OK, irrespective of whether you’re a PC gamer or console fanatic, this is amazing news.

Valve are offering their entire back catalogue of games, comprising 22 titles ranging from Half Life 1 and 2, to Counter-Strike Source to Team Fortress 2, as well as Portal and Day of Defeat, and everything in-between, all for only $99.99! This saves you 134 dollars! And 82 cents!

Oh, and what’s the best part of the deal? What they’re calling the Valve: Complete Pack includes their latest game releasing this week, Left 4 Dead! This would either make a great gift for yourself this holiday period, or a great gift for someone else (that happens to have an excellent broadband ‘net connection).

Go peruse the entire list of games in the pack over here.

Where in the world do you live? In that part of the world, do they have gigantic advertisements and banners adorning the local skyscrapers? No? Well, that’s how they do it in New York, as Valve and EA’s marketing push goes into overdrive for their next collaboration, the zombie co-operative shooter Left 4 Dead.

Not only that, Bethesda have taken out the entire back page of the New York Times for a full colour advert, featuring their latest behemoth, Fallout 3.

Now that’s advertising!

Thanks Kotaku!

Are you looking forward to Left 4 Dead, the game that pits four ‘survivors’ against four ‘super zombies’, as well as a zombie horde? You aren’t? Then you haven’t seen the opening cinematic yet!

While it is indeed ‘only’ a cinematic, the actual game is even better, allowing four players to take the roles of the survivors and another four players to take on super zombie duties, trying to outwit each other in a highly co-operative multiplayer experience, while dozens of zombies run about amidst the chaos.

Oh, and it’s from Valve! Left 4 Dead releases on PC and Xbox 360 in the US on November 18th and November 21st in the UK and Europe. Can’t wait!

According to a report in The Inquirer, the all-knowing, all-encompassing internet search giant, Google, is to buy Half-Life developer, Valve.

There have been increased rumblings on the ‘net regarding Google’s plans to enter the games market, with efforts such as their virtual world social network, Lively. Google would be interested in Valve, however, not only because they are a fantastic developer, but more likely is that they want to take advantage of Valve’s Steam, a service that streams games and game updates, as well as providing a central point of authentication for purchased software and online game servers.

Most of the large game publishers and developers have signed on to distribute their games through Steam as well, making the service extremely influential. With a current active subscriber-base of 15 million users, Steam could be even more powerful and prolific in the hands of Google.

If true, the news could be as big as the Activision/Vivendi merger or EA’s Bioware/Pandemic buyout last year. Also, if true, it’s expected that an announcement will be made during the course of the Austin Game Developer’s Conference, running through this week

Source: The Inquirier

UPDATE: In the first comment made by Valve regarding the supposed acquisition, Valve’s marketing director, Doug Lombardi, said that the rumour is just that - 100% rumour. Back to your lives, citizens…

According to the latest Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM), Valve Software’s co-operative survival horror zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, is headed to PlayStation 3, joining the Xbox 360 and PC platforms.

Valve’s Gabe Newell has notoriously gone on record as saying he isn’t too fond of the PlayStation 3, as a platform or as a gaming device. Valve’s ‘fondness’ for the platform was demonstrated when they set off to develop the contents of the Orange Box for PC and Xbox 360, leaving PS3 port duties to EA, their publishing partner.

It seems, once again, EA will pick up the slack and will be converting Left 4 Dead to the PS3. Hopefully this port will be a lot better than their Orange Box efforts, which left many a PS3 owner cold.

You will notice this is a console gaming blog and news site (hopefully that much is obvious). Well, it so happens that we were all big PC gamers in the day. Before the advent of the PlayStation, console gaming in sunny South Africa was limited to buying pirate consoles called Family Computer and to get a new game you visited your local Chinese “importer” down some alley in central Durban. These carts typically came with moon-text (since we had no idea what that stuff really was) or hilariously translated Engrish.

So, if you gamed here before ‘96 you were a PC gamer or a true-blue pirate. Most likely you were both.

That all changed for me - consoles are my platform of choice these days. But, I can’t ignore the fact that Steam has these wonderful little puzzle games that just about any PC can play. The latest is Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, and it’s a time-blackhole. At only $20 it’s a very, very good deal. My previous affair was with Geometry Wars, available for the giveaway price of $4.

Anyhow, Valve has just announced that Steam has reached a total of 15 million users, and that their revenue from the digital download service grew by 158% over the Christmas shopping season last year compared with the previous year.

That’s impressive. I mean, it’s bigger than World of Warcraft and Xbox Live. I thought PC gaming was supposed to be dead?