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'Death Stranding' and 'Control' lead Game Awards nominees
The Game Awards takes place in less than a month and voting is now open after Geoff Keighley announced the nominees. Hideo Kojima's sprawling epic Death Stranding leads the pack with nine nominations, including game of the year, game direction, score/music, narrative and performance for both Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen.
Valve freezes updates on 'Artifact' to face 'deep-rooted' issues
Last year Valve launched a Dota 2 card game spin-off that took aim Hearthstone and Gwent, but according to the team, Artifact hasn't lived up to anyone's expectations. In a blog post, Valve announced it's dropping the old plan of developing a stream of gradual updates driven by conversations with the community. Instead it will "re-examine the decisions we've made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more." Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that knowledge to build better games. At least one of those decisions could be the game's business model. As we noted when its release date appeared, those competing card games are free, while Artifact opted for a $20 starting price and made additional booster packs of cards available for an extra fee on top of that. That made it similar to traditional Magic: The Gathering, a game designed by Artifact's project lead, but, as RockPaperShotgun notes, could come off as stingy compared to both the big guns and even smaller alternatives like Shadowverse or Eternal. Valve made some big upgrades about a month after launch, but judging by the tone of the post -- or Steam Charts stats that count an average of just 353 simultaneous players over the last 30 days or reviews that are only 15 percent positive over the last 30 days or its fewer than ten viewers on Twitch -- it didn't help hold player's attention. Since then the team has been largely silent. Now it's entering a period of "process of experimentation and development" that's expected to take "significant" time, it's still unclear exactly what the future holds for Artifact, but at least Valve is acknowledging where things stand at the moment.
'Dota 2' app rewards you for predicting pro match winners
Valve doesn't just want you to watch Dota 2 eSports matches -- it wants you to have a small stake in them. It just released a Dota Pro Circuit app for Android and iOS that lets you win Shards (the in-game currency for Dota Plus members) by predicting the winners of Circuit matches. It's sports betting, just without spending real money beyond your existing subscription.
Valve updates 'Dota' card game with open tournaments and chat options
Valve has delivered the first large upgrade to Artifact since it premiered in late November, and it's clear there's lots of headroom for the Dota card game to grow. The 1.1 update adds short Open Tournaments that anyone can join. You don't have to chat up players or advertise them on social networks -- you just have to hop in and wait for Valve to pair you with an opponent. There's also a Free-for-All tourney mode that asks you to play as many people you can within three hours, awarding the win to whoever wins the most games in that time span.
A ‘Dota’ veteran’s take on ‘Arena of Valor’ for Switch
I've been playing multiplayer online battle arena games -- better known as MOBAs -- for the best part of two decades. First it was Dota, back when the game was still a custom Warcraft III map. Steam tells me I've sunk over 2000 hours into Valve's Dota 2, and I must've spent at least another few hundred hours dipping into both League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm. MOBAs are a genre I could never see working on consoles -- controllers just don't have enough buttons, nor do thumbsticks have the precision of a mouse. And yet I just spent a significant slice of my weekend completely glued to Arena of Valor, a port of a mobile MOBA that was released on the Nintendo Switch last week.
AI isn't good enough to beat the best 'Dota 2' players just yet
AI may have beaten the world's best Go player, but Dota 2 pros have shown that in their game, humans are still top of the food chain -- for now, at least. Last week, Dota 2 players from around the world clashed at the biggest tournament of the year, The International, with team OG taking the title and over $11 million in prize money. Arguably more important, though, was the contest of man versus machine(-learning) in a best-of-three exhibition series.
The newest 'Dota 2' shoutcaster is Valve boss Gabe Newell
Gabe Newell is a lot of things to a lot of people: PC gaming's greatest gift; the man who knows how Half-life 3 ends; reclusive sous-vide aficionado. And now he's an in-game announcer in Dota 2. If you pick up the new Mega-Kills Announcer Pack as part of this year's Battle Pass for The International tournament, you'll hear Newell's dulcet tones every kill.
Steam TV goes live again to stream 'Dota 2' tournament
Steam TV is online again after Valve briefly pushed it live last week. The platform is currently streaming a live broadcast of The International 2018, Valve's Dota 2 esports tournament. You'll be able to see the chat room even if you don't log into your Steam account, but you'll have to use your log-in credentials if you want to participate in the chat or to watch the game with friends. If you're fine watching alone and keeping your thoughts to yourself, though, all you need to do is go to the website and click the double arrow on the top right corner to maximize the screen. Take note that the video refused to load for us on Chrome or Safari and only worked on Firefox.
‘Dota 2’ veterans steamrolled by AI team in exhibition match
Later this month, the best Dota 2 teams in the world will meet in Vancouver for the biggest tournament of the year, The International. The annual contest consistently boasts the highest prize pool in eSports (it's up to $23.5 million already this year), not to mention the glory that comes with winning the prestigious event. It may not be long, however, before a team of non-human players becomes worthy of such success. This weekend, the all-bot roster of OpenAI Five took on a team of Dota 2 casters and ex-pro players that individually rank amongst some of the best in the world. OpenAI Five won the best-of-three exhibition match convincingly, and the only reason the human team took a game was thanks to a little help from the audience.
Valve's pay-to-play 'Dota' card game will be released November 28th
Valve's next title Artifact, a trading-card game, will be released November 28th. Digital trading card games like Gwent from Witcher developer CDProjekt Red and Hearthstone from Blizzard have been doing surprisingly well lately. That's probably somewhat because they're free to play. Artifact, based on Valve's free-to-play MOBA, Dota 2 will not be. Instead, a pair of 54-card starter decks and ten 12-card booster packs will set you back $20, according to Ars Technica.
‘Dota 2’ update improves the subscription's in-game coach
In March, Dota 2 players were introduced to Dota Plus, a monthly subscription service Valve likened to an evolved battle pass. Gamers who sign up get access to an in-game coach, special challenges and better post-match analytics. Today, Valve is rolling out a summer update that improves the Dota Plus experience even further.
After Math: Huge hamster balls
While the Overwatch community debated this week as to whether or not Top Gear's Richard Hammond could actually fit inside the Hammond the Hamster's mech (hint: yes he can, with room to spare), there was no shortage of news throughout the rest of the gaming industry. Alexa got its own board game, ToeJam and Earl are slated to return to consoles this fall, and Fortnite -- for one gloriously brief moment -- opened a tutorial sandbox for its neophyte players.
'Dota 2' team kicked from $15 million finals for using mouse cheat
There have been several eSports cheating scandals before, including a match-fixing arrest, an 'Overwatch' hackers being fined almost $10 thousand and a PUBG hacker arrested for selling game cheats. The stakes continue to remain high, as with a Dota 2 player who just disqualified his team from a $15 million tournament by using a programmable mouse.
OpenAI's 'Dota 2' bots are taking on pro teams
The Dota 2 world championship, The International, is fast approaching, and a top team will have a different-looking squad to contend with: a group of artificial intelligence bots. OpenAI, which Elon Musk co-founded, has been taking on top Dota 2 players with the bots since last year, and now it's gunning for a team of top professionals in an exhibition match at one of the biggest events in eSports.
Valve nixes 'CS:GO' and 'Dota 2' trading following Dutch loot box law
Back in April, the Netherlands ruled that loot boxes in video games were essentially gambling and called for their removal by mid-June. Now, Valve has responded by disabling trading for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 items on the Steam Marketplace within the country.
Valve adds more flexibility to 'Dota 2' pro competitions
The world of eSports is growing at a rapid pace. Games like League of Legends and CS:GO are becoming more mainstream by the day. While Dota 2 holds the record for the highest total eSports prize money but Valve feels its competitive scene has lacked structure. To rectify that, it's unveiled a number of changes that it hopes will legitimize its Dota Pro Circuit (DPC).
'Dota 2' is introducing its own underground battle royale
Following in the footsteps of Fortnite and PUBG, Dota 2 is introducing The Underhollow, which is another version of an underground battle royale. Billed as "a multi-team dungeon clash," that involves going on a quest for cheese, it's only available to 2018 International Battle Pass subscribers.
Valve won't release 'Dota 2' patches during major tournaments
Valve has learned a hard lesson about the importance of patience with game updates. The company recently switched to a rapid-fire two-week patch schedule for Dota 2, but has announced that it will delay patches when they coincide with major eSports tournaments. The most recent update arrived right in the middle of the Epicenter XL tournament, creating havoc for players who had less than a day to adapt to significant gameplay changes. Imagine if a football league suddenly changed the rules before the end of the season -- it'd be alarming if your sports career depended on it.
Valve’s new ‘Dota 2’ subscription adds an in-game coach
Dota 2 is a completely free-to-play game, with all the MOBA's heroes available to new players from day one. Valve makes money by selling different in-game cosmetics, announcers, HUDs, etc. When major tournaments roll around, the house that GabeN built also puts out time-limited "Battle Passes" that add challenges, co-operative game types, fantasy leagues and other things that encourage your participation in exchange for special effects and the latest hero skins. That's how it's worked in the past, but this year Valve is trying a more consistent approach to monetization with the new Dota Plus subscription.
Intel is making gaming easier for people without graphics cards
Intel is making life a little easier for PC gamers on a budget. A new driver update for its 6th-gen Core processors and above will configure a game to your rig's specs automatically. As PC World reports, this includes the "Kaby Lake G" processors on addition to Skylake. Finally, no more fiddling in the menus on your machine running integrated graphics to get a game to run above 20FPS. At least that's the idea. It's a lot like how NVIDIA's GeForce Experience works for discrete graphics cards. The first games to benefit from this include Battlefield 1, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto V, League of Legends and Overwatch. Sure, you'll probably lose out on shadow detail and texture filtering, but at least you'll be able to play, period.
