A gentleman named Lambent Stew has put together a webpage that gathers some of your Steam data and arranges it like little quantitative ducks in a row. How nice.

There are a number of homemade utilities that reconstitute Steam information, like a Steam sales tracker, and a Steam account value calculator. What's unique to this one is it outputs some useful aggregate data, like total hours played, and what percentage of games you've bought you haven't opened, you jerk. Good lord, I haven't played 1,006 games. Tonight, Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, it's you and me.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has received a plump post-E3 patch today. The unerringly accurate bots have been stupidified a little to make things a little easier, the UI has been reshuffled to make things clearer, disappearing props have been bolted down, holes in reality plastered over, grenade arcs tuned and "hostage pain reaction voice overs" adjusted. This patch is laying the groundwork for some bigger patches further down the line, according to the latest post on the Counter-Strike blog. "Over the next few weeks we will be releasing a major audio update, play with friends, new characters, and of course more beta keys."

The devs also say pre-order customers will be able to get into CS:GO "about a month before release" and confirm that there will be an open beta period for everyone to try "sometime between the pre-orders and release." At E3 Valve announced that CS:GO will be coming out on August 21 at the budget price of $15, which is nice. Here are the patch notes in full from Steam.

Gameplay

 
Bot difficulty has been adjusted. They should be a bit easier now.

 
Dedicated Servers:

 
Added support for overriding values in gamemodes.txt via gamemodes_server.txt - See csgo/gamemodes_server.txt.example for instructions on how to modify it and define your own map groups.
Added support for map sidecar files, which allow mappers to distribute map-specific gamemodes.txt variables in a separate file - See csgo/maps/de_dust_se.kv as an example.
Fixed mp_timelimit not working properly when mp_maxrounds was set to 0.

 
UI

 
net_graph has several changes that will allow players to better see values they (or the server operator) have configured incorrectly.

 
The most important difference is that the game tick rate is now shown in the bottom left, which is where “sv:” (server fps) used to be. Server fps is not really a useful metric for players except when it is below the tick rate (indicating the server is overloaded). Server FPS above the tick rate is meaningless.
The cl_updaterate and cl_cmdrate rate are now labeled as “up:” and “cmd:”, respectively. There is now color coding added to some of the values to indicate out of band values. If cmdrate or updaterate are set above the tick rate (requires a server operator to override the sv_maxcmdrate and sv_maxupdaterate), these values are shown in red. For optimal play experience, these values should match the server tick rate, which is the default behavior unless a server operator has overridden convars.
Fixed formatting so that the right aligned values are correctly aligned and text doesn’t shift and jump as displayed values change.

 
A banner element has been added to the Match Scoreboard to better convey Win, Lose, and Draw match results.
Hint text has been added to the bottom of the Loading screen.
Updated the Armor icon next to the Armor meter to include the Helmet when purchased.
Updated the dominated/dominating/revenge icons for freeze panel, mini-scoreboard, and death notices.
Updates to the Arms Race UI:

 
Now when someone reaches the Gold Knife level, the HUD shows a message in the chat text, displays an alert, and plays a sound effect.
The scoreboard now displays the winner of the Arms Race match.
The Arms Race weapon progression HUD element in the lower right now properly displays the data for the person you are spectating.

 
In Casual and Competitive modes, the weapon inventory in the lower right of the HUD displays the spectated player’s information now.
Voting UI updates:

 
Fixed the panel going away right after you cast a vote or saw a vote be cast as a client.
The vote panel has been made smaller and positioned so it doesn't cover other UI elements.
After you cast a vote, the game no longer shows the text instructing you to press F1/F2 to vote.
The Vote to Surrender option has been removed. Voting to Restart serves the same purpose.
When an attempt to vote fails because it had already failed recently, the error message is now more descriptive about what's going on.
If a player casts a vote when another vote is already in progress, they get a message letting them know.
If there are no players or maps that can be voted on when you try to cast a vote, those categories are disabled in the UI.
The vote panel now animates.
Added the proper sounds to the voting events.
A fix was made to a vote you cast in a single player game automatically failing.
Fixed the map you are currently playing displaying in the vote UI as "undefined".
Updated the size, look and translucency of the vote panel.
Added the ability to change the next map in the map list which overrides the next map in the mapgroup.
Changed the text, "Restart the map?" to "Restart the match?"
Voting for the same map you are playing as the next map will extend it and just restart the map instead of loading.
Fixed voting panel displaying during the freeze cam screenshot.
Fixed votes for a certain category failing if they had failed previously but had a different subcategory (for example, a vote failed for kicking player A wouldn't let anyone vote to kick player B)

 
Added a slider to the options menus that allow user to see and edit the numeric value directly.
Removed the Random mapgroup choice from multiplayer Find a Game screen.
Various improvements have been made to the loading screen to improve the layout.
Changed the default bot difficulty option in the Offline with Bots screen to be "Easy" instead of "No Bots".

 
Maps

 
Shoots

 
Fixed some vphysics console error spew by turning off collision on static props that don't have or don't need collision.

 
Baggage

 
Moved some fill lights out a bit from the wall to reduce highlight intensity.
Fixed some prop fading glitches.

 
Dust

 
Adjusted the Buy Zone edges to make sure all of the spawn points are completely inside the zones now.
Set static props with no physics hull to non-solid.

 
Dust 2

 
Added clip brush to a crate at B that fixes an issue with the player getting stuck and dying.
Fixed the misaligned Humvee windows near CT spawn.

 
Inferno

 
Adjusted the Buy Zone edges to make sure all of the spawn points are completely inside the zones now.
Fixed some red console spew with static props without physics.

 
Train

 
Fixed a spawn point at T spawn that was intersecting a pillar.

 
Lake

 
Fixed a number of lighting issues.

 
Office

 
Fixed an error message regarding the slide show projection.

 
Safehouse

 
Fixed hard to see into entry way from back porch on the T side.
The bush prop is now placed against the wall on the T side of the house.
Fixed a hole that went through to the skybox creating a bright blue spot under the CT side porch next to the stairs.

 
St Marc

 
Removed certain phys props.
Fixed a number of bad fade distances for cover props.
Turned some phys props to static props.
Fixed some bad fades on overlays.
Fixed z-fighting in fence.

 
Nuke

 
Moved the forklift and added clip brushes to prevent collision issues.
Added clips to the blue beams in lobby room.

 
Sugarcane

 
Turned a number of phys props to static.
Deleted certain phys props.
Fixed a few bad fade distances.


 
Audio

 
Fix for the ding sound not playing consistently when a new weapon is earned in Arms Race.
Updated the bomb planting sounds.
Updated the helmet hit sounds.
Adjusted hostage pain reaction voice overs.

 
Effects

 
Some minor optimizations to the explosion effects that may help sorting a little bit.
A few more minor optimizations for the explosions.

 
Bug Fixes

 
Fixed a bug in initializing a dedicated server.
Fixed a bug with the ‘Expert Marksman’ achievement.
Fixed the ‘Primer’ achievement not awarding properly.
Adjusted the weapon achievements award criteria to more suitable kill counts.
Changed Game Mode based achievement restrictions. All achievements can now be earned in Arms Race game mode and Arms Race-specific achievements are restricted in other game modes.
Fixed ‘Cold War’ achievement only being awarded to the Terrorist team.
Fixed ‘Wild Gooseman’ Chase achievement.
Fixed incorrect description for ‘Street Fighter’ achievement.
Fixed ‘Dead Shepherd’ achievement not getting awarded.
Fix for spectating your killer by default after freezecam/deathcam – camera will now follow a controllable bot first if applicable.
Fixed 'Magic Bullet' achievement.
Felicitous Fun Fact Fixes

 
Fixed "A former player" shown occasionally.
Adjusted requirements for many fun facts so they no longer show when inappropriate (e.g. "most kills with 1 kills")
Tweaked parameters in order to provide more interesting funfacts.
Require team elimination for fun facts mentioning eliminating the enemy team.

 
Fixed a case where a bot damages a victim and then a player takes over that bot and kills the victim and the death message shows the bot controlling player as the assister and the killer.
Fix for the hitch just before the Gold Knife kill in Arms Race matches.
Removed the display of the crosshair when the C4 is equipped.
Fixed error in grenade throw angle calculation.
Fixed main menu medals disappearing after returning to menu from a game.
Fix for losing mouse cursor after joining a game with Community server browser.
Fixed crashes/errors related to more than 10 players.
Fixed a bug where the taser had no reticule.
Fixed a rare crash in the weapon selection UI.
Fixed some weapons in the UI not showing properly when you were the first player to join a server and it immediately restarted.
Fixed not being able to pick up the C4 if you have a grenade in your inventory.
Fix for the defuse kit icon displaying on the HUD of a T.
Fixed the Warmup panel showing ‘%s1’ at the start of a match.
Fixed medal ranks on the scoreboard not going away in a player slot when that bot or player has left the game.
Fixed the "next weapon" element showing if you were spectating at the end of a round in a non-Arms Race match.

 

Valve has just announced the launch date of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: August 21. A collaboration with Defense Grid developers Hidden Path, Valve also mentioned that CS:GO will cost $15 "on all platforms."

The beta for the game continues to expand. A May 22 CS:GO update increased player capacity from 5 vs 5 to 15 vs 15 and added all-important chickens to de_inferno.

The CS:GO beta is evolving. A post on the official Counter-Strike site yesterday announced the addition of more players to official maps. The update is one of the "most requested map features", according to the devs, and arrives as part of a larger update that rebalances a bunch of weapons based on feedback and data gathered from the community. Burst fire has been smoothened out, bullet tracers are more visible and, most importantly, chickens have been "added to inferno", which is a monstrous patch note if ever there was one. Here's the full changelist, as it appears on Steam.

Gameplay:

Updated weapons based on performance metrics:
Slightly increased the damage for the fiveseven to keep it on par with other pistols.
Lowered the max width of the recoil patterns for the MG's to make them better for their price point.
Lowered the spread on the Negev to be more in line with the m249.
Improvements have been made to burst fire and tapping.
Added player spawns to all maps to support up to 30 players.
Player spawns are now randomly selected from a prioritized list of spawn locations in order to better support more players per map.
Adjusted bot behavior to fix the “antline” looking behavior.
Added support for server operators to specify tick rate with the –tickrate parameter.
Physics simulation tick rate now set to be the same as the game tick interval.
Bullet tracers have had improvements made to speed, visual effect, and frequency.
Chickens added to Inferno

 
UI

The Server Browser sorts Favorites and Lan tabs by ping rather than Tags.
The radar will no longer display an ‘X’ for dying players when they are not within sight of the player or player’s teammate.
Weapons with a burst mode will now show which state the gun is in on the ammo panel.
Input device is now locked to whatever device launched the game session.
Updated the Kevlar and Kevlar + Helmet buy menu images.
Updated the Domination icons.

 
Audio

Footsteps update position more often by shifting position determination to client side entity tracking.
Tuned ambient sounds in most maps

 
Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug with individual pistol round-based achievements. They can only be earned in Classic game mode now.
Fix for changing video settings while in game sometimes causing a deadlock.
Added a popup message triggered when a player attempts to initiate a vote on a server with voting disable.
Fixed bug where player's nav area would be reported as being on the floor below them causing the radar location to be displayed incorrectly.
Fixed several UI related crash issues.
Third party map and _SE map names no longer display in the scoreboard with the #SFUI_MAP_ localization token.

 

Dota 2 is doing rather too well for a game that hasn't been released. According to Steam stats, it's the second most played game on Steam right now, ahead of Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim and lots of other games that have actually been released. Dota 2 is currently in an ever-expanding beta that's been running since late last year.

Back in September, Dota 2 dev IceFrog posted on the Dota 2 site to say that Valve had decided to speed up work on Dota 2 after the success of The International tournament. The original beta plan had been to keep the game in beta for a year to get the roster up to size. Given how well the beta seems to be doing that might not be such a bad plan after all.

Here's a graph built using Steam Graphs showing Steam player stats over the last few days. At peak times in the US Counter-Strike: Source and the king of Steam, Counter-Strike 1.6, retain the upper hand. Dota 2 overtakes both during those downtime hours, which suggests a strong, growing international community.



Fans on Dota 2 Reddit have spotted a blog post by Chinese esports team DK E-Sports which suggests they're among the first to be invited to the Dota 2 International 2 Seattle Invitational tourney, which is exciting. Valve have said that the sequel to last year's very successful Gamescom competition will have a prize pool of at least $1.6 million. We'll hopefully get to watch it using Dota 2's lovely spectator tools.

Are you playing Dota 2? What do you think of the beta so far?

The Internet is often a place for things that don't belong on it. Things like a 56-page internal manual written for the people that work at the most private gaming company in the world.

Yep, you can read that now. What appears to be Valve's 2012 Employee Handbook has crept onto the web, and it's just as insightful to read as that incredible blog by Michael Abrash from last week.

It's a rare, detailed self-description of the company that includes mantras like "We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with our customers," policies like "Nobody has ever been fired at Valve for making a mistake. It wouldn't make sense for us to operate that way," and expressions of Valve's independence that include "Fortunately, we don’t have to make growth decisions based on any external pressures—only our own business goals."

Click inside to see the handbook.

The document is also filled with custom illustrations. And at least one Half-Life 3 logo. Sections of special interest include the entries:
"What is Valve not good at?" (p. 52)
"How does Valve decide what to work on?" (p. 13)
"But what if we ALL screw up?" (p. 23)


The handbook (PDF) was originally found here. A bottom-page watermark claims "handbook courtesy Valve." Well, duh. I've uploaded a copy to our server that you can read here.

A new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and CS: Source tournament is offering players a shot at a slice of a £10,000 prize pool - with no entry fee.

It's called GameShadow Battles, it'll be run online, and it's being put together GameShadow, Fasthosts, and epic.LAN. The tournament will launch on the 14th of May, and give 128 5-man teams a shot at a £5,000 grand prize. Runners-up can take home between £750 and £2750, and there are other prizes on offer for teams that reach the top of weekly scoreboards.

It's good to see a tournament of this size taking shape in the UK. We've got a good history of LAN parties, but the big prizes have typically been given away in the USA or continental Europe.

You can register your interest on the GameShadow Battles website. Are you going to give it a shot, readers? We're thinking about it - we're not the greatest CS:S or CoD players, but as demonstrated in February's showmatch, our Tribes: Ascend is strong*.

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta keeps getting bigger. The latest patch has added a new Arms Race mode playable on Shoots and Baggage. In Arms Race, every player starts with the same weapon, and gains a new one with every kill. The first player to get a kill with the final weapon, the knife, wins the round. Dead players respawn immediately and the round time is extended to give players time to murder their way through CS:GO's arsenal.

The patch adds a few new weapons, too, including the Scar 20, an auto-sniper for Counter-Terrorists, the G3SG1, an automatic sniper rifle for Terrorists, and the Zeus x27, a one shot insta-kill taser available to both teams in casual mode.

If you're looking for something less wild, the classic Aztec has been added to the map rotations. Here are the patch notes in full from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive site.

Maps:

Added Arms Race maps – Shoots and Baggage
Added Aztec to Classic maps

 
Gameplay:

Arsenal Arms Race game mode is a single extended round with instant respawn. All players start with the same weapon and get a new one each time they kill an enemy. The progression of unlocked weapons ends with the knife. The first player to get a kill with every weapon wins the match.
Added ‘Find A Game’ to the Play options menu screen. Find A Game allows you to join an online game of a specific type. This update offers Arsenal Arms Race and Classic Competitive game modes. The map cycle groups include:

Classic Maps
Arms Race Maps


 
Added new weapons:

Scar 20 – CT only auto-sniper.
G3SG1 – Terrorist only auto-sniper.
Zeus x27 – Casual Mode only weapon available to both teams.
 
Adjustments have been made to increase the base accuracy of all weapons.
 
Jump and land penalties have been decreased, and the rate of stamina gain has been increased.
 
Bot difficulty has been tuned.
 
HE grenade damage has been adjusted per pro feedback.

 
Models

Added two new player skins:

Phoenix Faction
GIGN


 
UI

Death notice order reversed.
Updated Italy mini map image.

 
Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug in the keyboard + mouse options screen where changes were resetting.
Fixed the consecutive loss bonus persisting through halftime. Solves the problem of teams receiving extra cash early in the second round of the match.
Fixed end match scoreboard saying it was a tie in Arsenal Mode.
Fixed a bug where penetrating shots were doing full damage after the penetration.
Fixed a bug where the desired distance required to defuse the bomb wasn’t being used.
Fix for the HUD alert panel coming up incorrectly.
Fixed for bots not being able to defuse bomb.
Fix for bug in Demolition mode where players would start the first round of the second half stuck in level geometry.
Fix for radio message font appearing quite large at higher resolutions.

 

Valve, who continues to expand the beta for CS:GO before a release this summer, has been vocal about its cooperation with the eSports community. But Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen believes that message hasn’t been backed up by game design that’s conducive to a competitive game. In a thread on the official forums, Kovanen calls CS:GO “terrible” and “not by any means fun.” He adds: “That's what every top player thinks as far as I can tell.”

These aren’t the complaints of a forum wildman, they’re from someone who formerly led Evil Geniuses’ CS team, and who's earned $340,000 in (team) prize money playing CS since 2005. Why does Kovanen feel this way? I spoke with him to get more perspective on what he describes as a “handicapped” game.



In our interview, Kovanen, a CS 1.6 player, pointed to map changes, bad visibility, player movement, and recoil as aspects of design that he believes undermine CS:GO’s chances at being a good competitive game.

“I played CS:GO for three hours a night, four nights in a row for the CES Plantronics thing. And on day four I still couldn’t tell who was a CT or a T. So I just shot everyone at first to find out if they’re a teammate or an enemy,” Kovanen says of CS:GO’s “desaturated” lighting. “It feels almost black and white. It's really hard to see player models from textures or random objects in the map.”


See some of the differences between 1.6, CS:S, and CS:GO in the video above.

Changes to map geometry and layout are another sour point for Kovanen. “De_train is the worst with two towers, the bomb train in the middle of outside, oversized trains, ladders on the sides of trains, most of trains removed in the inner site, et cetera. De_nuke has a lot of its best parts removed without backstairs to lower and back bombsite and short hall in lower. It all feels like they just really want to handicap the game by making it easier.” From Valve’s perspective, these map changes are probably in place to shake up tactics that’ve held up for more than a decade and accommodate new items and new game balance. Kovanen later added: “The game even has casual and competitive modes, I don’t understand why they cant make them vastly different if necessary, sort of like a built-in ProMod.”

Kovanen is also unhappy about weapon recoil. “Right now it feels like the recoil is just too strong,” he says. “It’s really hard to control (if even possible) and it feels like you could never spray at a spot, turn 90 degrees and still be accurate at another guy. You're basically stuck one-bulleting people or going for mindless sprays which might result in two people emptying their clips at one another with both people surviving. The bullet tracers are also really annoying and I don’t understand why they’re even in the game, It seems like another effect to make it more console-like; it’s just something more that will get in the way of seeing things clearly.”

Other figures in CS’ competitive community have been outspoken about CS:GO’s current weapon feedback. Former pro and now-caster Jimmy Whisenhunt believes that screen movement is the issue, not recoil.

http://youtu.be/TYeM6W_actM

I asked Kovanen what aspect of CS:GO he’d like to see changed most. “Player movement. Not only does that play a giant role in the game being fun, it adds a lot of skill to it as well. One of the things that makes CS:GO so frustrating to play is that the movement feels sluggish and slow and you don’t feel in perfect control of your character."

But Kovanen, who played on Team Europe in Valve’s first big CS:GO showmatch late last year, says all this criticism stems from wanting the game to succeed. “I believe in eSports. And if there are a lot of people who enjoy the game like I have enjoyed CS 1.6 over the years, good for them. I’m sure there were people who disliked 1.6, yet it has played a big part in how the last seven years of my life, so I’d hope other people get to experience something similar in their lives. I hope it will be successful, but with the way the game currently is and how I believe it will end up without listening to us, I don’t think it can be successful. I wouldn't be surprised if it got picked up for one or two years at most, and then FPS games got dropped out as a whole because of lack of CS:GO popularity. The ironic thing is all the pros would wanna help to try to make it a decent game because they all know there would be more money, more tournaments, and so on if it was a good game and everyone switched.”

Valve continues to make changes to CS:GO leading up to the game's summer release. Will you watch CS:GO competitive play? How well do you think the game will do as an eSport?

The best StarCraft 2, League of Legends and Counter-Strike 1.6 players are duking it out in Hanover this week for massive cash prizes at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship. We're on day two, but we're still in the group stages, so there's still plenty of competition left.

The whole event is being livestreamed, and you can watch them for free on the ESL World site. Counter-Strike and League of Legends teams are competing for a $50,000 first prize, while StarCraft 2 individuals are fighting for a top prize of $35,000. Not a bad week in the office for those who claim the top spot on Saturday.