Valve seemingly have little interest in making a new Day of Defeat but they are at least letting someone else have a crack. Now on Steam Early Access is Day of Infamy [official site], a World War 2 multiplayer FPS heavily inspired by Day of Defeat – and made with Valve’s blessings and support. Infamy is the work of New World Interactive, the folks who made modern military FPS Insurgency. They’re trying to pick up where Day of Defeat left off, basically. Here, have a gander:

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Fancy a peek at a video and some screenshots and gifs from Dota 2‘s [official site] newly arrived VR spectator mode? The video has snippets of what you can expect if you boot up VR Spectator Mode at the moment and you’ll find that just after the jump!

For the screenshots use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard or the arrows above (and then below because our gallery likes to be contrary) the image*.

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The biggest event on the Dota 2 [official site] calendar is almost upon us, The International. Valve’s huge tournament starts on August 3rd, hosted in Seattle as ever, but folks at home can now join in the fun too. The International Compendium update is now live, with packs of virtua Dota Top Trumps cards to collect, swap, and put into fantasy challenge sorts of… look, it’s all complicated. I’ll explain. But most exciting is the launch of the Dota 2 VR Hub, a way to watch matches in cyberspace which I assume lets you nestle between Tidehunter’s legs like he’s a big salty armchair.

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The klaxon which has been going off since I got up this morning tells me that the Dota 2 [official site] prize pool for The International 2016 has now surpassed its own previous world record for an esports tournament prize pool and is now sitting at over $18.5 million.

$18.5 million. To be shared amongst people who are very very good at digital wizard sports.

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I remember simpler times when Dota and CS:GO items existed to give our wizards fancy hats and our AWPs hideous paintjobs. Now they’re used as chips in unofficial gambling. They’ve sparked lawsuits accusing Valve of enabling illegal underage gambling and seen scandals over YouTubers being secretly paid to promote skin gambling sites – or even secretly owning the sites they promoted. Oh dear. What’s new in the world of skin gambling this week? Well, Valve started sending “cease and desist” letters and more players and YouTubers became implicated in shenanigans.

If this sounds dry, don’t worry: someone named Karl Quackenbush is involved.

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Phew, finally we get some new names in the Steam top 10 (previous weeks here’n’that), after the chokehold of the Steam Summer Sale is loosened. I did not expect that number 1, but I really> did not expect that number 10.

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Valve have announced they will start cracking down on websites which use Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site] weapon skins and Dota 2 items as chips for gambling. For years they’ve quietly tolerated them, but recent gambling scandals and lawsuits have given Valve and CS:GO a lot of nasty attention. They’ve had enough of it.

I always knew ‘skin gambling’ would be part of our dystopian future but, to be honest, I had thought it’d be fleshier.

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Not much moving, not much shaking in last week’s top ten best-sellers, as the after-effects of the Steam sale are still felt and, without many major new releases or breakout hits, there’s that creeping sense of PC games in 2016 returning to business as usual. HERE COMETH THE BRANDS. We do get one new entry though, and it’s a pretty one. … [visit site to read more]

Valve launched matchmaking for Team Fortress 2 [official site] on Thursday but its reception wasn’t wholly positive. As well as introducing 6v6 competitive ranked matchmaking, the Meet Your Match Update replaced TF2’s casual ‘quickplay’ with 12v12 unranked matchmaking – and that second mode has frustrated some. Its problems included long waiting times and limited options, but Valve are working on those and more. Over the weekend they acknowledged these complaints and launched the first update aimed at correcting some of casual matchmaking’s problems.

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Ranked matchmaking arrived in Team Fortress 2 [official site] overnight with the Meet Your Match Update, letting you and your pals leap in and scrap to prove you’re the roughtest, toughest, point-caputringest mercs this side of Dustbowl. Or find out quite how bad you are. How confident do you feel? Valve have also launched a little contest to decide which character class will next receive an overhaul: the Pyro or Heavy?

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