Those titles above are available now to gamers in North America.
"EA is one of the industry's largest publishers," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "The EA titles coming to Steam this holiday include some this year's top PC titles."
"We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam -- a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry's most successful digital distribution services," said John Pleasants, President, Global Publishing & Chief Operating Officer.
Products on Steam are now priced using local currency in the United Kingdom (Pounds Sterling), and Europe (Euros). All other countries remain in United States Dollars.
Folks from Matrieya Studios have released a public beta for their Half-Life 2 mod - Calamity Fuse. This mod sounds very interesting and it's free - it would be a shame to not download it.
Calamity Fuse a new multiplayer game that defies boundaries. Play it as an FPS, as an RPG, or as a fighting game, or all three at once. This amalgamation of genres combines the action of first person shooters with a customizable spell-building system and fighting game mechanics. Fight with firearms or hold epic aerial melee battles. Calamity Fuse gives the player innovative customizable gameplay: manage stats like Strength, Defense and Speed, build up defense and become a sword swinging demolisher, create devastating elemental attacks to decimate the opposing team from a distance, or powerful defenses to nullify magic and even absorb it to regain health, have the ability to inflict strategic status effects on your foes such as damage over time, loss of stamina and inhibited movement, or compound your healing abilities to play support.
Features:
Buildable inventory with choice of multiple weapons and armors
Fully customizable spell-building system
Fighting game style melee combat
"Wall latching" allows mobility over vertical surfaces
Automatic target system allows teammates to communicate non-verbally
If you are interested in participating head over to their website.
In the latest issue of British magazine Edge, they published their GOTY Awards list and Left 4 Dead named as The Best Online Experience of 2008. It also scored the third place as Best Innovation.
A nice big update for Garry's Mod has been released fixing a whole host of issues in the game, the big one is correcting SWEP prediction errors that were present. Here is a collection of other fixes found in the update:
Fixed huge SWEP prediction errors Fixed color_correction watching the wrong player Fixed low FPS and checker when missing underwater overlay Fixed broken seat pose after duplication Prevented props from distance fading in DX7 mode Fixed fast weapon firing exploit by switching weapons
Check out the full list of changes here and restart your Steam client to automatically apply them.
NEOTOKYO trailer is now available to watch on YouTube or download from MonkeyJunkie in 720p glory.
NEOTOKYO is a first person shooter that provides a visceral & realistic combat experience in a rich futuristic setting. It is greatly influenced by our admiration for Masamune Shirow (GHOST IN THE SHELL) and Katsuhiro Otomo (AKIRA), and has been in production since October 2004.
Christmas present from Valve - Peggle Extreme is now free for everyone!
Peggle Extreme delivers fast-paced puzzle action that combines elements of pinball and pachinko to create a truly unique game experience. As with the original Peggle, Peggle Extreme requires players to fire a metallic silver ball from the top of the screen, relying on gravity to propel the ball downwards while ricocheting off orange and blue "pegs". The goal is to clear all the orange pegs from the screen before running out of balls. A moving "bucket" at the bottom of the screen offers free balls, while green power-up and purple "bonus multiplier" pegs provide additional twists. Peggle Extreme features one power-up in the form of Bjorn the Unicorn, whose special takes the form of a "super-guide" sighting capability which enables players to see where there next shot will go beyond one or two initial bounces.
Valve have given us another great deal - this time Team Fortress 2 is on sale for $9.99. If you haven't picked it yet you should do it now. You can find the TF 2 store page here.
A new beta for Steam client is available. To access it go to File>Settings, and on Account tab pick Change... button. From drop down menu pick Steam Client Candidate.
List of changes:
Updated game overlay web browser to support generic web browsing, including web sites that use flash
Fixed games list scrolling behavior with pageup/pagedown and mouse wheel
Many back-end Steamworks changes in preparation for a Steamworks SDK update
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
The Engineer's teleporters can now be upgraded to level three. It will recharge faster the higher level it is
The Engineer's dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded
Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground or from health cabinets
Some changes to the second part of the first stage of Goldrush to give the attackers more of an advantage
Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper's machine gun, heavy's minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman's stickybombs
The icon on the HUD for a person calling for Medic will now give more information to the medic (if the target is low on health, on fire, etc.)
Added an achievement tracker that will allow people to choose specific achievements that they are trying to get
There is now a custom icon for death messages when the player was killed from a critical hit
Added a new particle effect for when a player enters the water
Added smoke to the feet of a rocket jumping soldier
Players will now have some particles swirling around them so other players can see when they are overhealed
We have started a beta to test localized currency in Pound Sterling and Euros on Steam. To join the beta, click here.
You will need to use this link each time you wish to purchase in localized currency during the beta. Your having opted into the beta is only saved for the duration of your browser session. Pound Sterling is available only in the United Kingdom; Euros are available only in Europe.
You won't be able to actually purchase if you manually set the store to a country/currency other than that in which you actually live.
Pretty awesome Europe eh?
You should post all problems or questions here.
