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Tag: Valve Corporation

  • Valve Cracking Down On Joke Reviews Flooding Steam

    Valve Cracking Down On Joke Reviews Flooding Steam

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    Today, in a new update, Valve is changing how it sorts and displays user reviews on Steam in an attempt by the company to hide all the joke reviews and memes that are flooding the digital storefront.

    For over a decade now, players have been able to leave text reviews for games on Steam. These reviews could be long or short, positive or negative, and are intended to help people decide if they want to invest time and money in a given game. However, in recent years Steam store pages have become flooded by joke reviews that are basically useless. Now, Valve has had enough and is making some changes that might lead to fewer joke and meme reviews.

    On August 14, Valve published a news blog about its plans to update Steam reviews in an effort to make them more helpful. Valve says the “primary goal” of Steam reviews is to “help potential players make informed decisions” about games they might want to buy. But the current system, where players vote on which reviews are “helpful,” isn’t working. So Valve is going to start identifying “unhelpful” reviews and make them harder to see.

    According to Valve, “one-word reviews, reviews comprised of ASCII art, or reviews that are primarily playful memes and in-jokes” will now be considered unhelpful and will be “sorted behind other reviews on the game’s store page.”

    How is Valve identifying unhelpful, joke reviews?

    Valve clarifies that players might still see “humorous, but unhelpful” reviews, but the goal is that they show up far less often when people are just trying to learn more about a game. The company says there will be an option you can toggle on for those who like these silly reviews and still want to see them.

    Screenshot: Valve / Kotaku

    So how will Valve identify unhelpful reviews? The company says reviews will be marked unhelpful using Steam moderators, user reports, and some “machine learning algorithms.”

    “Our team has found that a lot of the unhelpful reviews were easy to spot,” said Valve. “So we’re targeting those first. This is a work in process, and will likely take quite a while for our team to evaluate the existing reviews and newly posted reviews.”

    You might be wondering, why even leave these unhelpful reviews up? Valve says that it’s found that “many players want to express an opinion about the game” but they don’t always have the right words to do so. So it says these sillier reviews are still “valuable data,” even if they aren’t traditional reviews.

    There you go. You can still do your silly reviews, but now people won’t have to scroll through 200 of them making the same joke just to see if the game is good or not. This seems like a smart change and one which has long been overdue.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Valve’s Yet-To-Be-Announced Multiplayer Game Already Has Thousands Of Players On Steam

    Valve’s Yet-To-Be-Announced Multiplayer Game Already Has Thousands Of Players On Steam

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    Officially, Valve—the company behind Steam, Half-Life, and more—has yet to announce its next big game. However, thousands of people are currently playing and posting about Deadlock, Valve’s next big game, literally right now. So uh, what’s going on?

    Thanks to leakers and dataminers, we’ve known about a Valve-developed multiplayer game for a few years now. Before it was Deadlock, it was likely codenamed Neon Prime. At one point since it reportedly started development in 2018, the MOBA/character shooter hybrid was possibly going to be set in the Half-Life/Portal universe, but that has seemingly changed based on gameplay leaks that occurred in May. Now, it seems a rumored playtest for Deadlock is currently underway, with the game developing a community of players on Reddit.

    As spotted by IGN, over on SteamDB—a third-party website that tracks various stats about Steam games and players—Deadlock’s player count has been steadily increasing over the last few months. In the last few days, the game cracked 18,000 concurrent players. That means it’s one of the top 65 most played games on Steam, and Valve has yet to even tweet about it or release a trailer.

    IGN reports that Deadlock’s current early access period is using an invite system, letting players on Steam grant access to other players. It’s understood that Valve is allowing players with early access to talk about the game online with other players, but videos and screenshots still seem to be under a strict NDA. Many are posting about the game and how much they like it on the Deadlockthegame subreddit.

    That means we are in a really weird and somewhat unprecedented situation. A new Valve video game is gaining thousands of players on Steam, it’s got an active subreddit, and we’ve even seen videos of the game in action. Deadlock is real. It’s a thing. It’s Valve’s next game. Yet, officially, Valve has yet to announce it or even tease it.

    Many players assume that a full-on reveal for Deadlock and an open-access beta are coming sooner rather than later, with many suggesting September. But for now, we have to wait and see when Valve will decide to announce a game that thousands of people are playing and which already has guides and tier rankings. Strange times. Meanwhile, Valve might be working on Half-Life 3 based on some recent leaks. Strange times indeed, folks.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Valve Made About A Billion Dollars On Counter-Strike Loot Boxes In 2023

    Valve Made About A Billion Dollars On Counter-Strike Loot Boxes In 2023

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    Image: Valve / Kotaku / Jag_cz (Shutterstock)

    According to new data, it appears that Valve likely made about $1 billion from digital Counter-Strike 2 (previously Global Offensive) cases and keys in 2023. Yes, that’s billion with a “B.”

    In Valve’s immensely popular free-to-play tactical FPS Counter-Strike 2, players can get cases by playing and earning them through level drops, or purchase cases from Steam’s community market. These cases come in different variants and can contain extremely rare and valuable cosmetic items like weapon skins. But once you have a case, you don’t just open it. You also need a key, which must be purchased either directly from Steam or from other players on the community market. And because CS2 is very popular, this lootbox system is making Valve a lot of money.

    As spotted by Dexerto, third-party website CS2 Case Tracker recently released its 2023 year in review for cases. And the biggest stat is the estimated $980,000,000 that Valve earned from players buying keys to open cases. Because keys are just digital items that unlock cases, it’s not like it costs Valve all that much to make them or maintain them so the company likely absorbed almost all of that staggering figure as profit.

    A screenshot shows some of the data from CS2 Case Tracker.

    But wait, that massive $980 million stat is only how much money Valve likely made from the sale of keys. It doesn’t factor in the 15% cut they get from every case sold on the community market. When you factor that in, it becomes very likely that Valve made well over $1 billion on cases and keys in 2023 alone.

    That probably is one of the reasons Valve isn’t in a rush to make new video games. They don’t really need to. Instead, they can sit back and let Steam and Counter-Strike fund all their virtual reality experiments and other hardware projects. Honestly, it’s a miracle we ever got Half-Life: Alyx.

    One last stat for the road: According to CS2 Case Tracker’s data the most popular day to open cases was Wednesday. Why? I don’t know. But there you go. You can now likely win a bar bet with this weird bit of trivia.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • User Needed One More Steam Point To Hit 69,000 And Valve Delivered

    User Needed One More Steam Point To Hit 69,000 And Valve Delivered

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    A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a Christmas miracle happened.

    Steam Points are a part of Valve’s digital store that I often forget exists until I see one of my friends rocking some wild and ugly new animated profile wallpaper and think, “Oh right, I can make my already awful-looking user page worse using points!” You probably have a few thousand of these points sitting in your Steam account doing nothing. Maybe one day Valve will let you exchange them for coupons or something, but for now, they are only used to buy new cosmetic decorations for your Steam profile or to provide awards to user-generated content and comments. So they are effectively worthless, but that didn’t stop someone from wanting to have some fun with their heap of points.

    On Christmas Eve, Reddit user CoffeeAndPistachios posted a screenshot of their then-current Steam Points balance, showing 68,999. They wondered if there was any way to reach the “nice” number of 69,000. What followed were all sorts of comments and theories arguing that it was impossible, or laying out schemes that involved buying a specifically priced game and then spending the exact amount of excess points to reach 69,000.

    Then, on December 25, a miracle happened! That same user returned and posted that their Steam Points balance had increased by one single point and they didn’t know why. A bit of sleuthing revealed that a “Steam Support Adjustment” had occurred and added the single point, letting CoffeeAndPistachios reach 69,000. Nice.

    Was it a lone Valve employee who, right before they left the building to celebrate the holidays, decided to grant one user a small gift? Or was it Santa hacking into Valve’s servers and messing with their databases?

    Kotaku has contacted Valve for more information.

    For now, though, we can all take comfort in knowing that someone who needed one point got that one point. And people say the world is a bad place devoid of kindness and love.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Valve To Steam Deck Owners: Stop Huffing Its Vent Fumes

    Valve To Steam Deck Owners: Stop Huffing Its Vent Fumes

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    Photo: Valve / Kotaku / Fizkes (Shutterstock)

    Valve has a message to all you folks (myself included) who love huffing your Steam Deck exhaust fumes: Stop it. Please.

    Have you ever taken a break from playing your Steam Deck to sample the complex fragrances emanating from its exhaust vent? If so, you aren’t alone. Since the release of the handheld PC, many owners have reported that they can’t stop sniffing the fumes that waft out of the Steam Deck during play. It’s become a bit of a meme among Steam Deck owners, with folks often posting online how much they enjoy the distinctive aroma. I’m one of those sickos, sticking my nose right above the exhaust and taking a big whiff each time I play. But someone finally asked Valve about this, and it turns out the company wants you all to knock it off.

    On December 12, Reddit user Metapod100 shared a screenshot showing them asking Steam Support if it was “safe to inhale the exhaust fumes” from the Steam Deck’s top vent. The user pointed out that people enjoying the smell has become “somewhat of a meme” and admitted many folks really like doing it.

    A screenshot shows the message Valve sent back when asked about the Steam Deck vents.

    Valve’s response had the same vibes of a school teacher telling kids kindly (but firmly) to stop eating paste.

    “As with all electronics, it is generally not recommended you inhale the exhaust fumes on your device,” Steam Support said. “While there are no safety concerns with general usage, directly inhaling the device’s vent fumes should be avoided.”

    Valve’s support team added that while they “understand” that it’s become a meme, they still want Steam Deck owners to “refrain from this behavior for the safety of your health.”

    And that’s a totally fair, logical answer. But I’m going to ignore it. I can’t help it. Smelling the hot plastic-y (almost fruity) scent that my Steam Deck spits out after warming up is a habit I can’t shake. I love it too much. I’m sorry Valve. Please don’t be mad. (And also please release a Steam Deck-scented candle next Christmas!)

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • A Decades-Old Glitch In Half-Life Has Finally Been Fixed

    A Decades-Old Glitch In Half-Life Has Finally Been Fixed

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    A new update for Valve’s first game, 1998’s beloved first-person shooter Half-Life, has fixed an old, small, and annoying animation glitch found in one of the game’s most memorable levels. And fans, myself included, are very excited about it.

    The original Half-Life has plenty of memorable moments throughout its campaign. But one of the most famous has to be chapter six, “Blast Pit.” In this level, players are introduced to a big alien tentacle in a still-impressive set piece in which it crashes through a window in a missile silo and drags away a helpless researcher. However, for a very long time now, an animation glitch has made this moment look wonky and broken.

    VideoGameCinema / Valve

    Last week, Valve released a large 25th-anniversary patch for Half-Life that added in old cut content and new maps, fixed numerous glitches, and even made the game verified on Steam Deck. It was a great patch! However, even after that big update, the Blast Pit animation bug remained. Even after two smaller patches were put out by Valve to fix some minor issues created by the 25th-anniversary update, the Blast Pit bug was still in the game. It taunted players, myself included, who went back to replay the game for the 100th time. A developer who worked on Half-Life even recently commented on the broken animation and joked that it needed to be fixed. And now it finally has after many, many years.

    On November 22, Valve released another small patch for Half-Life designed mostly to fix a few more problems the big update introduced. And in the patch notes, I spotted a note that caught my attention:

    • Fixed timing for the sequence where a tentacle grabs a scientist in Blast Pit.

    Could it be? Had Valve finally fixed this tiny error that had lingered for decades at this point? I quickly hopped into Half-Life, loaded up Blast Pit, and watched that helpless scientist get grabbed and pulled away. But this time, he was actually connected to the tentacle and not floating multiple feet in front of it. I might have whispered, “Wow.”

    Over on the Half-Life subreddit, players are also celebrating the fixed animation. “Those crazy bastards did it,” one user replied. “That little bug annoyed me so much for some reason, so I unironically consider Half-Life a better game now that it’s finally fixed lol,” posted someone else.

    While I’m happy Half-Life is getting so much love from Valve right now in the form of all these updates and fixes, I’m also curious as to why. Sure, it’s the game’s 25th anniversary, so it makes sense to update it.

    But things like this make it feel as if a group of devs, or maybe even just one Half-Life superfan within Valve, are on a mission right now, just digging into the game and fixing long-standing bugs. And Valve seems to be okay with it. And you know what, I’m okay with it, too! I salute whoever is responsible for improving Half-Life all these years later.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Kotaku’s Biggest Gaming Culture News For The Week November 18, 2023

    Kotaku’s Biggest Gaming Culture News For The Week November 18, 2023

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    From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.


    Baldur’s Gate 3’s New Deluxe Edition Is A Steal For The Price

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Baldur’s Gate 3 already has one special edition, in the form of its Collector’s Edition. We even unboxed it here at Kotaku, and it’s got a lot of cool knickknacks that pay tribute to its tabletop roots. Of course that was expensive, solely for PC and PlayStation 5 players, and didn’t include a physical copy of the game itself. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox next month, so Larian Studios is taking the opportunity to release a new, Deluxe Edition for all three platforms. And given what comes in the box, I think it’s pretty darn affordable. Read More


    The Best Soulslike Of 2023 Just Got Easier

    The Scrapped Watchman (third main boss in the game) grabs Lies of P player character P in open courtyard.

    Image: Neowiz Games / Round8 Studio

    Like game director Ji Won Choi promised in early November, duo-developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have dropped a new update for their gothic, Belle Époque-era Soulslike RPG, Lies of P. And just as expected, this update makes some significant changes to the game so that you have an actual fighting chance at surviving this bloodied retelling of the Pinocchio story. Read More


    Modern Warfare III Players Beg For OP ‘Groot’ Skin To Get Removed

    Groot (Nova's Gaia skin) guns down a hapless soldier in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

    Image: Activision

    Modern Warfare III players are begging Activision to remove a “literally invisible” cosmetic first introduced in Modern Warfare II that’s plaguing multiplayer matches yet again. Read More


    Valve Has A Plan To Stop Bots And Resellers From Hoarding The New Steam Deck

    On November 16, Valve will let folks purchase a new Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition model, which features all the upgrades of the base OLED version of the portable PC, but with some extra cosmetic details, too. And to help folks actually get a chance to buy this thing, Valve is implementing some safeguards to slow or stop bots and resellers from buying them all up instantly. Read More


    Hades Is Joining The Best Free Game Library Nobody Uses

    The hero of Hades holds up a sword in front of stone serpants.

    Image: Supergiant Games

    One of the best action-RPGs in a generation is finally getting a mobile version, but it’s a mixed blessing. The good news is that Hades is coming to iPhones in 2024 and will be free for Netflix subscribers. The bad news is that it will be exclusive to both, with no way to buy the game outright or play it on Android devices. Read More


    Suicide Squad Game Resurfaces With Big Map And Live-Service Plans

    A screenshot shows the Suicide Squad standing together in the Hall of Justice.

    Rocksteady is finally ready to start talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after delaying it (again) earlier this year. The studio first announced its upcoming supervillain co-op action game way back in 2020. In a new video series going behind the scenes of the game, the devs explained how big its map will be and showed off some new cutscenes. Conveniently, they barely mentioned any of the live-service aspects fans aren’t happy about. Read More


    Here Are Your Picks For The Biggest 2023 Game Awards Snubs

    Geoff Keighley stands on stage at his award show.

    Photo: JC Olivera (Getty Images)

    Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards are far from the be-all and end-all of which games are good, creatively bold, and deserving of praise each year, but they’re still fun to get way too serious about. It’s the one day game developers get to dress fancy, go up on stage, and receive our collective thanks for their artistic accomplishment rather than getting canned the night before the quarterly earnings call. Read More


    Former Mass Effect Lead Forms New Studio To Make Narrative-Focused Games

    Garrus is seen speaking to Shepard in the Citadel tower, with a fountain in the background.

    Screenshot: BioWare / Kotaku

    Chinese publisher NetEase is opening a new studio with the lead writer behind the Mass Effect series at the helm.

    Worlds Untold will be based in Vancouver, and helmed by CEO Mac Walters, who’s known for his work at BioWare that spanned almost 20 years. Walters was a writer on martial arts RPG Jade Empire, then a senior writer on the first entry in the sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect, and was eventually promoted to lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. Following this, he was brought on as creative director on Mass Effect: Andromeda, worked on early narrative direction on Anthem, and project directed the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters, before ending his tenure at the studio as a production director on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. So he was at the forefront of a lot of the narrative direction of BioWare’s last two decades. How you feel about that probably varies depending on your opinions on the state of the studio, but speaking personally, the narrative wasn’t my biggest problem with most of those games. Read More


    Kotaku Unboxes The Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5

    Kotaku Unboxes The Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5

    The $600 set is currently sold out at PlayStation’s store but is still a gift to keep in mind for the Spidey-loving gamer in your life this holiday season


    Total Recall: How Does KotOR Hold Up In 2023?

    How Does KotOR Hold Up In 2023? | Total Recall

    We look back at what made BioWare’s first Star Wars RPG one of the most celebrated of all time


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  • Chaos Erupts As Team Fortress 2 Jacks Player Count Up To 100

    Chaos Erupts As Team Fortress 2 Jacks Player Count Up To 100

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    Team Fortress 2 has now been with us for over 15 years, and for some reason, developer Valve just decided to jack the maximum number of players who can join a server at once up to 100. Valve doesn’t actually recommend you play with that many people, and warns that the game doesn’t properly support that many players, but that hasn’t stopped the community from creating chaotic 100-player TF2 servers.

    Valve’s online class-based FPS, Team Fortress 2, isn’t a spring chicken by any definition, having first been released back in 2007 for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. And while the console versions have been long since abandoned, the PC version on Steam has continued to receive hundreds of tiny, medium-sized, and significantly large updates, all of which have been free. The latest update to the classic shooter has provided gamers with an option to set the world on fire and invite 99 other TF2 players into a single server.

    On July 25, Valve released an update for Team Fortress 2. The patch notes reveal a pretty lengthy list of tweaks and changes, but the one change that caught the attention of many was the quiet announcement that the game’s maximum player count had increased from 32 to 100.

    Valve: Don’t make 100-player servers, Gamers: LOL

    Also in the patch notes? A warning from Valve letting players know that this new max player count is totally “unsupported” and “not recommended.” In other words, Valve isn’t going to spend time fixing bugs introduced by playing with 99 other folks. If shit breaks, that’s just how it goes. You were warned, after all.

    Freddy210hill / Valve

    As you can probably guess, even with that warning, many players have already fired up servers with the new max player count, and the chaos that followed was incredible. Watching people play on 100-player servers feels like looking into an alternate dimension in which Valve teamed up with Sega to put out a Total War: Team Fortress 2 spin-off.

    Unsurprisingly, playing Team Fortress 2 with this many players causes some issues. Players are reporting lots of lag, poor framerates, broken models, collision problems, and even some instances when the game just crashes completely. That’s not surprising considering this is a 16-year-old game that was never designed to handle 75 people, let alone 100.

    But also, I love this so much. Good for you TF2! There is something very impressive about 100 people in a single TF2 match. It’s like an old car making a long road trip after years without a tune-up. It might stall a few times, overheat, or even lock up, but it gets the job done. Brings a tear to your eye, really. It’s also a perfect time to let people create high-player-count servers, as Team Fortress 2 is setting player count records on Steam following the last big update.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Looks Like Steam Now Has Timed Demos, Dead Space Up First

    Looks Like Steam Now Has Timed Demos, Dead Space Up First

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    Image: Valve

    The ability to try before you buy has been a thorn in gaming retail’s side for generations. From the demo discs of old to the subscription models of today, publishers and shopfronts have had to wrestle with the idea that a lot of people only want to spend money on games they’ll enjoy.

    Whether that’s right or not, I don’t have the bandwidth for today—the idea that you could get a refund for a bad movie is laughable, but then, movies don’t cost $70, and what even is a “bad” game anyway?—but regardless, I’ve always been fascinated by the systems and processes companies have tried over the years to help sell their games.

    Like this! Steam has long been a battleground for this kind of stuff. You’ve long been able to download demos on Steam if the studio/publisher wanted it, and free weekends have also been here for ages, but for a while now the accepted practice on the platform has been buy a game, play it for a bit and if you don’t like it within the first two hours, you can just refund it and get your money back.

    That’s not an ideal scenario for anyone. Games are big downloads these days, and companies are actually losing money on processing fees every time you have to refund a transaction. So Valve looks to have thought of something new: a demo, only you get to play the full game, only you get a very limited amount of time to actually play it.

    Dead Space is the first to offer the “Timed Trial” feature—which is baked into Steam itself, so surely it’s more than a one-off—and you can see how it works below:

    Image for article titled Looks Like Steam Now Has Timed Demos, Dead Space Up First

    Image: Valve

    Is 90 minutes enough time to really get a handle on a game? I don’t know! It’s a figure that sits below the point you used to be able to request a refund on, but also sits a few hours back from the point where some games start getting good, so who knows how useful this could be.

    I’ve asked Valve if other games are going to be implementing this soon, and if so if their time limits can be adjusted by publishers/studios.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Fans Discover Half-Life 2 Corpse Has Actual Dead Human’s Face

    Fans Discover Half-Life 2 Corpse Has Actual Dead Human’s Face

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    A censored image of the corpse as seen in Half-Life 2.

    If you’ve played Half-Life 2 or Source engine mods, you’ve likely seen the in-game model “Corpse01.mdl.” The burnt corpse appears multiple times in Half-Life 2’s sewers and other parts of the game, and modders often used it in fan projects. All is well, yes? Well, it was until recently, when fans noticed that the game’s creepy-looking corpse has the face of an actual dead man on it.

    Released in 2004, PC shooter Half-Life 2 was the highly anticipated follow-up to Valve’s first game, Half-Life. Upon release, it was widely praised by critics and players. But while it came out to huge acclaim, there was a time when Half-Life 2 wasn’t such a sure bet, as its development process was messy and protracted. Valve scrapped different versions, cut entire sections, and lightened up the game’s intended darker, grittier tone considerably for the final retail release. However, some leftovers of this darker version remain in the final game, including Corpse01.mdl. Playing the game as a kid, the body always looked hyper-realistic and creeped me out whenever I stumbled upon it. Now, we know why.

    Valve’s macabre texture-cribbing was discovered completely by accident (h/t The Gamer). About two weeks ago on the r/eyeblech subreddit, someone posted graphic images of dead bodies they claimed were from a medical forensic textbook. (While I’ve personally verified the images posted are real and out there, I won’t be linking to them. A little Googlin’ will lead you to them if you really want to see them.)

    In the comments on that post, someone pointed out that one of the images showing a burned corpse looked identical to the Corpse01 model from Half-Life 2. Another post picked up the thread and people quickly began comparing the images to the art in the game. Sure enough, they look identical. The only change appears to be that Valve copied the right eye of the corpse onto the left. That’s it though. The entire face of that model is seemingly a dead dude’s face. Yikes.

    Read More: What It’s Like To Work On Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat 11

    Then, three days ago, gaming YouTuber Richter Overtime uploaded a short and concise video detailing the history of the corpse and its connection to the image, and this seemed to take the story fully mainstream, with folks tweeting about it and sharing it more widely online. As you might expect, a lot of Half-Life fans were freaked out to learn that they have been looking at a real corpse for the past two decades. One modder has already created a new model to replace the old one for folks who feel uncomfortable leaving the original dead face in Half-Life 2.

    Kotaku has reached out to Valve about the corpse to verify its origins and to ask if the company has any plans to change it with a future patch.

    Personally, I’m not sure this is a thing that should be in a video game. It seems to me like it might be time to remove this model and replace it with an image of anything but an actual burned human corpse.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Valve Reveals Plans To Improve Steam Deck’s Screen, Battery

    Valve Reveals Plans To Improve Steam Deck’s Screen, Battery

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    A Steam Deck shows gameplay from The Last of Us.

    Image: Valve / Sony / Kotaku

    As we discussed earlier this week, the Steam Deck has had one hell of a launch year. It should be no surprise, then, that Valve has its eye on the future of its new handheld, which it has officially categorized as a “multi-generational product.” The company has now revealed a bit of what it’s hoping to improve and where it’s looking to expand in the hardware game.

    In a wide-ranging interview with The Verge, Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais talked about ambitions and concrete goals for the Steam Deck. After nearly a year out in the wild, the Deck has certainly impressed with its performance and wide selection of games. However, areas for improvement are clear: The screen is serviceable, but it’s far from that of, say, the new Nintendo Switch OLED Model. And the battery not only tends to drain quickly but, as iFixit observed in its review, it’s one of the least fixable things in an otherwise repair-friendly device. We know now that these last two points are top of mind for Valve.

    Though the company didn’t reveal much of its plans for the screen’s improvement, it did share some insight into the battery, its replaceability, and how future iterations of the product are addressing areas of concern.

    With a battery that’s quick to lose its juice, and the nature of such a power source being to degrade over time, poor replaceability is a disappointment. Griffais told The Verge that due to the possibility of battery expansion, “you can’t really have the battery-shaped hole [inside the Deck] be exactly the same size as the battery” and that all of the glue that holds it in place is to keep it from moving around too much.

    Concern for a rattley battery was apparently an issue in development. “In some of our early prototypes,” Griffais said, “we had [the battery shifting around] and I’ll tell you, it doesn’t feel good at all when you’re just moving around and trying to use your Deck.” Yang comically added, “You don’t want a Steam Deck maraca, and you don’t want a battery possibly touching other important components and jostling them around.”

    So the decision to secure the battery in place so rigidly was necessary to get the Deck in a playable, shippable, and reliably safe state. Yang revealed that Valve has “rolled in a change to the geometry of the [glue that holds the battery]” which should allow for easier removal and repairs down the line.

    Valve also revealed, perhaps to the surprise and joy of a select few, that a new Steam Controller is also something the company is aspiring to make happen. The original Steam Controller was a bit of an odd bird, but its high level of customization certainly caught the attention of a dedicated, if small, fan base. Us select few who fell in love with it already knew it, but the Steam Deck has continued to demonstrate the need for more malleable and dynamic gamepads for PC gaming.

    Read More: The Steam Deck’s Funky Controls Prove That Gamepads Are Outdated

    But if you’re ready to throw money at the screen for a follow-up to Valve’s owl-shaped controller, I’m sorry to say that it might take a while. “Right now, we’re focusing on the Deck,” Yang said. “[A controller is] definitely something where we’d be excited to work with a third-party or explore ourselves.”

     

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    Claire Jackson

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