquiring Valve, VP Doug Lombardi is “happy to have that conversation,” he told Gamasutra.

“By the same token, the company’s doing pretty well, and we’re really happy with what we’re doing,” he added.

“So we’ll see. I mean, anything is possible.”

In regards to deal with EA and their thoughts on Steam Doug revealed this.

“EA was very progressive about saying, ‘We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don’t want Steam to go away.’ Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they’re not asking us to make Steam go away.”

So while I doubt Valve are going out actively looking for someone to buy them up I think there is room for their relationship with EA to become even closer. As long as Valve stay true to what they are then they can do whatever the hell they want.

Update - Clicking the second ’s’ in the Remote Access link takes you to the Black Mesa (Source) mod website.

Update 2 - That link has been changed a few times since I last updated this, whatever this is just an attempt by a mod at getting some exposure. They succeeded, but only because the initial impression was that this was a Valve piece of work.

Original Story

Damn it.

Is Valve re-entering the Viral marketing world? Prior to the release of Portal Aperture Science was found on the web and masses of information was uncovered by many people who were eagerly anticipating Portal. A new site knows as Black Mesa Research has recently surfaced on the web. Look at the ‘About Us’ and ‘Latest News’ sections.

What does this all mean? Well the ‘Contact’ e-mail address leads to an immediate Delivery Status Notification reply and a Whois.Net search doesn’t indicate a Seattle based registration which is where Valve is based.

To throw a further spanner in the works a ‘John Q. Fake’ sent an e-mail to the halflife2.net news address telling us to look closer at this thread which was started on the 17th July.

Furthemore there is a ‘Aemote Access’ link at the bottom on the Black Mesa Research site which require a username and password. I am sure someone can dig up more on this.

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I know Mike Patton from his time as the lead singer of Faith No More. I loved his stuff and thought he had a great voice. Thus it was to my surprise when I read this interview with The A.V. Club where he reveals his secret work with video games as a voice actor. He has done work on Bionic Commando and Portal and will be featuring in Left 4 Dead as well.

AVC: You also had a brief appearance in Portal, the Valve game, and there’s talk about you perhaps appearing in their game Left 4 Dead.

MP: I think what they did is they took some material that I’d already recorded for Portal—maybe it was vice versa. Basically that came out of the same session of work.

If you are a fan of Patton’s work then check out the interview here.

Left 4 Dead Box Art

Undoubtedly that is some great box art for Left 4 Dead. This is a game which seems finally to be nearing release with Valve confirming that people can start placing pre-orders at retail. Valve also reveal that more media will be coming later this week ahead of the November release.

Hell yeah.

That is the first piece of concept art that has emerged for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and it will be part of the Into The Pixel exhibit for the E for All Expo later this year. The piece appears to show a Combine Advisor floating above a figure which is most likely Gordon Freeman in the possible ruins of the Citadel from City 17.

Valve have already stated that Episode 3 won’t be present at E3, will we see more of it at the E for All Expo in September though, who knows?

thanks to CVG

Wow…I have just read two fantastic pieces on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the first is a live-blogging of a mini-conference at Valve and the second is the more detailed roundup of the first piece. Boy is it clear that Valve love the PC as a platform and are willing to stand up and fight their corner.

Steamcloud, free weekends, game availability and much more are covered by John over on RPS so read on for the info!

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Shacknews recently caught up with the voice of Valve, Doug Lombardi. In this first half of a two part interview Doug talks about the PC Gaming Alliance, the future of PC gaming and system requirements in current PC games. This is an extremely interesting interview and you can read a little bit of it now:

Shack: Does the responsibility lie somewhat with the hardware manufacturers to market their products in a reasonable way, or is it up to the developers to set sane requirements?

Doug Lombardi: Oh I think it’s totally the fault of the developers. Totally the fault of the developers. I mean the graphics guys, their job to keep pushing the envelope, and as they push the envelope, move the lower-end cards down to a nice price point, so that there’s always this evolution that’s happening. If you’re a hot rod type of guy, and you want to spend $400 on the latest thing, you want to have a smoking machine, and when Left 4 Dead comes out you want to run it at its highest resolution with killer framerates, and call your buddies over for a beer and make them all drool over your system, awesome. But if you’re just a guy who wants a decent PC for less than a thousand bucks, and wants to be able to run games on it, there should be a card out there that runs games at a decent famerate and decent fluidity. Then it’s on us to write for both of those guys.

Go read the rest of it here.

Valve PR honcho Doug Lombardi spent a while talking to CVG at EAs Games Showcase event in London last week.

Doug talked about a whole load of things to CVG ranging from Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike to Valve wanting to see a Wii game and much more. Some of his comments are really quite interesting.

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