We wanted to share some information about The International so that you’re able to start making room in your schedules. This year the Main Event in Seattle will include 16 teams and will run for 6 full days, from Monday August 3rd through Saturday August 8th. Ticket availability will be announced on this blog prior to going on sale. Team invitations will occur shortly after May 1st.

We have released an update for Portal.
Changes in this update are:

• Fixed missing video card configuration files causing lower than expected default settings when running the first time
  
• Fixed bug with threads getting lower priority than expected causing performance issues on OSX and Linux
  
• Fixed bad damage indicators if you changed resolution while playing

Once again, we're putting out a call to artists to create items based around the themes of Chinese New Year, Chinese history, and springtime, and submit them to the Dota 2 Workshop to be considered for the next New Bloom Festival. This time around we would like to ask artists to avoid the use of dragons and written Chinese characters, as well any concepts that involve human skulls, blood and gore. Additionally, to have the best chance of having your work make it into the game, please be careful not to mix cultural concepts in your designs, such as traditional divisions between the dress of children and adults, warriors and civilians and upper and lower classes. Also, our workshop particle process is due to be reworked, so please refrain from using custom particles in your submission. Remember to mark your submissions with the "Spring2015" tag when placing your items on the Workshop. All submissions must be on the Dota 2 Workshop by January 19th. To everyone else: remember to visit the workshop and vote through your queue to make sure your voice is heard.Also, the excellent people at WeLoveFine are hosting a contest for Dota 2 merchandise designs for the New Bloom Festival, so if your talents lean toward creating awesome swag, they'll have you covered.

As we mentioned in September, there are a number of features in the works for Dota 2 that we're really excited to share with you. Among them is a major improvement to Dota 2's engine that we are aiming to release in the first half of next year. One of the main features in this engine improvement will be the ability to rapidly create entirely new game modes. You've seen some of this work with the Dota 2 Workshop Tools Alpha that began earlier this year. In the past, our Diretide and Frostivus updates contained game modes that were very time consuming to build and maintain, and would need to be rebuilt from the ground up after the release of the engine update.

With Diretide this year, we decided that it didn't make sense to build another one of those resource-intensive game modes, for two reasons. The first was that the mode would quickly become obsolete when the engine changes arrive, and the second was that building it would have taken resources away from the work that needed to be done to ship the engine change itself. Now that Frostivus is on the horizon, we find ourselves facing a similar choice and, after some thought, we believe that once again the right choice is to not develop a Frostivus game mode.

This doesn't mean that you won’t see interesting updates from us before the engine improvement goes out next year. We are already hard at work on our next major update, the New Bloom Festival in February, although we will continue to avoid building new game modes until the engine improvements come along.

The dark bargain is struck. Today through December 7th, the Nemesis Assassin Event will allow all heroes a unique opportunity to earn trophies and items. During each day of the event, contracts will be put out on the life of those heroes listed on Oracle’s Nemesis Registry, and these contracts can either be Fulfilled or Denied during the course of the match.

Owners of the Manifold Paradox Arcana will enjoy many custom upgrades to their specialized assassin, including an evolving weapon and a kill marker to show the location of their kills, but it’s important to remember that the hunter easily becomes the hunted, so rewards can be earned by all who participate successfully in the event.

You’ll also be able to purchase the Treasure of the Defender’s Vision, which includes mythical items. Or you can earn this treasure by using the charm and making three correct victory predictions. Visit the update page to see the Nemesis Assassin Event explained in detail. Will your favorite hero make the list?

An enigmatic new hero strides onto the battlefield. Oracle is coming to let you seize the fates of both friend and foe. Prefer to deal a deadlier destiny? Phantom Assassin's new arcana, the Manifold Paradox, is available for preorder, and will be on sale for 20% off until December 7th. Learn about the Nemesis Assassin Event in Day 3 of the Foreseer’s Contract update, arriving this week!

A mysterious figure, a ruthless assassin, and an infinite number of possibilities. The Foreseer’s Contract is coming soon. Head to the update page to get your first peek at a deal with incalculable ramifications, then come back next week to learn more.

Meanwhile, the Dota 2 Workshop has been redesigned to include a voting queue, which will make it easier for Dota workshop users to discover new items to vote on, as well as let us on the Dota team know which items you’d like to see shipped in-game.

The new design will also make it easier to browse new item submissions by authors you follow, find out what your friends are favoriting, and receive Workshop-related updates from the Dota 2 team. Workshop authors should now mark their sets as "sets" in the "edit collection" page, as this will give us a better opportunity to showcase your item sets.

So once you’re done reading The Contract, be sure to head over to the Dota 2 Workshop and start voting!

This operation features unlimited free access to a collection of six top-rated community maps, and introduces Campaigns – a new and rewarding way to play CS:GO. Forge your own path through a series of missions, earning extra Operation Vanguard Cases or weapon drops as a reward.

With your Access Pass, you can complete two missions per week in the two Campaigns included with the pass. If that’s not enough, you can take on optional Campaigns that will allow you to complete additional weekly missions and will send you farther across the globe. Complete a sequence of missions within a Campaign to earn Challenge Stars and upgrade your Operation Vanguard Challenge Coin!

In addition to campaigns, you’ll get a Competitive Scorecard to track key stats from all of your play in official competitive matches on Vanguard and Active Duty maps throughout the operation. Check out the Friends Leaderboard, and find out how you stack up against your friends.

Arms Race Update

Arms Race gets an overhaul with new rules and three maps previously restricted to Demolition mode. Will you charge through the weapon progression, or focus on taking down the enemy team’s leader? Check out this Arms Race Guide for all the info on the Arms Race update.

All this and more (including a new map in Demolition mode!) in today’s update, so what are you waiting for? Your Operation begins now!

See detailed update notes here.

To All Workshop Submitters,

We've recently updated the workshop submission tools for CS:GO, and as a result the process for generating a new (or modifying an old) submission has changed.

If you are updating a prior submission or generating a new submission:

1) Launch CS:GO
2) Open the console
3) type 'workshop_publish' and press enter.

Thanks, and keep up the great work!

Step right up, mortals, to Merasmus the wizard's Carnival of Carnage... now LIVE in Team Fortress 2!