Team Fortress 2 item makers have made over $2 million selling their digital creations, Valve has announced.

Yesterday marked the first full year of the in-game Mann Co. Store, and during that time user-generated content creators have made millions selling their virtual wares.

The Mann Co. Store is where the community designs, buys, sells and trades items TF2 characters can wear, such as hats.

"The 'Mann Co. Store' represents an important new direction for games and game makers," said Valve boss Gabe Newell.

"By leveraging and extending the platform features of Steam, Team Fortress 2 has enabled a viable marketplace for independent content creators and significantly extended the gameplay experience in an incredibly short amount of time."

Meanwhile, Valve has made live the Steam Workshop, an improved submission hub for community-created content. It's designed to make it easy to upload entries, check their status and get feedback from Valve. The Team Fortress community can view, comment on and rate items there, too.

Valve's added 30 new hats and cosmetic items, an item decal system, a "try before you buy" system, loadout presets, improved game performance and a new taunt as part of the Manniversary Update, which the company describes as "one of the largest and most ambitious in TF2's four-year history".

Video:

Pre-purchasing Football Manager 2012 from Steam gets you a handful of exclusive in-game Team Fortress 2 extras, Valve has announced.

Put down your £29.99 now ahead of the Sega footie sim's release later this month and you'll receive the following:

• The Merc's Pride Scarf can be worn by each class.
• The Ball-Kicking Boots are available for the Scout and spawn a team-colored ball that everyone can play with.
• Vuvuzela Noise maker.

For some, a video game doesn't stop when the power is turned off - their gaming experiences are bleeding into their day-to-day lives.

This can lead to video game-like reactions to real-life situations, Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm University have discovered.

It's called Game Transfer Phenomena.

The study - Game Transfer Phenomena in Video Game Playing: A Qualitative Interview Study - interviewed 42 "frequent" gamers aged between 15 and 21 years old. "Many" of the subjects "appeared to integrate elements of video game playing into their real lives".

The full study must be bought for $30. One amusing excerpt reported on The Metro website describe a 15 year-old boy wanting to use a gravity gun from Half-Life 2 to fetch something from the fridge. And why not?

One 19-year-old Price of Persia: Sands of Time enthusiast dropped his sandwich and immediately his finger used to press the rewind-time button twitched. A natural response.

Another 19-year-old thought he could use World of Warcraft's search function to locate his brother in a crowd. What a good idea.

Apparently half of the gamers interviewed said they'd looked for something from a video game to solve a real-life issue. One interviewee apparently saw a menu of topics available for him to think about (Heavy Rain?); another formulated a list of possible responses after being insulted (Mass Effect 2?).

Of course, there is a darker side to all of this. Use of aggressive, criminal and/or violent fantasies as solutions to real-life problems were reported by "a few" of the players.

The Daily Mail focused on one particular 15-year-old who said that "sometimes" he wants to be able to get a gun and "shoot down" people. "Irritating people", mind you.

"A recurring trend suggests that intensive gaming may lead to negative psychological, emotional or behavioural consequences," concluded report author professor Mark Griffiths, "with enormous implications for software developers, parents, policy makers and mental health professionals."

This research is being followed up by a study of 2000 gamers.

The Game Transfer Phenomena report hits headlines a day after Grand Theft Auto was linked to a shooting spree and eventually a murder onboard a Royal Navy submarine.

Video: What a useful tool the Gravity Gun would be.

Code possibly belonging to Half-Life 2: Episode 3 has been spotted in the leaked beta client for Dota 2.

The lines of code are for something called "ep3". Take a leap and transform that to Episode 3, and the code suggests the project lives on.

Not only that, we're also given an insight into some weaponry - an ice gun, a flamethrower and a "weaponizer".

/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_icegun.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_concrete.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_liquid.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_metal.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_flamethrower.cpp

Half-Life 2 was released in 2004; Episode 1 in 2006; Episode 2 in 2007.

Four years and many Valve games - Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 - have passed since. And now Valve concentrates on Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

The absence of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 from Valve press releases, coupled with suggestions that the runaway success of Steam may have impeded Valve's game development, have led many to give up hope.

Has the boat sailed for Episode 3? Should Valve instead concentrate on Half-Life 3?

The Dota 2 beta client link comes from Vietnam. Lambda Generation has rounded up the data mined from the leak.

Video: Half-Life 2: Episode 2.