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A few years ago the developer got on stage to say “fuck you” to EA at an awards ceremony, proudly denouncing big publishers. The company, since then, have done very little in terms of releasing new titles and their main platform for sales has been digital – namely steam. As such, the company has been in a spot of bother. So they decided to update their game Defcon which added achievements, which then gave it some promotion on Steam and got it sales, and with it, hard cash.

The developer went from a fully fledged indie darling to a company in dire straights. In recent times they developer had to sack most of its staff, sell it’s offices and furniture and go back to development from their bedrooms.

Valve okayed the promotion and even though it didn’t focus on DEFCON we were happy that we had achieved our core objective. This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we’d had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we’d had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year’s operating capital in the bank.

As nice as the story is, it’s important to note that as much as Valve have saved one small developer, how many have they let die in the hallowed halls of Steam?

Some film makers have gone on to make a short film, for submission in the ‘Action on Film’ shorts festival in the US in a few weeks, about Shepard and his fight in Ravenholm. Check out the appropriately moody voiced-over trailer below:

Well, while busying themselves on these Valve games, they’ve also taken some time to convert their Unreal2K4 mod to Source, and today they’re releasing it on Steam. The price? Zero euro. The best price!

Expect it to hit the frontpage of your Steam client today. No word yet on whether it’ll be available for Mac as well as PC.

First up is manually-controlled sentry bots. Then we have upgraded weaponry in the form of the “frontier justice” shotgun which looks very steampunkish, and features a new way of getting crits. No more randomising for crits!

More details are available on the site. No word of a new engineer-fueled video feature yet! Keep in mind this is the first major TF2 update since the game went multi-platform for Mac and PC.

Obviously the main gimmick to this campaign is that it features the original Survivors from the first Left 4 Dead, with an obvious exception. Set after Dead Center with the Survivors still in the stock car from the shopping mall, they must work their way under a river to reach the other side, fuel up a generator to lower the bridge to get across and carry on their way.

The level design itself is reminiscent of that from the original L4D with not very open outdoor areas combined with tight indoor corridors leading everywhere. The three individual levels are quite varied, each with their own different challenges to overcome to push through, including the wedding, the sewer run and others.

The final is, rather annoyingly, another Scavenge-style affair, requiring you to fetch gas cans from across the map. However, the area in which the gas is spread around is considerably larger than the mall in Dead Center, which does offset the fact that you do have the remaining original Survivors helping you out with covering fire from above.

In all, the DLC is quite good. Nothing too amazing, but it’s also not lacking anything. The gameplay is good, but the story behind the campaign, and especially the inclusion of the original Survivors makes no sense whatsoever.

Video coverage of a run through the campaign can be seen below. Beware as it does contain spoilers for those of you who haven’t yet played the DLC.

That is one ugly lad... And the zombie's not too pretty either!

As with all Xbox Live deals, it is only available to Gold subscribers and not to Silver accounts. To be honest, it’s not even worth it anyway, seeing as the PC version has had the update for free for ages now. However, it does add another 250 Gamerscore to the game with an extra ten achievements, so those of you who whore your Gamerscore would love this deal.

It makes me wonder what will happen when the Left 4 Dead 1 version of the Passing DLC comes out? How much money will MS try to scrounge from gamers?

In 2007, Valve announced the Orange Box, which featured Half Life 2 and the episodes that had been released up to that point. Furthermore, it contained Portal and the long-awaited sequel to Team Fortress.

Today, in 2010, Valve have confirmed Orange Box 2, which will contain a sequel to Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2: Episode 3, Portal 2, Half Life 3 (a new, full-length game Valve says) and Half Life 3: Blue Shift 2, a sequel to the much-hated expansion to the original Half Life game.

Valve also said they will be releasing HL3 and TF3 on their new game engine, a departure from their Source engine, which was released with Half Life 2. The new engines name will be “Sauce”, allegedly named after CEO Gabe Newell’s favourite condiment. The name reflects the companies’ new ethos, to liquidate their efforts onto multiple platforms. Sauce will directly port all new titles built in the engine across from Windows PC to Mac OS X, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and in a surprising move, even the Wii.

Valve are giving shoryuken.ie’s team a chance to preview the new software roster soon, so look out for a preview in the coming days.

“It’s clear that Apple is taking share from Sony’s PlayStation Portable, and to a smaller level, the Nintendo DS,” says Flurry Analytics’ report. Sony’s market share fell from 20% in 2008 to 11% in 2009, and Nintendo fell from 75% in 2008 to 70% in 2009.

“It’s getting to the point where Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft need to be looking seriously at the iPhone and iPod Touch; Apple’s devices single-handedly gobbled up 5% of all video game revenue in 2009. That’s up from just 1% in 2008.” The report went on to say “Apple has already established broad third-party game publisher support. With the iPad featuring a larger screen and more processing power, games on the tablet take a step closer to PC and console gaming. Unless the other major video game platform providers (ie, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft) respond accordingly, Apple could continue to roll up video game market share. With these figures, our main finding is that iPhone (and iPod touch) is a gaming platform to be reckoned with,” Farago wrote. “Controlling 5% t revenue of a $10 billion industry in just a year and a half is significant.”

It’s hardly a shock to anyone that the 79c pricetag on small, puzzle type games are popular on a platform that’s in the hands of nearly every single student and yuppie the world over. What’s more interesting is the fact that Apple are sitting up and paying attention to gaming for the first time in their illustrious career making hardware and software. OS X will be the next battleground in an attempt to take market share from Windows by bringing Valve’s acclaimed Steam platform to OS X, also bringing Source-engine based games with it. Those with licenses for games on Windows can re-download their titles in Steam for Mac entirely free, too.

As a long-time Mac user this news blows my mind in ways I couldn’t even fathom, but Valve have finally seen the white, brushed-steel light and decided that in April, us glorious users of OS X will legitimately get to play Source-enabled games, including the full roster of first-party Valve titles (half life, counter-strike, team fortress et al) and a number of the 1,000 plus third-party titles on the Steam platform.

This opens steam up to a new roster of fans, as well as allowing current fans to carry over their Windows-purchased titles to Mac at no extra cost and continue to interact with their friends via Steam’s excellent social networking features.

In a press release Valve said, “Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

Portal 2 will be the first title to get a simultaneous release on both platforms. Fitting, given Portal is set in a serenely efficient white world environment.