Portal 2 - Valve
The Steam Holiday Sale is on now through Sunday, January 1, 2012. In addition to huge savings throughout the store, the 2011 sale features two special promotions that allow you to win like never before.

The Great Gift Pile challenges gamers to complete up to six objectives each day. Completion of each objective grants the chance to win a free game or discount coupons for select games available on Steam. If you don’t win, no worries, you’ll be given a piece of coal. But hold onto that coal!

Why?

Coal is the ticket to enter the Epic Holiday Giveaway. It’s called Epic because the top prize is every game on Steam. The more coal you have, the better your chance of winning. Players may alternatively choose to magically mix their coal into something shiny and new by “crafting” seven pieces into a gift from the Great Gift Pile. So this year receiving coal is a good thing.

Didn’t get what you want? Of course Steam allows you to trade coal and prizes with your friends.

Further details on these events and information on how it’s progressing may be found here.

Complete information on all the savings, daily deals, featured publisher game packs, compilations and more may be found on www.steampowered.com.

Dino D-Day - Valve
• New winter map "Snowy Park".
• Full stat-tracking integrated with Steam.
• Game UI overhaul.
• Fixed several server crash errors.
• Fixed a few instances where view models would disappear while deploying.
• Added significant optimization improvements, particularly for those with low-end systems.
• Added a press-to-hold ironsights feature.
• Fixed goat related bug.
• Fixed client crash related to MG42 posts.

Bastion - Valve
Supergiant Games has released a new update for Bastion, which updates the new Score Attack mode and addresses two issues with the game. This update will be applied automatically when players are signed in to the Steam client. The change list includes:

- Score Attack Mode: It is now possible to earn Fragments and XP when revisiting areas. Try revisiting areas using different weapons, spirits, and idols!

- Fixed an issue where the Fragment Globes in Bullhead Court ceased yielding as many Fragments as intended.

- Fixed an issue where certain subtitles containing accented characters appeared as asterisks.

For more information on Bastion technical support, visit the support FAQ topic in the Steam forum.
Worms Reloaded - Valve
Updates to Worms Reloaded have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

As a thank you to all of our loyal fans we’ve added some great new content to Worms Reloaded. The update includes two classic weapons from previous Worms games, the Old Woman and Longbow, as well as a new landscape theme, ‘Britannia’, which was recently featured in Worms Crazy Golf. Also, for a bit of fun, we have updated, re-recorded and included the all-time favourite ‘Worm song’ in this update. Happy Worming!
Sid Meier's Civilization® V - Valve
[MULTIPLAYER]
- Significant improvements to general multiplayer stability.
- Significant improvements to Hot-Join stability.
- Multiplayer now using the same AI move caching as single player, improving turn-times significantly.
- Lobby improvements: We now display game details in the lobby list (players in each game, map size, map type, DLC required, etc.).
- Host can now kick players from the staging room when loading a save (if a player cannot return to a game, the game can now be continued by the rest of the players).
- Found and corrected additional causes of Out-of-Sync.
- Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed players on the same team to trade cities back and forth to auto-heal it.
- Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed players on the same team to trade cities back and forth to generate endless City Strikes.
- Exploit: Corrected an exploit that allowed a player to “lag” the UI to gain multiple free techs.

[UI]
- Change “Load Game” save sorting to be “Last Modified” by default.


[BUGS]
- When scrapping a unit, make sure any “cargo” units are scrapped as well.
- When a unit is destroyed that is carrying another unit, make sure to kill both (missiles sometimes lingered).
- Corrected a bug that was causing eliminated Civ’s to not generate notifications correctly.
- Changed notification language for when a Research or Trade deal is cancelled due to the AI running out of funds to pay for it (per-turn deal), or are eliminated. It was currently displaying a “because of war” notification which is incorrect.
- Corrected an issue that could cause unhappiness from city count and number of specialists to become incorrect over the course of a long game.
- Changed Frigate obsolete tech to Combustion.
- Fixed Korean science building exploit.
- Fixed a problem with City Strike that gave the user the impression that they could not end their turn, when in reality, city strike was still active.
- Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur in hot-seat when exiting to the main menu.
- Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur when a unit was eliminated by standing too close to a Citadel.

Announcement - Valve
The Daily Wishlist Giveaway continues today on Steam. Each day 10 people will win the top 10 games on their wishlist!

To enter, you must have a Steam account and a Wishlist with at least 10 games, and each day you will need to visit the gamepage of the featured daily deal.

The featured daily deal today is Dead Island at 50% off!

A new game starts tomorrow. Check back to join in on the excitement!

Gundemonium Recollection - Valve
Gundemonium Collection
-Added new holiday achievements.
-Added new holiday outfit color sets.
-Plus a couple other surprises!

GundeadliGne
-Made some small networking improvements.
Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Valve
The Daily Wishlist Giveaway continues today on Steam. Each day 10 people will win the top 10 games on their wishlist!

To enter, you must have a Steam account and a Wishlist with at least 10 games, and each day you will need to visit the gamepage of the featured daily deal. The Daily Wishlist Giveaway began December 1st and will continue into the holiday season.

The featured daily deal today is Shogun 2 at 66% off!

Good luck!

Space Pirates and Zombies - Valve
patch notes:

Version 1.012
Added Medium, Huge Double Turrets
Added Fixed Mount turret mods (increases weapon size by 1 level)
Added Deployable Focal Turret (surplus)
Added Deployable Disruptor Turret
Added Deployable Stealth Ion Turret
Added Deployable Stealth Leech Turret
Added Deployable Torpedo Rack
Added Deployable Battle Station
Added Damage numbers visible for deployed turrets from player ship
Added Oversized boosters get a 1.5x bonus (Fixed mount turret modes make this possible)
Added 5 new star system backgrounds (requires game restart to populate galaxy)
Added New AI ship designs to use deployable turrets
Added Radar indicator for blackboxes
Changed Undersized boosters are 66% effective vs. 50% per number of levels undersized
Changed AI ship designs tweaked to make use of new fixed mount and double turrets
Changed Made large ship resources stay in memory. Takes more ram, but minimizes hitching.

Added Winter Mod:
Added Santa flying around in the background dropping presents
Added Milk and Cookie drops from ships (these also attract Santa)
Added Santa dumps a load of presents when picking up Milk and Cookies
Added Chance for Santa to drop a godlike specialist ("Little Helper")
Added Themed Radio chatter
Changed Asteroids are snowballs
Changed Zombie asteroids are yellow snow
Changed Disruptor Cannon -> Blizzard Blaster 2000
Changed Deployable disruptor Turret -> Snowball Howitzer
Changed Mining Station Rock -> Unhappy Snowman
Changed Crates -> Presents!
Changed Rez -> Candy Canes
Changed Santa hats for Carl, Don, and Elsa
Team Fortress 2 - Valve
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
  • Fixed the Frontier Justice getting infinite crits
  • Fixed a problem that would allow Pyro Mmmph to activate in the air without taunting
  • Fixed Manmelter getting crits from Mmmph
  • Fixed an exploit with The Eureka Effect and The Phlogistinator where the effects could activate without taunting in high-lag situations
  • Fixed the Brown Bomber not showing up on the Demoman
  • Fixed client HUD crash
  • Fixed colors on Christmas lights for the Blue team Scout weapons
  • Fixed a bug that would cause minicrits when switching weapons rapidly
  • Steam Workshop zip file size limit has been increased from 4 MB to 10 MB
...