Alien Swarm saw some great success when it was released, mainly due to the fact that it’s a free game with catchy gameplay and a cool social premise. And in the spirit of throwing free stuff our way, Valve have just released an update for the game which adds several new goodies to it and makes it an ever more exciting experience.First in line is the new “Onslaught” game mode, which features the AI Director from Left 4 Dead, used to dynamically spawn swarms of aliens around the map based on your performance and that of your teammates. With Onslaught, you can keep

A while back, Valve took an interesting step and started using their popular shooter Team Fortress 2 as a sort of advertising platform. After the promotion for their own game Left 4 Dead 2, which came with an exclusive hat for TF2, they also helped promote the adventure series Sam & Max. And now, they’re running yet another promotion, this time for the upcoming Worms: Reloaded.If you buy the new Worms before next Thursday (September 2nd), you’ll receive two unique items in TF2 – both for the Soldier class, they’re a combination of a Worms-themed helmet

Valve have a long-running history of adopting neat community creations and helping them develop into full-blown games. Alien Swarm is the most recent example of this – a game which started out as a free mod for Unreal Tournament, and is now a complete game running on the Source Engine and being distributed through Steam – for free!That’s right, it’s not even a special promotion – the game is 100% free to play, including a powerful SDK that is even more advanced than Valve’s own in some aspects. And for those of you waiting to see how Portal 2

How long has it been since Valve announced they’re working on a trading system for Team Fortress 2? Over a year, likely – but it seems that the wait is finally over, as Valve’s Robin Walker has confirmed in an interview that the next large update for the game will finally introduce the trading system to the game.The update is slated for release some time next month (though this is Valve we’re talking about, so take that with a pinch of salt) – and apart from the trading system, it will also include the winners of the Polycount contest. There’s

Over two years ago, Valve started slowly updating Team Fortress 2’s classes, giving them new unlockable weapons and keeping the game fresh with new content like maps and environments. And now, the last of those updates has finally been completed – with the Engineer having received his set of unlocks, all of the classes now have an alternate set of weapons.The new weapons are aimed at improving the class’s capabilities in direct combat, as opposed to sitting far back in the base remaining stationary. Apart from the new toys, there are a total of 4 new maps, one

Well this is getting a bit too ridiculous for our taste. For those of you who haven’t been following the latest major update for Valve’s TF2 – the Engineer update – Valve are releasing a limited set of 100 golden wrenches, obtainable by a semi-random system. And just last night, things got a lot more serious than you’d expect when a cosmetic accessory is involved.A well-known member of the community, known by his nickname Drunken F00l, who administrates the popular site TF2Items.com, among other things, apparently used a leaked list of wrench drop

Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 is a rehash of the classic PC game, and was recently brought to Valve’s Steam distribution platform for the astonishingly small price of $3. However, one of the things people criticized initially was the lack of multiplayer support – which has now been addressed.The game is now more tightly integrated with the Steam community, supporting the Steam overlay feature, as well as being able to use your Steam name as an in-game alias. So far though, private games can’t be hosted and everything works through a lobby system – and

Valve, developers of the hit franchise Half-Life, haven’t been saying much lately, but a rumor is going around that is sure to disappoint a lot of fans – apparently, the last installment in the Half-Life 2 Episodes trilogy will not be released this year. It’s not known whether we’ll at least see some media beforehand either, but knowing Valve, they’ll probably keep it all a secret until the last moment.After the release of Half-Life 2, Valve decided to expand the series before releasing Half-Life 3, and started working on three episodic sequels.

In the first of a series of guest columns on gaming, Cadred columnist and popular gaming commentator Richard 'Dr Gonzo' Lewis explains how Valve could once more make Counter-Strike the foremost online game. There is little more frustrating to the public than seeing a good idea badly executed. There will be people coming out of the cinema having watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine that will be able to tell you all about that. But it is something that competitive players of Counter-Strike: Source will already be able to tell you about at length should you wish to sit down and