Team Fortress 2

Image by R0B0CITRUS - http://steamcommunity.com/id/RetroCitrus/

Because sometimes you just need more rivets and scrap metal to get the job done. Team Fortress 2's latest content patch Robotic Boogaloo went live today, the first update forged entirely by the Valve shooter's own community. The update includes 57 new items, all of which we're told are totally new and completely non-derivative. The new item set includes some strange and wonderful mechanical hats, at least one of which is a delicious metal hot dog.

The new items are only available from RoboCrates, which can be accessed with the appropriately named, $2.49 tradable RoboCrate key. The RoboCrates themselves become rare drops in the free-to-play game starting June 3, according to the official TF2 website. Also, in what the website reports is a first for game's expansive economy, all content creators who contributed to Robotic Boogaloo will share in the revenue from the sale of RoboCrate keys.

Since we may be halfway to becoming robots ourselves, this new patch seems apropos. For a taste of the new content's eclectic robot style, check out the community-made trailer below or the update's included comic, DEATH OF A SALESBOT.

If you don't have beta participation turned on in your Steam settings, go do that so you can start collecting trading cards, earning XP, and leveling up. Yup, Steam just got gamified.

The games participating in the Trading Cards beta are Don't Starve, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2, and "up to half the card set" for each can be earned by playing them. The other half of each set is "earned through your collecting prowess," which presumably means trading with Steam users who got different drops.

Once you collect a complete set, you'll be able to craft a game badge which will appear on your profile and unlock "marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons." Badges can be leveled up by collecting the required trading cards again, and all badges—including any you already have—now give you XP which contributes to your "Steam Level." Leveling up has its own benefits, awarding you "non-tradable items like profile showcases, extra friends list slots, and more."

Now that playing games on Steam is a game, are you bothered that someone out there is already beating you? If so, the PC Gamer Steam group may be a good place to start looking for trades.

Join the Steam Trading Cards group on Steam to score a beta invite so you can start collecting trading cards, earning XP, and leveling up—yup, Steam just got gamified.

The games participating in the Trading Cards beta are Don't Starve, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2, and up to half of the new virtual trading cards for each can be earned by playing them. The other half of each set is earned "through your collecting prowess," which presumably means trading with Steam users who got different drops.

Once you collect a complete set, you'll be able to craft a game badge which will appear on your profile and unlock "marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons." Badges can be leveled up by collecting the required trading cards again, and all badges—including any you already have—now give you XP which contributes to your "Steam Level." Leveling up has its own benefits, awarding you "non-tradable items like profile showcases, extra friends list slots, and more."

Now that playing games on Steam is a game, are you bothered that someone out there is already beating you? If so, the PC Gamer Steam group may be a good place to start looking for trades.

There may come a day when preparing for the next chapter of a Left 4 Dead game will include wiping down your sweaty palms and taking a deep, deep breath. If you don’t, the zombies will get faster.

In remarks during the 2013 NeuroGaming Conference and Expo (via VentureBeat), Valve’s in-house experimental psychologist—Wait, hold on. Did you know that Valve employs an experimental psychologist? I wonder if he has lunch sometimes with the economist.

Anyway, Valve’s in-house mad scientist, Mike Ambinder, discussed experiments where players’ overall nervousness and agitation were measured, in part by recording sweatiness. If players began to show signs of nervousness or fear, the game would speed up. This new control scheme—mouse, keyboard, sweat-measuring skin pads—added another way for the player to interact with the game. Shoot zombie, reload pistols, keep calm. Signal for rescue, throw molotov, keep calm.

Ambinder also described other experiments in game design and biofeedback—which Valve has been talking about for a few years—including a version of Portal 2 that was played via eye tracking. Exploring the next generation of possible gaming inputs shows once again that Valve continues to operate, and plan, on a whole different level.

So good for you, Mike Ambinder. Just stay away from the mega-baboon hearts and everything will work out just fine.

There may come a day when preparing for the next chapter of a Left 4 Dead game will include wiping down your sweaty palms and taking a deep, deep breath. If you don’t, the zombies will get faster.

In remarks during the 2013 NeuroGaming Conference and Expo (via VentureBeat), Valve’s in-house experimental psychologist—Wait, hold on. Did you know that Valve employs an experimental psychologist? I wonder if he has lunch sometimes with the economist.

Anyway, Valve’s in-house mad scientist, Mike Ambinder, discussed experiments where players’ overall nervousness and agitation were measured, in part by recording sweatiness. If players began to show signs of nervousness or fear, the game would speed up. This new control scheme—mouse, keyboard, sweat-measuring skin pads—added another way for the player to interact with the game. Shoot zombie, reload pistols, keep calm. Signal for rescue, throw molotov, keep calm.

Ambinder also described other experiments in game design and biofeedback—which Valve has been talking about for a few years—including a version of Portal 2 that was played via eye tracking. Exploring the next generation of possible gaming inputs shows once again that Valve continues to operate, and plan, on a whole different level.

So good for you, Mike Ambinder. Just stay away from the mega-baboon hearts and everything will work out just fine.

Update: ESEA co-founder Craig "Torbull" Levine has responded with a more official statement, posted to the ESEA news page. He admits they were testing Bitcoin integration, to "determine whether it was a feature that we might want to add in the future." Ultimately, Torbull says, they decided against it.

He goes to claim that "an employee who was involved in the test has been using the test code for his own personal gain since April 13, 2013."

"The owners and management at ESEA all apologize to each of you that were impacted by the recent events and intend to make things right," Torbull continues. "ESEA has issued a free month of ESEA Premium to all of our community members who were enrolled in Premium for the month of April. We also ask anyone who has experienced any physical damage to their computers to open an ESEA support ticket.

"In an effort to maintain complete transparency, we have released all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses as well as data dumps of the wallets themselves. The value of the mined Bitcoins was $3,713.55 and ESEA will be donating 100% of the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. ESEA will also match 100% of this amount for a total of $7,427.10 donated. ESEA is also increasing the Season 14 League prize pot by $3,713.55."

Original Story: Multiplayer eSports network ESEA was found to have malware in its anti-cheat client, which used users' graphics cards to mine for Bitcoins. Information about the exploit was posted to the ESEA's forums by user "ENJOY ESEA SHEEP", who found he had been unwittingly farming Bitcoins for someone in the community after noticing excessively high idle GPU usage.

Mining is the legitimate, and deliberately system-intensive process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger - generating Bitcoins for the miner in the process. The ESEA client had been pooling the GPUs of users in order to generate more money for wallets held by ESEA staff.

ESEA co-founder Eric ‘lpkane’ Thunberg responded to the accusation, initially claiming it was a mistakenly released April Fool's joke. His first statement is kind of amazing:

"Lol that got aggressive quickly.

"Back towards the end of march, as BTC was skyrocketing, Jaguar and I were talking about how cool it would be if we could use massive amounts of GPUs logged into the client to mine.

"We went back and forth about it, considered doing something for April fools, didn't get it done in time, and eventually elected to put some test code in the client and try it on a few admin accounts, ours included.

"We ran the test for a few days on our accounts, decided it wasn't worth the potential drama, and pulled the plug, or so we thought.

"Fast forward to 48 hours ago, a fuck up in the client server results in a restart which results in a setting getting changed which enables it for all idle users, and here we are."

Thunberg claimed the combined efforts of ESEA users' unaware mining netted them roughly 2BTC, or $280, which he promised would be put towards the Season 14 prize pot.

He returned with a second statement a few hours later, after users pointed out that anti-viruses had been flagging the client for longer than the claimed 48 hours. He admits the mining had been part of the client since 14th April, and that the overall money mined totaled $3,602.21, before going to say:

"So first the bad news, this is way more shady than I originally thought, and as the person who is ultimately responsible for everything it's 100% my fault.

"Now the good news, as of the client update released in the last hour, all the BTC stuff is out which should solve the GPU and AV warnings."

Thunberg once again promised to use the now substantially higher total as part of the Season 14 prize pot, and that - as recompense for the additional strain that's been placed on user's GPUs - would gift a free one month Premium code for Premium account holders. He finished by saying, "once again, our bad, thanks for keeping us honest."

Thanks, Cadred and PCGamesN.

Who told you that Adult Swim cartoon characters, ditzy cyberpunk robots, and a cuddly rabbit-and-dog detective team couldn't live together in harmony? Because if today's Poker Night 2 release is anything to go by, they totally can. Well, as harmoniously as a bunch of wisecracking jerks can get on while competing ruthlessly for assorted unlockable items, anyway. Check out the new cast of players in the trailer - and we've got a list of the prizes up for grabs, too.



Brock Samson from the Venture Bros squares off against Borderlands' plucky Claptrap, while Ash Williams from Army of Darkness and the notorious Sam and Max are all plotting your defeat. Oh, and just to make your "Omaha Hold 'em" losses against these fictional smartasses all the more devastating, your dealer is the soul-crushing GLaDOS.

The prizes are based on your platform of choice, so us PC gamers will be aiming to outfit ourselves in these stylish Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2 items. Because look: you're nowhere near striking fear in your foes' chests unless your Mechromancer is wearing a perpetually grinning Max Mask. There are also numerous in-game unlocks to be had, such as themed poker tables and chips. I hope Max's face is slapped on everything.

For just a fiver, Telltale's Poker Night 2 is available today on Steam.

We already know what Team Fortress 2 looks like when teamed up with the Oculus Rift, but it turns out that was only half the story. Thanks to an enterprising individual with access to both a Rift and a prototype Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill, TF2 is now immersive for the lower half of your body, rather than just the top. Is this the future of games? All I know is that I want to try this expensive-looking kit for myself - does anyone want to buy one of my livers? (I can get by with just one, right?)

The Oculus Rift, you'll recall, is in the wild now, while the Virtuix VR Treadmill - which reads the movement of your feet and feeds that information into the game - will be heading to Kickstarter soon. Together, they look like this:

(Thanks to Road to VR and Eurogamer)

Those who’ve tried playing Team Fortress 2 with the Oculus Rift largely agree that it's a game changer - albeit with resolution and focus problems. Yet Valve's tech-brain in chief, Michael Abrash, talked at GDC extensively about the challenges of developing working VR and especially AR systems, and what exactly technical advances we'll need to get a more satisfactory VR system. Though the Oculus Rift has impressed nearly everyone who’s worn it, Abrash suggests that it’ll take some time before we escape the technology’s compromises.

First, we'd better clarify our terms. Virtual Reality (VR) is a closed, totally immersive 3D system that appears in the frame of reference of the real world – so turning your head turns it in Virtual Reality. Alternate Reality (AR) is virtual reality images that appear to coexist with the real world, distinct from the simple overlays that, say, Google Glass does. And, Regular Reality, as Abrash has it, is the real world.

“Many years ago I read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and I realised that much of it was drawing on virtual reality, and really wanted to be involved in making it happen,” says Abrash, which motivated him to move to Dallas and work on Quake with John Carmack. Since then the prospect of the Metaverse (Stephenson's immersive 3D world) has advanced rather slowly, until very recently. Abrash points to improvements in flat-panel displays, batteries, mobile CPUs and GPUs, wireless tech, miniaturised cameras, gyroscopes, accelerometers, compasses, projectors, waveguides, computer vision and tracking hardware as key technologies for modern virtual reality. And, of course, the true 3D games that he started with Quake, are there to supply the content (though the game I really want to try is Dear Esther).

We have now have a working VR, in the form of the cheap, light and ergonomic Oculus Rift, which Abrash is relatively positive about. “When a rocket goes past you in Team Fortress 2 on the Oculus Rift, it's like God on steroids.” That sounds _relatively_ positive to us. However, the Rift is only a start, because there are many problems it ignores or dodges. For example, “The math for resolution at wide fields of view is brutal. If you take the (best available display for the next year) and apply it across a hundred degree field of view, you end up with a pixel density that's less than 1/50th of a phone held at normal viewing distance.” Ouch. “The bottom line is that, as with 3D, it will take years, if not decades, to fully refine VR – and AR is even harder.”

So, with a series of spacetime diagrams that befuddled the less-technical brains in the audience, Abrash showed that there are fundamental disadvantages to all commonly available display technologies. Tracking in VR, and especially AR, is extremely difficult because of problems like colour fringing and blurring caused by body, head and extremely-rapid eyeball movements. Similarly, the combined latency of the device can be no more than 20ms total for tracking, rendering, transmitting to the display, and getting photons to come out of the display – and to stop coming out. The Rift in particular doesn't track sideways motion, such as strafing – and a failing correspondence with the real world is one of the things that makes players nauseous.

VR may well be the future, and the Oculus Rift offers a thrilling glimpse of it, but it seems there’s a lot of work to be done before that future arrives.

For more information, go check out Abrash's blog on the technology.