That’s a huge number, and a huge chunk of their 35 million strong userbase (based on active users). A lot of this is helped along by the sales which boosted sales numbers and helped generate a lot of game-time for people who otherwise may have gotten bored playing TF2 (which is, of course, free). However a large chunk of this concurrent usage is down to Skyrim players.

The strange thing is that I imagine this number would have been bigger had EA stuck with Valve and put Battlefield3 on the platform as well.

One huge boost for this kind of news is that it proves that PC gaming (regardless of your platform-of-choice) is defiantly hitting back at consoles with an iron fist!

[source]

5 of my favourite games from this year. I’ll add some notable ones thereafter but these are the 5 that captured my attention, imagination and – most importantly – my time. Oh, and my money… most definitely my money.

Although I’ve ranked the games from 5 to 1 (1 being the best), the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd games may as well be lined up together as an equal share of awesome while the first is most certainly my “game of the year”.

5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The original Deus Ex was a stunning showpiece for PC gaming. How do you create a fully realised world? By having meaningless bits of it work, like ATM machines and the ability to wander up to seemingly random folks on the street and have a chat to them.

This new title was fraught with worry from gamers. Could Square Enix re-capture that feeling from being in the Deus Ex world? Or will this be so bad it ruins the original… As it turns out they did a great job. They captured a great middle ground between a full world that suits Deus Ex and a story that belongs with Ghost in the Shell in terms of sci-fi that might actually come true.

The story is a huge strong point for this game, even more than the excellently orchestrated combat, visuals and acting. The script is strong, solid and easy to follow and the voice acting is one of the best I’ve heard – not just this year, but any year.

This would have been the best FPS RPG type of game this year if Skyrim wasn’t released.

4. Portal 2

I remember when Valve acquired the students who made Narbacular Drop everyone expected something special. Add the flare and creative spark from Valve, coupled with their excellent Source engine and give it an odd puzzle-solving twist and you have to be onto a winner. And they were. Portal was a commercial & critical success that bound FPS style gameplay elements with puzzle solving. Something you often don’t get. The fact that Valve had released a game with no major multi-player element was testament to the fun of Portal. The script was incredible and it launched Jonathan Coulton’s career into new realms with the track “Still Alive”.

With that, most fans would have been happy if Portal 2 was just Portal with new puzzles but Valve really kicked it up a notch. They added Wheatley, the now-synonymous scientific robot entity that was cast brilliantly with Stephen Merchant as the voice behind the ball of cables.

In Portal we had GLaDOS, cake and personal companion cubes as memes, but Portal 2 stepped it up with potatos and Cave Johnson.

Portal 2 deserves to be in every “top games of the year” list because it’s so good, so fun and so funny. The direction Valve are taking with the Source engine is exemplified with new effects seen in Portal 2… which hopefully leads on to Half Life 3 (or episode 3).

3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This is a surprising entry. Not because it’s not number one on the list but because it’s on the list in the first place. I hated Morrowind. I hated Oblivion. I actually dislike Lord of the Rings, LARPing and games/books/movies set in fantasy lands that involve “magic”. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed such a thing from start-to-finish without being unimaginably bored for lengthy periods of time.

Skyrim is Bethesda’s answer. It’s the everyman RPG with magic, potions and men who look like cats. The opening sequence involves you as an interned criminal. How you manage to stop being interned is exactly what stopped me being bored… dragons. The game is all about dragons and violence. I’m into that. In fact, despite not being that far into the game, but far enough in to have a grasp of the story and direction of the game, I’m glad I don’t have to use magic, potions and other such horrendous “get out of jail free” cards RPG writers use to make their boring stories interesting (my opinion, of course).

There’s a lot to talk about in Skyrim. It’s difficult to explain the scope of this game, and in fact one of my only complaints is that some quests take a long time to do because you have to go an incredible distance to get to the quest location (once you visit a place you can get there in one click via the in-game map).

2. MineCraft

Indie darlings Mojang only released MineCraft a month ago, but many people have had it for well over a year now thanks to their business model. The model was to release the game in alpha mode for a low price and let it generate revenue before it’s even released. This was a genuinely brilliant idea that generated millions in revenue without having a finished product shipped. Slowly but surely the team added features as the game went through alpha phases and finally released a product that made sense.

While I’m gushing over it, it is worth noting that the game is horribly difficult to get to grips with if you’re a new user because there is literally no in-game help or assistance. There’s also no clear story mode to help you understand it. It’s kind of like dumping someone into an online StarCraft match with a pro player without explaining a thing or providing the single player experience first…

All that considered, it’s hard not to feel a sense of joy about this game. It’s great to see an indie developer do so well so quickly, and still have the ambition to go forward as an indie – ignoring the courting advances of EA amongst others.

And while I’m on about Sweden…

1. Battlefield 3

…which is also the home of DICE. Anyone who’s ever visited a shop, gone online or talked to someone who plays games knows what BF3 is. No, it’s not the next iteration of Bad Company, which was a lot of peoples’ introduction to Battlefield via consoles. No, BF3 is a stunning follow up to 2005′s Battlefield 2. Yes. 2005. I know a lot of people who will wince at that fact.

Years of mine life were lost to BF2, and indeed 1942. BF2 was an amazing open-world experience. For me it defined multi-player as an experience far beyond my first online MP days with Unreal Tournament. There is quite literally nothing like running to a capture point by gunning down 3 Chinese enemies on Wake Island while a helicopter crashes into a jet above you and a boat is launched into the air via C4 on the beach below. All controlled by real people somewhere in the world.

BF3 does nothing new. The netcode is improved. The graphics are far superior to anything this year and it runs on the earth-shattering (quite literally) Frostbyte2 engine, which gives DICE games the ability to destroy everything in front of them. This means that the mayhem and madness of Battlefield also includes destroying buildings. Twice yesterday I died because of RPG fire. I didn’t get hit by the RPG or the fallout from it… but no, the RPG took out a wall which took down the roof on top of me. The game told me “Bad Luck”…

The level unlocks are great and frequent enough to make the next round worthwile. I’m only level 13 but feel I’ve achieved a lot in that time, but obviously have a lot to do also.

The new maps are a mix between close-quartered areas and huge open worlds that would rival full games, let alone single maps in a 64-man battle.

The two maps that stand out for me are the two Parisian ones. One is set in the Metro tunnels under the city. Russians invade from the streets above while US troops try to defend the tunnels and get back out to the streets above. Stunning and life-like city streets add an extra sense of wonder to the game.

Seine Crossing is another real-world map with photo-realistic design and graphic notches. It’s here that using an RPG to blow the side of a building up really shines. There is no greater joy in this world than blowing the side of a building off to expose an enemy position.

There is a single player addition to this game, which helps new users get to grips with it as well as appease the console entrants to the Battlefield. The SP campaign is very good but falls short of Modern Warfare 3 simply because MW3 is ridiculous, over-the-top and maddening, which gives it the extra edge. BF3′s realistic campaign just doesn’t compare to rolling into Berlin as buildings fall down around you. But the multiplayer experience is far, far superior in DICE’s effort.

Call of Duty players beware, CS is where shit gets real.

Initially the breach appeared to only affect the Steam user forums, but it appears now the scenario is much worse for Valve. The Steam database itself has been breached too, potentially allowing access to credit card and other sensitive data to the hackers.

“We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums,” he wrote in a user-wide IM.

“This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating. We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time,” the note pointed out. “Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely. We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.”

The forums are due to come back online soon but as Newell said above, it’s worth changing your Steam password just to be safe.

“I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologise for the inconvenience,” Newell concluded.

The modders who created Gun Game are actually working with Valve on this mode, to ensure that 1. Their audience don’t cry foul when it’s released, and 2. so that the modders don’t feel hard done by.

The new screens are quite pretty, as you’ll see below, but also they demonstrate the new skins for terrorists which are looking quite slick. The dude with the back-pack could almost pass as a more realistic rendition of one of the Brink characters!

Now we have an update. And a comic.

The new update brings sci-fi-esque guns in the form of Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators technology, developed by the folks at WETA digital (Lord of the Rings graphics heads). They are in-game props that WETA make in real life as side projects. They’re steam-punk style guns that shoot lasers, basically.

There are two guns, a hat and a facial hair with smoking pipe… with a smoke effect. So when the kids take up smoking pipes, blame TF2.

Each magical item costs real world money (around €5) which combined costs the price of a game, almost. Which is basically how Valve can justify giving this game away for free. Remarkably.

Anyway, enjoy the update and the new swag to buy.

Team Fortress 2 is a rather good online shooter. It’s also now a rather free online shooter. With hats, naturally.

Valve are known to dip into the murky world of Augmented Reality Games to help promote features and even full titles, but it appears in-game ARG’ing is going on within TF2 now with the appearance of giant red rockets in some maps.

ModelViewer of the rockets

The most convenient theory being discussed on the steam forums is that we’re going to get a Meet the Pyro video & update. How that works with the occurrence of crashed rockets in maps, we don’t know. Yet.

Alongside the typical retail release of the game, EA are also going to release digital copies of the game. The interesting fight here is that EA have been crabby at Valve about Steam, a digital distribution service by the makers of Half Life.

EA used to have their own such service for their own creations on PC which ultimately fell flat for being too buggy, not useful and too difficult to use. Now EA have a new service which is a better better as a client but also doesn’t necessarily act as a launcher for games, i.e. it can be closed when you play games.

EA then went ahead and released the names of retailers, both digital and bricks-and-mortar, for Battlefield 3. Steam isn’t there.

As said elsewhere, it’s nice that EA are taking the PC platform seriously by dedicating so much to it with this digital release platform and the fact that BF3 is set to shine primarily on PC rather then consoles. However, is it really beneficial on the whole to cut out Steam, giving it’s such a dominant platform?

This feels a lot like if Sony said DVD’s can’t be played on the PS3, because they have blu-rays. It just hurts them. Sure, those who want it will still go for it, but with enough conjecture and blog-o-sphere mud slinging, it could end up being a lot of negative press that just ends up taking away from EA’s sales. Having said that, EA might expect that and eventually come back to Steam – but anything they sold via Origin will just have made their wallets fatter anyway, because they take home 100% of the sales.

Not every mad doctor lives in a castle surrounded by villagers with pitchforks. Sometimes they live in the trenches, where there’s plenty of spare parts flying around and a pressing need to get inventive with them.