Steam has set a new concurrent users record with over 27 million online.

According to SteamDB, Valve's platform hit a new all-time peak this afternoon of 27,182,165 concurrent users.

That beats Steam's previous best of 26.9 million users online at the same time in April.

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Yesterday, Valve unveiled a new compatibility ratings system for Steam Deck, intended to give users a clear indication of how well specific Steam games will run on the upcoming portable gaming PC. And now, a new beta update for Half-Life 2 has been discovered, seemingly released to ensure the seminal FPS meets the requirements needed to earn Steam Deck's top-tier Verified compatibility badge.

Half-Life 2's new beta branch update, as detailed by Valve watcher Tyler McVicker on his YouTube channel, reportedly covers a surprising amount of ground, not only making adjustments to the way the UI and resolution are handled in-game - primarily to ensure the FPS classic fits Steam Deck's aspect ratio and remains legible at its relatively diminutive size - but addressing some long-standing bugs as well.

Details on the latter are limited, but McVicker does highlight a few of the beta update's new UI and resolution scaling features. Perhaps most pertinent to Steam Deck, Half-Life 2's HUD is now unlocked and can scale "perfectly" to whatever aspect ratio it's being played on. Additionally, there's ultra-wide support, plus an FOV increase up to 110.

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Valve has cancelled ticket sales for Dota 2 tournament The International amid a continued covid case rise in Romania.

The International was set to return with a live audience in Bucharest from 12th to 17th October.

But covid case rates have soared recently, and the government this week announced new coronavirus restrictions. Romania has the second lowest vaccination rate in the European Union, just ahead of Bulgaria. Bucharest reached a record of 8.28 per thousand new infections over the past two weeks, among the country's steepest rates.

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Team Fortress 2, it's fair to say, is getting on a bit. The 14-year-old game remains incredibly popular on Steam, but over the past year it's hit the headlines for the wrong reasons, with bot problems that show no sign of disappearing. (Although we got to witness players conga-ing their way past the bots, at least.)

In any case, it seems the community has finally taken it upon themselves to give Team Fortress 2 a refresh, as a group of modders called Amper Software has started recreating the game in Garry's Mod spiritual successor s&box. The reason for this: they wondered what Team Fortress 2 would look like in Valve's newest engine, Source 2.

"Ever since Source 2 was first mentioned publicly as an engine that Valve was working on, a lot of people in the Team Fortress 2 community have started asking the question: if Valve ever ports TF2 to Source 2, what would it look like? How different gameplay would be? And would TF2 even feel the same?," the team explained in a blog post. "...s&box, the spiritual successor of Garry's Mod made on the Source 2 engine, has been released as part of a dev preview to a group of community members, including ourselves. It, pretty much, like Garry's Mod itself, allows you to build whatever you want using the toolset that it provides. So we've decided to not lose that chance."

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Left 4 Dead 2's iconic survivor line-up is embarking on another undead adventure, this time appearing as playable characters in developer Rebellion's Zombie Army 4: Dead War.

Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle - who debuted in Valve's seminal co-operative FPS sequel all the way back in 2009 (and who finally returned to action in 2020's official The Last Stand update) - come to Zombie Army 4 as part of Rebellion's free Left 4 Dead Character Pack 2, available now on all platforms. They follow the original Left 4 Dead's cast, who joined Zombie Army 4 as playable characters earlier this year.

The new group's arrival coincides with Zombie Army 4's Season 3 finale, which wraps up its current storyline in new campaign mission Return to Hell. "Our intrepid squad [are thrust] back into the underworld," teases Rebellion, "but this time it is a haunted manifestation of Schweiger's mind which they must survive in order to free him from Baron Umbra."

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Valve has reportedly sanctioned the release of Half-Life 2: Remastered Collection, a passion-project mod that "completely overhauls" the seminal shooter.

As noted by SteamDB (thanks, PCGN), the collection comes from Filip Victor and is "not Valve related", but Tyler McVicker - who focuses on news about Valve and Steam - reports that the remaster has "Valve's consent".

It's apparently the next iteration of the fantastic mod Half-Life 2: Update, a "completely free and extensive community-developed update for Half-Life 2 featuring beautiful lighting, countless bug fixes, and a brand new Community Commentary Mode". It's available to anyone who owns Half-Life 2 on PC and offers "countless" bug fixes in "one free standalone download".

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It's no secret that Team Fortress 2 has a bit of a bot problem, but the game also has a community that really enjoys mid-match shenanigans - and the two combined today in one of the funniest posts about TF2 bots I've seen so far.

Reddit user 2Noel posted footage of an Attack/Defend match in which Blu team was pitted against a bunch of bots - normally not great news for those wanting to keep their heads on their shoulders. Yet the team decided to try a different tactic to just charging into battle, instead choosing to conga their way out of spawn and onto the control points. And surprisingly, it worked. Stay tuned for the satisfying bot slaughter at the end of the match:

The question you're probably asking right now is: why didn't the bots shoot the Blu team members? The answer, it seems, is that the bots are programmed to avoid shooting players who are using taunts and emotes. If you look closely at the video, you'll notice that players not engaged in the conga line (such as poor old atomdotdat) are instantly sniped by the bots, while the dancers remain unharmed.

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Valve's 2007 shooter Team Fortress 2 just broke its all-time concurrent players count.

According to Steam's official stats, the multiplayer FPS hit a peak of 151,253 concurrent players on Steam on Friday night.

The previous high was 147,360 concurrent players in December. At the time of this article's publication, Team Fortress 2 had 141,741 concurrent players on Steam.

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Kim Swift, lead designer on Portal, has joined Xbox Game Studios to work on its publishing programme.

Xbox announced the hire today via a Twitter post which mentioned Swift's role would be to "accelerate our innovation and collaborate with independent studios to build games for the cloud".

Swift is most famous for her stint at Valve, which began when her portal-based game demo Narbacular Drop impressed Valve bosses and she was roped on board.

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New Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players now need to pay for ranked play, Valve has announced.

Previously, new players of the free-to-play competitive first-person shooter had access to drops, ranks, skill groups, and a free path to Prime (paid) matchmaking.

Valve said that over time, these benefits had become "an incentive for bad actors to hurt the experience of both new and existing players".

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