Virtual reality is undoubtedly an immersive feast for the eyes, and accompanied by surround sound headphones that pump in realistic high-def sounds to our ears, users are pulled into a digital world.

But what about our other senses? What about those who actually want to smell their digital universe?

The attachment is a novel idea, but as you can see it’s a rather bizarre piece of hardware that traps your visage in a claustrophobic mask that looks quite uncomfortable.

The FeelReal Mask is a curious VR peripheral that aims at injecting more “reality” into your virtual reality sessions by simulating the sense of smell to virtual reality (yes, really). It will also deliver minor temperature fluctuations to simulate hot air, wind and even water mist.

It’s rightly labeled as a “mask” considering when you strap it on to VR hardware you’re pretty much obscuring your entire face, trapping your features in a bizarre claustrophobic contraption for the sake of “total immersion”.

The FeelReal Mask as showcased at GDC 2015. (Photo Credit: The Verge)

Since you’re mouth will be completely covered up, the mask features a Bluetooth microphone to ensure you’re not completely vocally cut-off from the outside world.

It seems like a novel concept from the start, but once you see what you have to go through to get your senses doused in the “full VR presence”, the FeelReal Mask will most likely scare everyone off. Smell is an inherently important sense, and is more closely tied to memory than any other of our five senses, so successfully tapping this reservoir could lead to potential interactive gold.

But how does the mask work? Loaded with a cartridge that produces seven unique smells that waft through “odor generating vents”, the oddity is tethered to the headset by Bluetooth and powered by a battery with a four-hour life cycle.

Hot and cool air are funneled through dual-sided vents along your upper cheekbones to simulate wind and the like, whereas the water mist lightly sprays at separate dual-sided vents along your cheeks.

The “odor generator” is right under your nose–like literally right under your schnozz while wearing the headset–and delivers the following scents:

• Ocean
• Jungle
• Fire
• Grass
• Powder
• Flowers
• Metal

The mask is attachable to just about every piece of VR tech out there including the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus, Valve’s Vive headset and even Zeiss VR One.

The Verge tried out the hardware at GDC 2015 and likened it to “smell-o-vision” for VR.

The publication described it as “strapping a foam block over your mouth and nose, putting yourself at the mercy of its air vents,” and saying that it’s basically a “gas mask arranged into a little smiling face.”

While the FeelReal Mask is certainly a unique specimen in terms of adding smell to VR, we’ve seen other peripherals that aim to bring total immersion to the virtual world.

Hardware like the Dexmo exoskeleton from Dexta Robotics and the mo-capping CyberGlove are helping bring the sense of touch to virtual reality, laying the framework for technologies that could very well introduce hardware of Lawnmower Man-like proportions.

But I think senses like smell (and taste for that matter) are best left to the real world.

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Asus (TPE:2357) is making a Steam Machine, which is called the GR8S.

Set for a launch in the month of November, the machine will offer the latest hardware available from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). After a delay of one year, Valve’s ambitions are going ahead with full steam, with over 15 brands pledging to launch a Steam Machine this year.

The Steam Store listing for the GR8S mentions that the prices for the unit start at $699, with hardware configurations that include Intel’s Core i5/i7 CPUs, Nvidia GeForce 900 series video cards, DDR3 RAM ranging from 4GB to 16GB, storage options in the form of mechanical hard drives that are available in 500GB and 1TB flavors and SSDs from 128GB to 512GB. Here’s the full list of specs on offer:

• Price: Starting at $699
• CPU: Intel Core i5/i7 processors
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9-series graphics
• Memory: DDR3 4GB ~ 16GB
• Storage: 500GB/1TB 7200rpm HDD, or 128GB ~ 512GB SSD
• Audio: ROG SupremeFX 5.1 HD audio
• Network: Intel Gb LAN with 802.11 ac Wi-Fi

Asus has opted for a tower design, unlike Zotac, which went with a more traditional mini-PC styling. Asus’ design does stand out, with the red on black styling serving to highlight the premium nature of the chassis. The Steam Machine will be 4K-ready, with connectivity options including HDMI and DisplayPort. It is unclear if Asus will go with HDMI 2.0 connectivity, which is aimed at delivering 4K at 60fps through a single port, but seeing as how the GR8S will launch in the month of November, it is likely we’ll see the latest standard on board.

If you’re interested in seeing all Steam Machines that will go on sale later this year, be sure to visit Steam’s storefront. There are options from 15 mainstream vendors that begin at $459 and go all the way up to $4,999. Valve also launched a Steam Controller that will be up for sale for $49.99.

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Zotac has recently announced their very own Steam Machine to join Valve’s expanding SteamOS-powered mini-PC lineup.

Featuring a compact Zbox-like form factor, Zotac’s new SN970 Steam Machine packs a wallop thanks to its beefy Sixth Generation Intel processor matched with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M GPU with 3GB of GDDR5 for higher-end graphical performance.

One of the big features of the SN970 is that it’s a 4K ready Steam Machine that supports full UHD at 60Hz, which is a welcome feature especially in the mini-PC realm.

Gamers can also hook up to four display monitors up to the device thanks to its 4x HDMI 2.0 ports, making the device a potential nexus for entertainment.

“We are honored to be working closely with Valve to bring gamers a system that will redefine PC gaming,” said Tony Wong, CEO of Zotac International.

“The Zotac Steam Machine delivers a fully optimized gaming platform with full emphasis on graphics. We have employed the latest Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU technology so gamers can keep the graphics sliders on ultra, and enjoy smooth, 4k gaming.”

Like every other Steam Machine, Zotac’s SN970 runs Valve’s proprietary Steam OS right out of the box, which is aimed at simplifying the user experience for optimum accessibility and performance.

Zotac has yet to reveal pricing details for mini-PC, but Valve announced at GDC 2015 that we should start seeing the Steam Machines shipped out this November.

Whether or not the SN970 will be able to take on the current juggernauts of living room gaming–the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One–all depends on the price. If Zotac can maintain an attractive price point then gamers will be much more likely to jump onboard the mini-PC market, considering this particular model supports 4K gaming and has some beefy specs to boot.

Below we have a full list of specs on the Zotac SN970 Steam Machine:

Key Features

• SteamOS preloaded
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M MXM Graphics
• 4x HDMI 2.0, supports 4K UHD @ 60Hz
• 1x HDMI in
• 2D/3D NVIDIA Surround Sound
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet

Specifications

• 6th Gen Intel Processor
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB GDDR5
• 8GB DDR3 RAM
• 64GB M.2 Solid-State Drive
• 4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0
• 1×2.5″ 1TB HDD
• 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Mic-in, Stereo Out
• SD/SDHC/SDXC Card Reader

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Valve has confirmed that it won’t be holding a big press conference at GDC 2015 today, contrary to rampant internet rumors of a Half-Life 3 reveal on 3/3 at 3pm.

The news comes straight from Kotaku, who spoke to Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi to confirm the whole thing is a “big mix up”. Valve apparently has no plans to hold any kind of huge press conference today at GDC.

It turns out the confused 3pm “event” is actually a game physics presentation from Valve programmer Sergiy Migdalskiy that aims at teaching “fundamental elements and practical considerations for using collision detection and physics simulations in games”

How did this happen?

HTC and Valve have teamed up to make the Vive VR headset a reality, leading to speculation that Half-Life 3 could be a perfect launch title.

On the heels of HTC (TPE: 2498) ‘s big announcement in partnering with Valve to make their VR headset “Vive” a reality, gamers started speculating that Half-Life 3 would be a perfect game to release on the new peripheral. It could be a match made in heaven, and it would certainly shake up the games industry.

Then a particular BBC News article came up that seemingly cemented the news. The article had a quote from HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang saying that “We are co-operating with Half-life, and I think… I hope, you know, it will be on it.”

This little bit of interview text had gamers speculating rapidly across forums and social media, fueled to an inferno thanks to this little tidbit in the BBC article:

“Valve is expected to provide more details about the launch at its own presentation at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on Tuesday.”

In reality, Wang’s words have been misconstrued; she “hopes” that Half-Life will be on the Vive VR headset–but we all know how far rumors have been known to reach. Plus the BBC article in question has been updated with the following text that pretty much nixes hope.

“But the BBC understands that Valve’s own employees were surprised by Ms Wang’s comments as they were not working on a Half-life game for the new helmet at the moment,” an update on the article reads.

The part about a press conference on March 3 at 3pm was mostly fabricated by Reddit posts, which then spread across to Twitter and pretty much had the entire gaming world expecting to see a Half-Life 3 reveal in the afternoon.

Chances are that if Valve’s own marketing director says that it’s a “big mix up”, then it most assuredly is.

This is just another one of those failed Half-Life 3 rumors that drove the internet into a frenzy, and we’ll likely see more rumors spawn until Valve issues some sort of concrete news.

Source: Kotaku

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Today Valve formally announced Vive, its virtual reality headset, to the world and delivered details on how the Steam-powered hardware will impact the world of VR.

To make its peripheral a reality, Valve has tapped Taiwainese smartphone maker HTC (TPE: 2498) to manufacture the hardware.

Originally prototyped at ValveVR, Vive is the finalized form of the company’s virtual reality hardware. Vive will make use of Steam VR’s tracking technology as well as tap into the platform’s array of games–but Valve has plans to embrace a wide scope beyond gaming.

With Vive, the partners claim that users will be able to literally be able to seamlessly walk around and explore the VR space thanks to the Full Room Scale 360 Degree Solution, “inspect objects from all angles and truly interact with your surroundings”.

“A gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree, allowing you to look around the virtual environment naturally.”

To tap into the full potential of Vive you’ll need to hook up a pair of SteamVR “base stations” to track your movement, pretty much giving a motion capture effect within a limited 15 feet x 15 feet space.

As for visuals, Vive VR headset will simulate 1200 x 1080 high-definition images at 90 frames-per-second on two screens over each eye, promising to fill your field of vision “in all directions”.

But you’ll need to hook up your own headphones for audio immersion, as the Vive is an eyes-only experience.

As for input, HTC is creating specially designed “simple and intuitive” wireless controllers to interface with Vive, which will be fully tracked to simulate user input within the virtual space. The HTC VR Controllers will be sold and packaged in pairs.

What kind of games can Vive VR host?

A recent thread on NeoGAF showcases a very such game that could fully tap into the potential of the Vive headset. The Gallery, and upcoming project from from Cloudhead Games, looks to be a leading example as to what developers can pull off on the platform.

Below we a quote from the game’s press release that talks about what Vive means for the dev team:

“We now have a hardware target that matches the original vision for The Gallery: Six Elements. To unleash the user into full, volumetric, 360 roomscale experiences with motion control!

“The HTC and Valve VR experience offers hardware so precise and exacting that we now have the fidelity in our mechanics that we did not have access to before. You will not believe this tech until you get a chance to use it yourself. This is something to be excited about!”

But it’s not all about gaming. Valve wants to help bridge the gap between virtual reality and actual reality to change our lives.

Vive can be used to aid in communication between people across the world, simulate travel to foreign countries, and a million other possibilities.

The company is also partnering with entertainment producers like HBO and Lionsgate Films to bring immersive video experiences to the device.

Valve has already shipped out Beta versions of the Vive Developer Editions out to a variety of game devs including Vertigo Games, Bossa, Cloudhead Games, Dovetail Games, Wemo Labs, and more.

“HTC Vive is real, it’s here and it’ll be ready to go before the start of 2016,” Cher Wang, Chairwoman of HTC, said in the official press release.

Be sure to drop by the Vive VR homesite for more information or to sign-up for e-mail announcements.

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Today was a day of good news for all Nvidia Shield Tablet owners and potential owners.  Nvidia announced today that the Lollipop 5.0 update and the new GRID gaming service are coming to the Shield Tablet in an update on November 18th.  Nvidia Also confirmed that the Green Box they teased yesterday is in fact Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, and Portal.

Today via the Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) blog the company let people know about the upcoming capabilities and content they have made for its Shield Tablet.  The news of the Lollipop 5.0 update that we have known for a while was confirmed to be scheduled for release on November 18th.  The update brings Android’s new material design and performance benefits.  The update will also have an update for the popular Nvidia Dabbler application that has updates in the user interface, full support for layers, and interestingly the ability to stream the app via Twitch (which the tablet already supports for games).  The blog also confirmed that Half-Life Episode One is coming to Android, and it has been optimized for the Nvidia Shield Tablet.  This game will be part of the new Green Box bundle that will be included free with the 32GB/LTE version of the Shield Tablet.  Also confirmed were new games that are optimized for the Shield Tablet.  These games are OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath, Pure Pool, Strike Suit Zero, and Turbo Dismount.

The biggest surprise was the announcement of the long in-beta GRID gaming service.  This will harnesses state-of-the-art Nvidia GPU servers to deliver a GeForce GTX gaming experience on SHIELD devices.  The lineup already includes 20 AAA game titles including Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2, and Psychonauts.  The service will be adding new titles every week.  Essentially this will be like Netflix for games that users can stream right to the Shield devices to play.  But the best part is that the GRID service will be free on Shield devices (both the tablet and the portable) through June 30, 2015.  This is great that Nvidia is giving users more than 7 months of the gaming service free for owners who have already bought devices. This will help make up for the fact that the Green Box is only available with new purchases of the 32GB/LTE tablet and will possibly encourage people to buy SHIELD devices if they weren’t already planning to.

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Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) released a tweet today that had a pixelated image of what appears to be a Shield Tablet with 3 different game images and a Shield wireless controller. The tag on the picture says “What is GreenBox”, and it looks like there will be a Valve game package coming to your Shield devices soon.

What Do You Think GreenBox Is?

What do you think #GreenBox is? http://t.co/GCAnLqptbm pic.twitter.com/aelLAXf9uU

— NVIDIA (@nvidia) November 11, 2014

Today Nvidia made a tweet today with the pixelated image of a Shield Tablet and what appears to be the art of three games on the screen.  A link takes you to the Nvidia Shield website and has the same image as the Twitter post, and has text that reads “What is GreenBox”.   The image also has text encouraging people to tell them what they thing Green Box is via the Twitter hashtag #GreenBox.  If you are a gamer you can probably notice that two of the images are likely Portal and Half-Life 2.  The name GreenBox is very obvious that it is the none to clever attempt to copy The Orange Box name.  The Orange Box was a release of three Valve games in one package.  The games in the package were Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and Portal.

Could this mean that we should expect to see the release of Team Fortress 2 for Android?  Another possibility is that Half -Life Episode 1 is about to be released.  While one might hope that Team Fortress 2 will be the next game the fact is that a multiplayer game is likely going to be a lot more work than a single player game.  The other two games, Portal and Half-Life 2 are already available for Android.  Those games were released by Nvidia Tegra Partners on the Play Store and have gotten rave reviews.

What we can gain from the teaser is that this should be a package with 3 games from Valve, two of which are Portal and Half-Life 2.  It is likely the next chosen game will be just as big of a hit as the current games.  Either way this is good news for those who game on Android and those with Nvidia Shield devices.

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Paranautical Activity, a voxel-based FPS-roguelike mashup indie, was pulled from Steam’s digital store after its creator delivered targeted death threats against Valve’s Gabe Newell.

Code Avarice dev and creator Mike Maulbeck issued these threats after a bout of frustration with the platform.

As Maulbeck pointed out, on the game’s launch day–arguably the most important day for any indie game–Steam hadn’t updated its status: Paranautical Activity was still listed it as an Early Access game.

After noting that Steam delayed his game because “it couldn’t be released on weekends” and that being labeled as Early Access could “cripple sales”, Maulbeck’s vexation rose to a boiling point.

“Valve marked our game as ‘now on Early Access’ as we released the final version (no longer in Early Access),” Maulbeck told Eurogamer via e-mail. “I knew this would greatly cripple sales and confuse customers.”

Paranautical Activity was one of the games featured in Steam’s special Halloween-themed bundle, but was yanked shortly after Maulbeck’s vicious threat.

The dev continued to deliver a fusillade of frustration on Twitter, calling Valve a “f-cking monopoly” and lamenting the company as “incompetent pieces of sh-t” among other vicious attacks.

Then Maulbeck crossed the line. “I’m going to kill Gabe Newell,” the deranged developer said. “He is going to die.”

Valve promptly responded to this death threat by pulling Paranautical Activity from Steam altogether and cancelling Maulbeck’s private account.

“Yes, we have removed the game’s sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi said to Polygon.

We wouldn’t mess with Gabe, would you?

Maulbeck affirms that he reached out to Valve in an effort to fix the game’s erroneous listing, but ultimately the interactions left the dev angrier than ever.

“I in fact had already begun getting tweets and e-mails from people claiming I marked it as Early Access myself to try and avoid criticism of the final version,” Maulbeck continued in his correspondence with Eurogamer.

As a result to the tumult caused by his threats, Matt Maulbeck reveals that he’s resigned from Code Avarice.

“I’m really, deeply sorry that my short sighted, hot tempered actions resulted in not only my own dreams and aspirations being destroyed, but those of the entire team I worked with. I’m sorry that my statements made Valve and/or Gabe uncomfortable and upset (rightfully so).”

Maulbeck will no longer be a part of the games industry and “will not receive any money made by Paranautical Activity” nor will he “have a hand in future CA games”.

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Valve has just announced that ESPN networks will be carrying the DOTA 2 International Championships, which just recently broke a $10 million prize pool. The International DOTA 2 Championships will be held in Seattle, Washington from July 18th to the 21st and will culminate in a final where the winners will walk away with nearly $5 million thanks to so many people buying Compendiums.

Prizepool

People wanting to watch the DOTA 2 International Championships on TV or online can do so using ESPN 3, and ESPN 2 for the final match. You can also access most of the matches and the final match on WatchESPN, ESPN’s streaming application which is available on smartphones, tablets, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

This means that eSports just gained another level of legitimacy that I don’t think very many people expected. Because Valve was able to bring Disney/ESPN onboard for the DOTA 2 International Championships, they are in effect making eSports one of the most legitimate forms of sport today. ESPN already had great success with the world cup and they clearly are recognizing an opportunity here to once again capitalize on a very excited audience and are doing so by announcing this the day before the DOTA 2 International Championships.

Hopefully ESPN will not be the only ones that will start broadcasting eSports on TV for people to watch and enjoy. I suspect that League of Legends from Riot Games may eventually get streamed/broadcast by someone like Fox or Turner Sports who all will want to get in on the eSports buzz and craze as they are some of the most loyal audiences and also have some incredible spending power, as shown by the DOTA 2 International Championships’ crowd funded prize pool of over $10 million. This is just the beginning and it will very likely only get more interesting very soon.

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The update that Valve released to Counter Strike: Global Offensive yesterday was a huge one to the community as it solved many problems that users were experiencing with bullet penetration, also known as Wall Banging. The problem with the previous implementation of bullet penetration in Counter Strike: Global Offensive was partially that it wasn’t very scientific and partially that it made very little sense. You could should through a thin metal grate and basically do no damage to someone, or shoot through a fairly thick metal vent and do an amazing amount of damage. In fact, you could do more damage to someone through the sides of the vent than shooting through the grates. Also, shooting through certain metal objects bullets would randomly penetrate or not without any reliability. The same went for cardboard boxes and wooden boxes. Essentially, it was a crap shoot. Because of this, certain shots in game would be considered kills while others were not. However, with the new update Valve have significantly improved the bullet physics and wall banging in game so that it is now far more predictable and can be used more like if it were in the real world.

As Valve states, not all guns shoot projectiles that can penetrate (wall bang) and not all surfaces can be penetrated. They also state, logically, that if a bullet successfully penetrates, it will lose some of its power and do less damage after it exist the object or wall on the other side. The calculation of how much damage this bullet does is purely a function of the  weapon, distance traveled through the object and the materials of the surfaces penetrated. And like in the real world, the further the bullet travels through the object the more power it will lose. And once it has lost all of its power it will simply fail to penetrate and stop traveling altogether.

Now, each weapon has varying penetration, from a glock to an awp where the power can range from anywhere between 0 and 300. A value of 0 means that it will never penetrate any objects, while 300 will mean that it will penetrate harder surfaces for greater distances, but cannot go through everything for an unlimited distance. Also, the total number of surfaces that any bullet can penetrate in a single flight is capped at 4.

Valve has also made a list of the surfaces of the objects that you shoot and the materials that they are made of.

Material Ease of Penetration

Glass Very Easy
Cardboard Very Easy
Metal Grate Easy
Wood Easy
Plaster Average
Tile Average
Metal Hard
Concrete Hard
Brick Hard
Solid Metal Very Hard

To see the raw wall banging numbers for all materials and their penetration value, see the file named
csgoscriptssurfaceproperties_cs.txt
The entry you want to look for is “penetrationmodifier”.

How wall banging works through wood with different weapons and distances

They’ve also included some examples of wall banging as well as tools that allow you to test exactly how it works in-game.

What a wall banging shot looks like when shown in game with tools

To test bullet penetration for yourself, open the console while playing on a private server (or offline with bots), and enter the following command: sv_showimpacts_penetration 1When a bullet penetrates a surface, you will see a report including information about the type of surface penetrated, the distance the bullet traveled through the material, and the damage lost in the process.You can increase the amount of time this information stays on the screen by changing sv_showimpacts_time

They have also included an FAQ to explain exactly any kinds of questions you might have about the new wall banging system.

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We’ve been covering the International DOTA 2 Championships since they announced the prize pool for the event. Initially, Valve, the makers of DOTA 2, put up $1.6 million of their own money for the event and gamers have contributed to the prize pool for the event through the purchasing of the Dota 2 International Championships Compendium. DOTA 2 is a MOBA game (Massively Online Battle Arena) much like League of Legends, which is one of the more popular of the two and is made by Riot Games. DOTA 2 has only officially been out for a year or so (but has been in beta since 2011), but the momentum of the game is picking up even faster than anyone had suspected and is likely trying to compete with Riot Games for their user base.

However, Riot games funds their World Championships and last year’s season which was from a pool of $2 million, with the first place team splitting the $1 million prize. Similarly, Last year’s International DOTA 2 Championship was around $3 million ($2.8 million) with half of the prize going to the winning team, Team Alliance. This year’s $10 million prize so far eclipses both of those figures that it has now propelled eSports into the level of incredibly real sporting competitions. Many comparisons have been drawn with the FedEx cup which is the highest paying sporting event in Golf and actually eclipses any other horse racing event in the world and many other sports including Cricket, Rugby and virtually any other sport that isn’t Soccer or American Football. Obviously figures change from year to year, but at $10 million and counting there’s a good chance that a lot of people are going to want to switch to play DOTA 2 instead of League of Legends.

After all, the $10 million is split among the top 8 teams that compete, which means that there’s still a ton of money being played for even if you don’t finish in the top 4 where the real money can be had. Looking at the DOTA 2 split from last year, the top team gets 50 percent and the rest of the teams split the remainder. The 2nd place team gets 22 percent, 3rd place team gets 10 percent, 4th place team gets 7 percent, 5th and 6th get 4 percent and 7th and 8th get 1.5 percent. That means, if Valve continues with these percentages for the $10 million pool this year, 1st place will get over $5 million. That means that each and every member of the team walks away with $1 million and immediately become millionaires. Sure, there are coaches and other costs, but in the end there’s $1 million per player being awarded which can’t be said about most sports, team or not. Being able to become a millionaire in a Team eSport is mind boggling on its own.

DOTA 2 International Championships Prize Pool split via Alliance Gaming

Now, if you take the same percentages from last year and apply them to this year,  2nd’s place stands to win $2.2 million (over $400k per player), 3rd place stands to win $1 million (over $200k per player), 4th place stands to win $700,000 (over $100K per player) and 5th and 6th places each take home $400,000 (over $90K per player). Last (and least) the 7th and 8th place teams would likely take home $150,000 which still comes out to $30,000 per player which is nearly what the entire team got for winning last year in the same place. The sheer size of this tournament is really starting to weigh on me now.

Now, if we compare those numbers to last year’s League of Legends final, we will see why there’s a good chance that a lot of people will soon consider switching to DOTA 2 (unless Riot Games significantly ups the prize pool). Mainly that the 3rd place DOTA 2 team will earn as much money as the 1st place team did in League of Legends’ final.

League of Legends 2013 final split, source: Curse Gaming

Based on the above numbers, the winners of this year’s DOTA 2 International Championships will actually walk away with more money individually than the entire team of SK Telecom T1 did last year. Additionally, 2nd place players in DOTA 2’s Championships will walk away with more money than the entire 2nd place team did in the League of Legends finals ($400K vs $250K). The numbers just continually get more and more drastic with the 4th place team in DOTA 2’s Championships walking away with almost as much per player as the entire 3rd and 4th place teams did in the League of Legends final.

This means that the stakes are higher than they have ever been and Valve has found a way to make their game more competitive with Riot’s League of Legends, by simply allowing the community to incentivize the game’s growth. $8.4 million out of the current $10 million was added to the prize pool by the community, so they clearly want to see DOTA 2 succeed and by the looks of it, this is going to be one of the most talked about eSports events, ever. I even remember when I first heard about League of Legends $1 million prize for their final and how big of a deal that was. Now we’re looking at $10 million which is no chump change, and likely explains why universities are handing out eSports scholarships, even though right now they’re only for League of Legends (not sure how long that’ll only be League of Legends now that DOTA 2 has a $10 million pool).

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Robert Morris University-Illinois, a small private university in Chicago, will offer eSports scholarships later this year. Beginning this fall, the scholarships will cover up to 50 percent of tuition and room and board; which is worth up to $19,000 per student. This is the first substantial scholarship of its kind in the U.S. The school plans on offering 45-50 athletic scholarships to competitive League of Legends gamers.

League of Legends has 70 million players per month and in terms of hours played, it was the most popular video game in the U.S. and Europe in 2012.

RMU is also looking into hiring a coach for its team. League of Legends is a highly competitive game that requires a lot of teamwork, strategy, and skill.

A competitive college league already exists in the form of the Collegiate Star League dedicated to video gaming. The CSL is comprised of teams at 100 universities such as MIT and UC Berkeley. Most teams exist as clubs or informal groups at their respective schools. The RMU Eagles will be an official team in this league.

Source: NPR

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The DOTA 2 International competition has already begun in the regional competitions and the final will be in July from the 18th and 21st in Seattle’s KeyArena. However, in order to fund the competition, Valve has decided to encourage the community to purchase compendiums for $9.99 which will allow them to increase the prize pool by $2.50. The International Compendium is a digital booklet that allows gamers to interact with the DOTA 2 tournament. DOTA 2 players will also earn more rewards as they are able to level up their Compendium by watching games, collecting player cards and making tournament predictions

The awesome thing about Valve’s model is that with the Compendium, they are encouraging DOTA 2 players to buy the Compendium because of the vast amount of additional rewards that they are enabling with each mark they hit trying to raise the prize value of the International competition going down in July. The stretch goals started at $1.8 million and has reached $5 million, meaning that at least a million gamers (out of 8 million active gamers) have bought the DOTA 2 International Compendium. So far, gamers have gained 11 new bonus items in addition to what the Compendium had originally offered and there are only two more stretch goals left, at which point they will have raised $6 million for the DOTA 2 Internationl competition.

By buying this Compendium and encouraging gamers to participate more with the Compendium Valve may actually be able to show the world how powerful their community (and game) really can be. And they may be able to get 1 million concurrent viewers to watch a single event which may show the world how serious eSports has gotten, if League of Legends hasn’t already done that with their competitions. However, based on the current $5 million purse, there is already going to be a LOT of attention bring drawn towards DOTA 2. After all, how many people are going to want to play a technically free game where you can compete for a share of a $5 million prize.

Keep in mind that last year the prize pool for the 2013 DOTA 2 International competition was $2,874,380, which is already quite sizable. But this year the DOTA 2 community have outdone themselves and are on pace to double it this year.

Last year’s split went like this according to PC Gamer:

1st – $1,363,988
2nd – $600,155
3rd – $272,798
4th – $190,958
5th – $109,119
6th – $109,119
7th – $40,920
8th – $40,920

Based on these numbers, and the fact that the current prize pool is nearly double the previous one from last year we can expect that 1st place will likely walk away with something like $2.5 million while second will walk away with something around $1.2 million and 3rd place with around $500,000. This is going to be a pretty big competition with incredibly high stakes and it will be very interesting to see how much attention it gets outside of the core DOTA 2 community, which currently is about 8 million strong.

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The DOTA 2 International competition has already begun in the regional competitions and the final will be in July from the 18th and 21st in Seattle’s KeyArena. However, in order to fund the competition, Valve has decided to encourage the community to purchase compendiums for $9.99 which will allow them to increase the prize pool by $2.50. The International Compendium is a digital booklet that allows gamers to interact with the DOTA 2 tournament. DOTA 2 players will also earn more rewards as they are able to level up their Compendium by watching games, collecting player cards and making tournament predictions

The awesome thing about Valve’s model is that with the Compendium, they are encouraging DOTA 2 players to buy the Compendium because of the vast amount of additional rewards that they are enabling with each mark they hit trying to raise the prize value of the International competition going down in July. The stretch goals started at $1.8 million and has reached $5 million, meaning that at least a million gamers (out of 8 million active gamers) have bought the DOTA 2 International Compendium. So far, gamers have gained 11 new bonus items in addition to what the Compendium had originally offered and there are only two more stretch goals left, at which point they will have raised $6 million for the DOTA 2 Internationl competition.

By buying this Compendium and encouraging gamers to participate more with the Compendium Valve may actually be able to show the world how powerful their community (and game) really can be. And they may be able to get 1 million concurrent viewers to watch a single event which may show the world how serious eSports has gotten, if League of Legends hasn’t already done that with their competitions. However, based on the current $5 million purse, there is already going to be a LOT of attention bring drawn towards DOTA 2. After all, how many people are going to want to play a technically free game where you can compete for a share of a $5 million prize.

Keep in mind that last year the prize pool for the 2013 DOTA 2 International competition was $2,874,380, which is already quite sizable. But this year the DOTA 2 community have outdone themselves and are on pace to double it this year.

Last year’s split went like this according to PC Gamer:

1st – $1,363,988
2nd – $600,155
3rd – $272,798
4th – $190,958
5th – $109,119
6th – $109,119
7th – $40,920
8th – $40,920

Based on these numbers, and the fact that the current prize pool is nearly double the previous one from last year we can expect that 1st place will likely walk away with something like $2.5 million while second will walk away with something around $1.2 million and 3rd place with around $500,000. This is going to be a pretty big competition with incredibly high stakes and it will be very interesting to see how much attention it gets outside of the core DOTA 2 community, which currently is about 8 million strong.

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The guys and girls over at Malwarebytes have uncovered a new method of Steam account phishing which gets around Valve’s own Steam Guard service. Valve’s Steam Guard service is a serviced designed by Valve to make sure that people’s account credentials aren’t being stolen by other people and using them on their own computers. This both acts to protect users’ accounts and acts as a sort of level of DRM to protect the content from people unauthorized to use it. From my expereince, Valve’s Steam Guard has worked quite well and always sends me an email whenever I log in from a new machine or one that isn’t recognized by Steam’s service. Steam Guard essentially sends you an email with an authorization code after a pop-up comes up within Steam itself asking for that code that was sent to your email.

These phishers are using this system, that most Steam users are familiar with in order to create fake Steam sites that look very much like what you would see if you used Steam and got a Steam Guard notification. They do this by sending you a message over Steam or via an email and get you to go to their phishing site. Once there, you will be prompted to provide them with your SSFN file, which is a bit unlike most phishing schemes where they ask for your username and password. But, since Steam Guard exists, this information simply isn’t enough and they need your SSFN file. What is the SSFN file? Well, it’s the file that enables Steam Guard to authenticate your account and ensure that your computer is an authorized one. If you delete your SSFN file, you will be forced to re-authenticate your computer via Steam Guard and get the email code and everything all over again.

Steam SSFN Upload

The phishers have successfully found a way to steal users’ SSFN files by simply asking them to upload it to their site and at that same time use the SSFN file on their systems in order to gain full access to the users’ account. Why is this important? Well, many users, myself included, have hundreds of dollars worth of games on their account and those accounts could be sold to other people for a lot of money if properly stolen. So, naturally, there are a lot of people searching for new methods of phishing and getting around Steam’s own protections to prevent such bad things happening to their users. Hopefully Valve is aware of the issue now and makes it impossible to phish someone for their account SSFN file to steal their account and either use it for themselves or to sell it off to the highest bidder.

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So, we already reported to you about the cake we got from Nvidia along with an Aperture Laboratories-themed letter, as well as the ultimate result of Portal arriving on the SHIELD with a short review of our experience and some screen shots. Well, Nvidia’s viral marketing doesn’t stop there with SHIELD as today we received a bright green crowbar from Nvidia that simply said, “What Would Gordon Do?” This is a clear allusion to Half Life 2, and as if that isn’t enough, they also have the Half-Life 2 and SHIELD logos emblazoned on the crowbar itself.

Nvidia SHIELD Themed Crowbar

As we had alluded to in the previous article, there was a good chance that Nvidia and Valve’s next logical step would be to port over other games from the Orange Box since Portal was part of that group. So, it comes as little surprise that today’s crowbar that we got from Nvidia had a Half Life 2 logo on it accompanied by the SHIELD logo with the “What Would Gordon Do?” phrasing on it. Maybe WWGD will make a comeback as a joke phrase that alludes to games, but the truth is that Nvidia and Valve are likely going to be releasing more Orange Box games on the SHIELD which is awesome. Even though, to be honest, Portal is probably my favorite game out of the entire Orange Box even  though all of the Half Life games are quite good as well, and Team Fortress 2 is still wildly popular today as a Free to Play game with a plethora of hats…

And no, this doesn’t somehow confirm that Half Life 3 is coming, you can CLEARLY see that it says HL2 on the crowbar, so don’t get too excited about that yet, Valve appears busy trying to make better use of their game portfolio on mobile. Which, is admittedly a good idea, they need to maximize their utilization of their own IP even on platforms they don’t entirely control (like Google Play or Tegrazone). This is a good move for both Nvidia and Valve and should simultaneously yield some awesome SHIELD-based exclusive titles.

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Nvidia has been talking about the fact that Portal will be coming to SHIELD since they announced it at their GPU Technology Conference along with the $199 price cut of the SHIELD. Since then, the guys at Valve and Nvidia have been working feverishly to deliver a working port of Portal from the PC to SHIELD. Well, we got an early access to the APK a few days ago and we’ve been playing it ever since, and the verdict is that its virtually impossible to tell whether or not I’m playing on my PC or on my SHIELD. I’ve played Portal before on my PC and the experience on the SHIELD might even be better because you’re so much more focused on the screen and the speakers are right in front of your face. Every time I pick up Portal on my SHIELD, another 10-20 minutes seemingly evaporate within what feels like seconds. Portal is just one of those games that you can’t help playing, especially after a really long break in playing the game.

Portal on NVIDIA’s SHIELD

The gameplay with the SHIELD feels incredibly natural and I hate to admit it, but I think I like playing Portal more on my SHIELD than I do on my keyboard and mouse because of how immersive the experience is. This is a great game that you can play virtually anywhere and anyone can enjoy. My only concern is the replayability of Portal for people after they’ve dropped the $10. Not to mention, this may expose a new generation of gamers to Portal that have never played it before (the game is 7 years old now). But since it is only coming on on SHIELD for now, which is understandable considering the controls, most of the people that will be buying Portal for SHIELD will probably already own a PC and have already bought Portal for their PC or have gotten it for free through some bundle or sale like most of us have. You can see all of the screenshots we’ve posted are actual gameplay of Portal from the SHIELD.

Playing Portal on Nvidia’s SHIELD

The game itself will be available to the general public on May 12th, for the ripe old price of $9.99 which if you ask me, is a bit pricey for a game that sells on Steam for PC for exactly the same price. Even so, nobody actually would pay $9.99 for Portal, they would wait for some sort of bundle or Steam Sale, which honestly would be an awesome thing for Nvidia and Valve to do, sell an ‘Orange Box’ like deal for the Steam-based Valve games ported to SHIELD. I would be really excited to see what other interesting things other than Portal Valve and Nvidia are able to accomplish, perhaps even simultaneous launches of Valve PC titles with the Tegra/Mobile version? Eh, maybe we’re just being too optimistic, but after our experience with Portal on the SHIELD, we can’t help but be overly optimistic.

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There has always been a ton of pop culture around the phrase “The Cake is a lie” and many gamers simply don’t understand the origin of the phrase or understand its meaning, but neither are necessary unless you get a randomly delivered cake from UPS in the middle of your week with a ‘letter’ from “Aperture Labs.” I’m not going to be one to say no to a delicious chocolate cake being delivered to my apartment for free, but it is a bit weird to be getting a cake either way and once you read the letter that accompanied the cake, you start to understand that this is a very clear allusion to Portal. Portal is without a doubt one of my favorite games of all time, and it comes as no surprise that Nvidia is probably working with Valve to port Portal from PC to Android with the SHIELD getting it first.

So, the guys at Nvidia are going to be releasing Portal on the SHIELD by what looks to be pretty soon. Yes, we did have the cake, and yes it was good. Now if only there was a Titan Z buried somewhere inside that cake, then I might get a little more excited. Until then, I’ll just have to wait for Nvidia to drop Portal onto my SHIELD and ‘suffer’ with one of the best games of all time on an Android gaming console. Hopefully it’ll be available for the Tegra Note 7 as well, which would make it even more attractive. Oh, and as a lover of Counter Strike: Global Offensive, I would really love to see Valve port that game to Android too, even though I am not sure it’d play the same on Android as it does on PC.

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Steam Hardware Survey, December 2008

Following our article with November 2008 details, here are the changes:

• AMD lost 1.04% of CPU share in December alone – Intel gained that share
• Nvidia lost 0.47% of its GPU share, while AMD/ATI gained 0.45%
• Out of those 0.47%, 0.25% bought a graphics card with 1GB of video memory
• Quad-Core processors are now used by 10.76%, up 0.64% from Nov ’08
• 50.81% of all users have at least 2 cores to play with
• DirectX 10 API is now used by 22.88% of all users, up 1.45% from Nov ’08
• 41.5% users use widescreen resolution, gained 1.47% from Nov’08
• Multi-GPU configurations are still used by less than 2% of all users, with 1.84% (+0.06%). This means that just 300.000 Steam gamers have more than one GPU in their computer.
• Revenue-wise, these 300.000 gamers spent 200+ million USD on their GPU hardware alone, or equal revenue to 1.2 million mainstream users (if they spent $199 on a card)

We can conclude that roughly 1% of all users (150.000) bought new systems, mostly equipped with quad-core processors and ATI Radeon graphics cards. Given the fact that cut-off for SHS is 10th in the month, only Steam Hardware Survey for January 2009 will show all the Christmas sales results. Then, we can see what happened with the base of Steam users.

This does not include the whole world, so there is a lot of room for free interpretation, but bear in mind that this number includes more than 15.5 million users worldwide. And Steam itself is gaining users, so it will be interesting to see how it will all equal out.

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Steam has more than 15 million users worldwide and is to software distribution what World of Warcraft is in the world of MMO games. But probably the most interesting part of Steam is world famous “Steam Hardware Survey”. Every month, Valve collect data from 15 million users and lists what kind of hardware do people use. This is an invaluable process that gives developers golden information about platforms they should target. In my discussions with game developers, I had countless verbal battles with people who didn’t want to create a game for high-end hardware, because the adoption rate is too low. Well, think again.

In survey for November 2008, stats show that Intel leads the CPU share with 63.62%, while AMD owns the remaining 36.38%. Dual-core dominates with 49.04%, e.g. almost eight million people own a dual-core processor. Quad-core captured just 10.43%, which means quaddies have a mountain to climb. It is surprising to see that 40.19% still own a single-core processor, but multi-thread support is a must-have feature today, not tomorrow – 59.47% own a multi-thread capable computer.

CPU-wise, best sellers are Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors (2.4-2.66 GHz), while owners of AMD platform just cannot get enough of Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz (4400+). Graphics-wise, Nvidia captured 65.11% of all steam users, translated into more than 10 million gamers. Here comes the most interesting part of the survey. According to Steam, GeForce 8800 captured the hearts of no less than 32.35% of users. Out of 10 million Nvidia users, more than three million people own a high-performing GeForce 8800 card – it is almost incredible to see that amount of 3D horsepower taking more market share than numerous mainstream and low-end cards. 

API is a key decided in what platform to go with, and software developers will appreciate the fact that even though almost half of all Steam users use DirectX 10 hardware, only 21.43% of all steam users can actually use DX10 API. Windows XP is loved by more than massive majority of DX10 HW-owning users.

Numbers don't lie, and these are results from more than 15M people around the world. World's largest IT-related survey, that's for sure.

Summary

All in all, I would conclude that this survey proves just how popular Core 2 Duo and GeForce 8800 are. If you’re working on game code optimization today, and plan to launch the game on Steam in 2009, focus your efforts on following parts:

• Vista is a failure, gamers are waiting for Windows 7 to tell Good Bye to Windows XP
• Focus optimization on two cores, most likely in 2.5 GHz range
• 480.000 users overclocked their CPU beyond fastest shipping clock, additional 1.5 million moderately overclock their machines
• Users have around 100GB of free space on the hard drive
• Most of users have 512MB of video memory.
• Most popular resolution is 1024×768
• Most widescreen users use 27″ screens (surprised?), followed by 24″ ones. Thus, for widescreen focus on FullHD resolution
• Multi-GPU is esoteric at best, with 1.79% of overall share. Yes, only 280.000 people have multi-GPU configuration, with SLI dominating the share with 1.55% (240.000).
• Currently, nobody uses 4 GPUs with ATI chips and mere 4600 people own two 7950GX2 cards
• Valve currently makes world’s largest IT-based survey, and probably one of largest surveys in existence (does anybody know how many people Nielsen actually track?)  

All in all, Steam survey offered an interesting insight. I’ll follow-up on this one in our future monthly reports on Steam.

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