Gizmodo Australia » valve

Giz Explains: Everything You Wanted to Know About DRM

Matt Buchanan — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Condensed explanation: Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the arse that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there’s more to it.

Google Buying Valve?

Mark Wilson — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:15:00 +0000

Weeeeird. According to The Inquirer, Google is set to acquire video game company Valve at any moment now. It might seem like an odd match at first, search engines not having much to do with The Orange Box, but Google may be interested not in Valve’s games but in Valve’s game distribution platform, Steam. Steam is the most veteran digital download service on the block, and acquiring the tech could further enable Google to take over the world/galaxy. Also, rumour has it that Valve has developed a rich stockpile of badass digital weaponry, like laser machine guns and WMDs and stuff. [theinquirer]

UPDATE: Kotaku spoke with Valve who said the rumour is false.

Novint Falcon Force Feedback Controller Gets Valve Support

Jason Chen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:40:00 +0000

The long-in-development force-feedback PC game device Novint Falcon is a good idea in theory, but without actual support from games there’s not a whole lot you can do with it. Good news though, since Valve just announced support with the controller for PC versions of The Orange Box, Counter-Strike: Source, the Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead. With the pistol grip accessory it’ll be fine for every game, but what we really have hopes for is fiddling around with that gravity gun and feeling the force feedback with it. [Novint via Crunchgear]

Valve’s Steam Cloud Brings Cloud Computing to Gaming Masses

Matt Buchanan — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:30:00 +0000

In the next update to Valve’s Steam client, which distributes and manages PC games, and is probably the best digital distribution setup around (other software companies wish they had a setup half as good), Valve will be throwing cloud computing into the mix. Called Steam Cloud, the update will let you store profiles, keybindings and all of your save games online, in addition to social networking features like calendars and stuff. The cloud storage is free. Why is this a big deal?

A game company is taking the lead with two very hyped developments in how we consume software—digital distribution and cloud computing. Steam was already groundbreaking in the way it eliminated physical media from the big software equation on a mass level, and and Steam Cloud does something similar, bringing cloud computing to the masses. (It’s been so successful Steam sales are about to overtake box sales for Valve.)

Google does this to an extent with Google Docs but by integrating it with the Steam client, Valve takes it a little further—it doesn’t matter whose PC you’re on, all of your stuff is there, waiting. Ironically, as much as Microsoft’s trying to fend off the cloud, Xbox Live presents a pretty awesome opportunity to dive into it and do something similar—they already do with respect to software distribution. [Maximum PC]