The Steam Christmas sale has launched, kicking off a series of deals that will throw ridiculous bargains at us every day from now until the new year. As well as the daily deals there's a selection of developer and publisher packs offering as much as 86% off entire game catalogues. Read on for more on the spectacular deals on offer.

Today's sales have the rock solid platformer, Super Meat Boy going at 75% off, Fallout 3 at 33% off, the excellent action RPG, Titan Quest at 75% off. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is also on sale at a third of its normal price.

Every day one of the new offers will be eligible for a special holiday bonus. The discount on these games will increase if you own a certain game. For example, today's special deal is on Portal. It's 75% off everyone, but if you own Half Life 2, you'll get an extra 10% off.

The huge game packs and publisher catalogue deals will be available from now until January 2nd, and offer the biggest savings. The THQ pack is currently offering 21 THQ games for the price of one, and contains gems like Company of Heroes, Stalker, Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2. The Square Enix & Eidos bundle is also another great deal at 86% off, and that includes Batman: Arkham Asylum, Deus Ex, the Hitman series, Just Cause 2 and much more.

You'll find the full list deals listed on Steam. What will you be buying?

We already know and love that the most athletic player movement happens on PC. Today, we learned of a new act of space-time gymnastics worthy of our internetting. DemonStrate has completed Portal in 10 minutes, utilizing known and new exploits to zap GLaDOS in the groin in just over 600 seconds. Prepare for irony: the sprint allegedly took two years to perfect. Video footage on the other side of this hypertext portal.



DemonStrate has also completed a Half-Life 2: Episode 2 speedrun, if you like spending your afternoons watching men ignore Combine soldiers.

It's been a fine few weeks for charity projects. An indie sock sale recently raised thousands of dollars, and a team of heroic volunteers are even now braving the terrible boredom of the Desert Bus challenge. The latest effort for Child's Play might just top them all. How would you like to own your very own Portal gun?
This replica of Chell's Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device can be switched between blue and orange portal firing modes, and even makes the pew-pew portal sounds when triggered. The gun will go on sale as part of the 2010 Child's Play Charity event auction in Seattle on December 7th. To see how this amazing replica was created, check out the project's build blog. Here's a video showing the gun's various features: