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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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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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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A movie version of Portal is back on track, Star Trek and Lost director J.J. Abrams has said, nearly a decade after we first heard of its existence.

The project still sounds far-off, and there's no word on what has been holding up development - but the wheels now seem to be turning.

"We actually do have a script that's being written for the Portal movie now at [Warner Bros.]," Abrams said today (thanks, IGN) "We're really excited about the take and the pitch, so it feels like that thing's finally on the rails.

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Valve has finally fixed a security vulnerability in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that could be used by hackers to gain remote control of a player's PC - an issue the company had reportedly known about for two years by the time its existence was publicised last week.

News of the exploit was circulated in a tweet by not-for-profit reverse-engineering group The Secret Club. It explained one of its members, Florian, had contacted Valve two years prior to report a remote code execution flaw which made it possible for a hacker to take over a target's PC by tricking them into accepting a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Steam invite.

Although the exploit - one of several vulnerabilities reported to Valve by Secret Club members - had the potential to affect any game utilising Source Engine, The Secret Club stressed only CS:GO was still verifiably at risk. "We cannot say for sure if and when things have been patched in other games throughout the time without us being notified about it," it wrote.

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The FBI is reportedly investigating cheating in professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matches in North America.

As spotted by Kotaku, the commissioner of the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), Ian Smith, said the organisation was working alongside the FBI on an ongoing investigation into "a relatively small but significant group of players over a long period of time, organising match fixing in North American MDL".

"[It's] what I would describe as classic match-fixing - players being bribed by outside betting syndicates in order to fix matches, rather than players just doing it off their own bat opportunistically. It's been going on for longer, [and] it's much more organised," Smith told YouTuber slash32.

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