It’s obviously not the first time that such an event has been staged of course, but it definitely is a rare sighting of generosity from Activision that you all should take advantage of.

Despite the game’s criticism, it still remains immensely popular with both PC and console gamers and it’s a shame that Activision can’t put a free trial of multiplayer up on the PS Store and Xbox Live marketplace. We’ve seen other developers like Ubisoft offer free trials of games like Assassin’s Creed, and it would be a great way for Activision to ignite new interest in the console version of the game.

For those planning to take part in the free weekend, it will commence on Thursday April 26 at 6pm UK time, 10am Pacific Time for those of you in the US. There’s no set time on when the free multiplayer will end, but we’re guessing that Valve will shut it off sometime on Monday or late Sunday evening.

This is completely free, so there can be no complaints really. Activision are on the brink of revealing their next Call of Duty game on May 1st, and information on the latest teasers for the game can be seen here. Tell us – are there any PC users out there who are happily playing MW3 ahead of BF3?

More About: infinity ward, Modern Warfare 3, steam

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This seems to have come out of nowhere, but there is little doubt that everyone is talking about it on the likes of Twitter at the moment. The Steam Box story is according to a report over at The Verge who suggest that Valve may be planning to reveal the new hardware at the Game Developers Conference, which kicks off this week in San Francisco.

Further more, The Verge has even got a potential list of specs for us to drool over, specs which were apparently discussed at CES 2012 back in January. If legit, Valve may be announcing the Steam Box with specs such as an Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM and graphics from NVIDIA.

8GB of RAM sounds pretty good to us, but what would a console from Valve mean for the industry – more specifically, how would it make Sony and Microsoft feel since both companies are almost ready to announce their PS3 and Xbox 360 successors? There has always been a big gap from console to PC, but the idea of having a compact box in the living room which could handle the equivalent of Battlefield 3 on PC, may be a tempting idea for many gamers who have previously been reluctant to make the jump from console to PC.

What’s more interesting, is that this huge rumor has come days after Gabe Newell was quoted as saying ‘if we need to sell hardware, we will’. Coincidence perhaps guys, or a real indication that Valve are ready to enter the console market? Let us know your initial feelings towards a Steam box from Valve and if you would choose it ahead of the Sony PS4 and the next Xbox console. Kotaku has a image of a rumored prototype model here – well worth a look.

The idea of playing PC-quality games in the living room is an interesting one, but we would definitely like to see it happen as a fourth console option is always better than three.

More About: Sony PS4, steam, Valve, Xbox 720

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Let’s start with Steam’s Elder Scrolls discount, you can now buy Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, Oblivion Game of the Year Edition and Skyrim for $49.99 in total (would usually cost just shy of $100). Alternatively you can buy Morrowind for $9.99, Oblivion for $9.99 and Skyrim for $39.99, usually Morrowind and Oblivion GOTY Editions are priced at $19.99 each on Steam. As for Skyrim this will go back up to $59.99 on Thursday, which means it’s a 33% saving. If you are in Great Britain you can get Skyrim for £23.29, usually it costs £34.99.

As you probably already know by now the Skyrim Creation kit is now live and so is the Steam Workshop – so you can finally begin creating your mods and sharing them with the community. If you’re struggling to come to terms by the CK’s vastness you should check out this YouTube playlist and bookmark it, here you can watch videos created by Bethesda Softworks which introduce you to the kit and teach you the basics, needless to say more videos will be added to the playlist as time goes on. (We have embedded episodes 1,2 and 3 at the bottom of this page).

Finally we can tell you that the high-resolution texture pack is available for download for free, the DLC is pretty self-explanatory and should make Skyrim look even more beautiful than it already does – you can download it here.

Now that you have the Skyrim Creation kit, Steam Workshop and high-resolution texture pack please test it all out and come back to tell us whether or not you’re impressed. Does Skyrim look much better with the improved textures? Is the Steam Workshop as seamless as promised? Is the creation kit complicated to use? These are the questions we want answered!

More About: Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Skyrim Creation Kit, steam

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The testing of the app via the beta period must have gone well as it is now available to everyone to download as they please. According to a report on SlashGear the app may have mobile based games in the future, but for the time being is the perfect companion for the browser based interface for both PC and Mac computers.

Users will be able to purchase items for future playing via the application, and the integration with the community is a big appeal for the Steam fans. For Android users they can get the app now for free from the Android Market, and users will be able to sign into their regular Steam account. Then you will be able to explore the Steam community as well as checking out gaming information while on the move.

For those using the iOS platform can also get the app as a free download from the App Store for devices with iOS 4.0 or later. Your Steam name and login will be needed to get into the community, and for more information hit the Steam Support page. Are you surprised the app has received its general release so quick?

More About: Android, iOS, steam

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It has been a long time coming and one of the biggest requests from the Steam community. Gabe Newell and his team have listened though and if you head to the App Store now or Android Market, you’ll see that the Steam Mobile app is now available to download, free of charge.

According to Valve, the application will allow users to sign into their accounts on the go and send instant messages to other users on their friends list. You can also browse through the vast collection of games in Steam’s library, whether that is checking out some screenshots for a game that you’re interested in, or finding out which games are currently on sale.

Unfortunately though, it appears the app isn’t ready yet for full public use, either that or Valve just doesn’t want everyone joining at the same time. Once you’ve downloaded the app and input your Steam account details, you will probably be greeted with the ‘account not in beta’ message. At the moment, there doesn’t appear to be a solution to this, although Valve mention the following on the app:

”Thank you for your interest in the Steam mobile beta. We’ve made a note of your account and will be sending out more invites shortly”

Hopefully that means that emails will start appearing with some sort of activation process, which will allow users to log in as normal and start using the app. If by chance that you already have complete access to the app, let us know your thoughts on it so far. Does the Steam app suit your requirements or is there some areas of the PC app that have been left out?

More About: steam, Valve

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Kotaku reports that early last week some gamers began to receive emails from a hacking website after the service forum had been defaced. Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder addressed the company forum on Thursday with a message confirming the breach. Later warnings were issued saying ‘the attack goes beyond the Steam forums.’ As a precaution all forum passwords were reset. They later recommended other passwords be reset as there was evidence to suggest a deeper intrusion, despite the forums being the only section thought to be affected initially.

Further reports suggested the company was still investigating and it has now been confirmed that the hack does in fact go beyond the forums. This was confirmed after they found evidence that a Steam database containing encrypted credit card information, billing addresses; email addresses, purchases, passwords and user names had been accessed.

This hack comes at a bad time for Valve as the company is beginning to launch some of the biggest games of the year so far, but for companies like EA and OnLive, who also have cloud gaming services, this couldn’t have happened at a more convenient time. They will be looking to take advantage of the unfortunate Steam situation and may benefit with deflectors, which would boost their success as they are just trying to get a foothold on the market at the moment. Users are more likely to join a service where security of their details can be assured.

Are you a member of Steam? Will you be looking to join a different service after this breach?

More About: steam, Valve

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To clarify, this will not let PC players play the game early, but it will just let them play the game the exact moment that Bethesda makes the game available on PC. On Valve’s part, letting players pre-load the game in advance will ease the pressure on their download servers significantly, as you can imagine that as soon as 11.11.11 hits, the majority of ‘unaware’ Steam owners will be buying and downloading Skyrim at the same time and the download speeds are likely to be hit, causing frustration all round.

So that’s why pre-loading is great, and we’re guessing that most of you are already in progress of this at the moment. What download times has Steam given you to pre-load Skyrim, we bet the excitement is killing you in anticipation for the game?

For those of you that have pre-ordered the game but had no idea pre-loading is now live, head to the Steam page here to begin. On a side note, we’ve noticed that a lot of you are very surprised about the rather small 6GB install for Skyrim, as many of you obviously expected sizes reaching the heights of 15-20GB for the game, given the scope of previous games for example.

We’re not complaining though, it just means that you can get Skyrim installed quickly on your system – that’s not a bad thing is it folks! As for the exact time when the game goes live on PC, we’re guessing that it could be 12.01am on 11.11.11, although there’s some speculation that it could be going live at 11.11am in your respective region – which would be interesting.

Have you pre-loaded Skyrim already? What time do you expect the PC version to go live?

More About: Bethesda, steam, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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There are two vital pieces of evidence that suggest that Battlefield 3 is coming to Steam and one of them appears to be more concrete than the other. If you head to this competition page being held by Sapphire, you’ll see that they are giving away one free copy of the game, but requires the user to redeem his or her code on Steam. Check out a portion of their terms below, as reported from VG247.

”One (1) PC Game code for Battlefield 3, redeemable for the game on Steam (www.steampowered.com) with a Suggested Retail Price of $USD 59.99”

Futhermore, a user has left a message on the official Steam forums revealing that there are a couple of Steam related files that are already located on the PC version of the game. If you want to check out these files for yourself, head to your installation directory for Punkbuster and you should see them.

If the news turns out to be true, then it means that EA has made a mighty u-turn on their opinions of Steam after initially saying that they wouldn’t be offering the game on Valve’s marketplace. Could it be that gamers are not taking too kindly to buying the game from EA’s own Origin store perhaps?

It’s great news for PC users regardless as it gives users a much easier way of picking up the game as Steam is easily the most used digital distribution store in terms of PC game sales. EA are probably well aware of this, so don’t be surprised to see an official announcement this week.

Would you pick up Battlefield 3 on Steam, should it become available or do you not care about where you get your games from?

More About: Battlefield 3, EA, steam, Valve

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The last time we spoke about this game was back in March when we suggest that a later summer release was scheduled, however the lead designer at Firefly Studios, Simon Bradbury, has now confirmed that the game will arrive on 25th October – as we have seen previously this game is only available for PC.

Bradbury thanked gamers for their patience and promoted the game by saying that it boasts the best bits from previous titles, whilst adding some all-new features such as night time sieges. Also the graphics should be much better than before thanks to a “cutting edge graphics engine”. Check out EuroGamer for some additional details.

The game will be available via Steam and other digital download services, also a boxed version of the game will be available in stores, if you pre-order the game from Steam you get the first Stronghold for free – this is not much of an incentive in our opinion, but here’s the Steam link anyway, below we have added the game’s minimum system requirements:

OS: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista® (with Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7
Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon™ 64 3000+ or higher
Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2 GB for Vista and Win7
Graphics: 128 MB DirectX® 9.0c-compatible video card (ATI® Radeon X1000/GeForce® 6 Series or better)
DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
Hard Drive: 2 GB space free
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card

Will you buy Stronghold 3?

More About: Firefly Studios, steam, Stronghold, Stronghold 3

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Currently no specific date has been set, but we can confirm that the CS: GO beta for PC will kick off sometime during October, sadly there is no sign of a beta for PS3 or Xbox 360 just yet – but we do know that people who want to play the PC beta will need to install Steam and have a beta key.

Below you can see a couple of cards which Valve staff handed to us during the expo, each has a Counter Strike: Global Offensive beta key printed on the rear – we have been promised more and we will soon be handing out beta keys to some of our lucky readers.

On the rear of the card it clearly states that to redeem your beta access you must download Steam from here (if you don’t already have it installed) and then install it on your PC, once installed create or log in with a Steam account and once in check out the Games menu – here you should be able to select “Activate a Product on Steam”, this is where you enter your beta key, it’s that simple!

One thing which hasn’t been confirmed just yet is the exact date that the beta will start, all we know is that it will start something in October – with Battlefield 3′s beta kicking off in late September it will be interesting to see how popular the CS: GO beta is – we got some hands on time with the PS3 version of the game and despite witnessing a few minor bugs we were more impressed than we thought we would be – in fact it exceeded our highest expectations, especially after posting this video back in late August – yes visually it is no BF3 or MW3, but in terms of gameplay it was great fun.

Stay tuned if you want to find out more about our hands on time with Counter Strike: Global Offensive, or if you want to get your hands on a Counter Strike: Global Offensive beta key for PC. It may be worth Following Product-Reviews on Twitter, Liking Product-Reviews on Facebook or adding me to a Circle on Google+ – as soon as we get the codes we will announce the giveaway!

More About: counter-strike, counter-strike global offensive, steam, Valve

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