Let's start things off today with a little rumor and speculation. First up, we have the rumor that Valve is in talks with Markus Persson, aka: Notch, about something. Between last night's blog entry on the Team Fortress 2 blog that did nothing but praise Minecraft and Notch and a comment posting on a blog entry from Notch, it looks like Valve has taken a liking to the very Indie developer.


Now obviously, this could mean one of any number of things.

1. It could just be that Valve wanted to personally congratulate Notch for what he's managed to accomplish. Something a little more personal than a mere blog entry on the TF2 Blog.
2. Perhaps Valve have extended a job offer to Notch to come work at Valve. As mentioned, Notch is just one developer who is working on Minecraft. This is a real possibility that they want his talents or ideas for future Valve titles.
3. Maybe Valve just wanted to thank Notch for what he's done, and offer him a free trip to Valve HQ for a friendly visit. Or gift baskets may be involved with some Valve swag.
4. It may be that Valve wants to distribute Minecraft through Steam. What this would mean for current owners of the game though is anybody's guess. It also does not shed any light on whether or not the price of the game will go up beyond what was already expected to happen once the game's multiplayer Survival is released.

Right now this is pure speculation on anybody's part. These were just thoughts gathered from, non-committal, sometimes cryptic comments Notch has made on his Twitter and Tumblr, and the fact that Valve wishes to speak with him about something.

Who knows, perhaps it was nothing more than just an attempt by Valve to get Notch to add hats to Minecraft. We will see.

In other, somewhat related news, Minecraft managed to increase its sales by 1,000 in a span of just 24-hours. Perhaps spurred on by the love thrown its way by the Team Fortress 2 blog.

WHO DID THIS?! What mad man had the idea to put the very addictive Minecraft into Team Fortress 2? Oh, apparently it was a huge fan of both Minecraft and TF2, David Collins, that put together this WIP map for Team Fortress 2.


Why is this important? Well, according to the latest TF2 Blog entry, most of the development team is absolutely hooked on Minecraft, and so should you.

Valve has updated their Left 4 Dead 2 blog with a few interesting items. First up is the fact that a Tank figurine will soon be released by the IP Factory, the same team that released a number of Team Fortress 2 figures.


The tank will be the first of a number of "strictly limited high end collectibles." Pre-orders for the Tank go up on July 30th, just two days away!

Secondly, the L4D2 blog details a few upcoming changes to the game's versus mode, notably focusing on the Charger and point distribution.

While we were testing other changes with the Charger, we were bothered that doing the right thing did not give you the best score. New players were often confused by this lack of feedback, so we fixed that.
- Charger now receives 300 points for any Survivor that is insta-killed.
- Charger now receives 100 points for any Survivor that is insta-incapped by a charge.
- Any infected that causes a Survivor to stumble into a "ledge hang" situation will receive 50 points.

Friendly fire is never fun, especially when it really isn’t friendly fire. So in both Versus and Co-op we wanted to remove those times when you receive a friendly fire warning for shooting through an infected.
- Bullets that first pass through an infected character before striking a Survivor are now ignored as friendly fire.

Failing at the Tank is miserable experience. We all know the feeling when you are trying to explain to your team - but he was already on fire! So we did some work there.
- Tanks go into a stasis when they spawn and leave stasis when the human player takes over.
- Tanks do not attack when they are in stasis.
- Tanks in stasis are invisible but still show a glow to the infected team.
- Tanks in stasis cannot be set on fire.

That's certainly not all that's in store for an upcoming update. More details will be revealed soon courtesy of the blog as to why a few changes were made. Hit the jump to check out today's update notes.

That's right Counter-Strike fans, Valve is currently in the process of updating and testing both de_dust and de_dust2 for Counter-Strike: Source. There is a catch however. The catch is that the maps are being tested only on official Valve CS: Source servers. You can play and test them, but you have to join up on servers using the "Valve" tag testing these maps.

So far, these are the changes that have been made to the two popular Counter-Strike maps.

2010-7-27 B
de_dust2 ( de_dust2_v104 )
- Fixed player getting stuck at double doors
- Fixed wrong texture in interior arch
- Fixed gaps in ground
- Textured visible nodraw roof from T spawn
- Fixed newly blocked window (short A)
- Fixed hole in sky clip (long A)
- Clipped off awkward high position on rocks near CT spawn

2010-7-27
de_dust2 ( de_dust2_v103 )
- halved tonal range ( reduced HDR effect )

de_dust ( de_dust_v102 )
- halved tonal range ( reduced HDR effect )

2010-7-26
de_dust2 ( de_dust2_v102 )
- fixed a bunch of exploits.
- matched dust cloud visibility to DX8.

de_dust ( de_dust_v101 )
- matched dust cloud visibility to DX8.
- matched de_dust2's HDR characteristics.

If you wish to actively test the update maps out, please see this official SPUF thread on how to do so. There are specific guidelines to follow when posting about issues in the map, so please read that thread's OP carefully.

Earlier today there was mass outrage and a lot of eye rolling going on at those who claim they did not cheat in Modern Warfare 2 and were wrongfully banned by VAC. It appears as though Valve was indeed at fault with a false positive and are reversing those bans tonight.

Hello,

Recently, your Steam account was erroneously banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.

The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks).

We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn't already own the game.



To share your extra copy of Left 4 Dead 2 with a friend, you can 'Manage Gifts and Guest Passes' from the 'Games' Menu in Steam, or visit this article on the Steam Support site for detailed instructions: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...4502-TPJL-2656.

To access your own copy of Left 4 Dead 2, visit your library of games in Steam. If you didn't already own the game, it will now be listed among your others there, and is available for download immediately.

Regards,
Gabe Newell
President, Valve

Earlier today we posted news that appeared as though we weren't really believing those who cried foul, because well, we didn't believe them. Well, we'll be the first to say we were wrong. It was one of those very rare cases where someone wasn't lying about not cheating after they were flagged for the infraction.

There are other threads and posts on the Steampowered forums, and elsewhere, detailing the free gift of Left 4 Dead 2 and the unbanning.

Last week, a number of Modern Warfare 2 gamers were banned by VAC through their alleged use of cheats with the game. Given VAC's nature of delayed bans, a rather large number of bans came all at once last week and many are crying foul.

So many, in fact, that people are suspecting there's a bit of a glitch going on with the automated VAC system itself. That is, many feel as though the bans were unjustly dished out even to those who claim they have not cheated. Well, that's the conclusion that Rock, Paper, Shotgun seems to have come to as well, without anything more than the complaints of the vocal few to back their assumptions.

It is of our opinion that with every wave of bans there are going to be a number of vocal gamers who ***** and moan about being "unjustly banned" and cries of how there must be "false positives." Unlike RPS, who seems to forget that when there have been a handful of rare admitted false positives within VAC, it is our belief that these are merely people trying to save face despite the alleged cheats that were found on their system running while gaming. When those aforementioned false positives were found in the past, Valve was quick to fix the mistakes and reverse bans where necessary, namely with faulty memory, the use of Cedega, and a few other instances.

This happens with every anti-cheat system on every game that supports anti-cheat. From Counter-Strike gamers to Battlefield gamers, there will always be those who claim the system made a mistake and that they are not at fault for any wrong doing. If it was indeed a false positive, would Valve not have acted by now to fix the issue? As mentioned, they have done so before and made the fixes publicly known. Thus far, however, Valve has not said a word about these bans.

But by all means, go judge for yourself. In a bit of irony, the outraged gamers who claim to have not cheated but were banned have created a Steam User Group. Perhaps their plight will be as fruitful as the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott of yesteryear. In addition, there are plenty of threads and posts both on the Steam forums and on the official Modern Warfare 2 forums.

UPDATE
VAC has started the process of unbanning and restoring accounts. It appears that a number of bans were, in fact, false.

From 402's Twitter:

@gRaver999 Yep. Everyone affected should be receiving an email with explanation from Steam and their account restored.

Source