The concept that video games are harmful is a topic that has long been debated on by members of the medical community. The country of Brazil seems to have taken an active stand towards this issue announcing a nationwide ban on the Online FPS Counter-Strike and MMORPG EverQuest.

More information in the full article.

In an email to Valve, gamer Thomas was able to confirm that a bunch of Valve games (including three games in the Orange Box) will be getting additional achievements, namely: Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source.

Read Valve's email in the full article.

 

In the three months that flew by, Xfire jumped from a mere 6.5 million registered user base to a whopping 7+ million, all over the world. Since the free online service, thanks to Xfire's in-game IM widget, caters to over 800 PC games (which includes MMOs) worldwide, it should be interesting to find out what Xfire's Xstatics numbers pull out for the month of April and May.

According to Mike Cassidy, CEO of Xfire, the current user base now provides 14,300 man-years on gameplay and activity within the community. And that's just for the month of March alone. There's a wealth of information that marketers and game developers could tap into, because instead of focusing on single region or market alone, Xfire actually monitors what gamers play everyday, wherever they are.

According to the official press release, Xfire is also currently hosting an invitational Counter-Strike: Source tournament for North America. The competition, called "The Ridiculously Long Lasting Stride Xfire Cup 2007," is sponsored by Stride Gum and offers US$ 24,000 in prizes for the participating North American teams.

Recently, a Chinese student in Clements High School was expelled for having played Counter-Strike in a level that had hallways reminiscent of his own school's hallways. Following the parents' appeal for reconsideration, the Ford Bend Independent School District had postponed the meeting because four of the school board's members refused to show up.

The appeal was the fourth part of a long appeal process, ultimately ending up with a meeting with the Board of Trustees.

Defending their stand, the FBISD trustees who stayed away said that the meeting itself "circumvented" the disciplinary process. Board member Stan Magee stated that the meeting could have expedited the resolution of the case. Unfortunately, third-party onlookers have began to say that the board's rash decision was an overreaction to the Virginia Tech incident.

Coupled with the video game-related banter coming from anti-video game media icons, even Magee admits that their resolution was an effect of fear, stating, "I think we overreacted as a result of the Virginia Tech ordeal." Although the Chinese community rallied behind the 17 year old boy, there are many sentiments that have risen against the act despite people applauding the quick response of the board.

FBISD spokeswoman Mary Ann Simpson stated, "This goes back to Columbine. Ever since that horrid incident took place schools today have to take every incident that is reported very seriously." She iterates that these things had to be taken seriously, and that students needed to know that such things aren't taken lightly anymore.

Only Magee, Simpson and Ken Bryant appeared in the meeting on Monday at the districts headquarters. The other four members, namely Steve Smelley, Sonal Bhuchar, Cynthia Knox and Laurie Caldwell, did not arrive for the 5:30 p.m. meeting, which became cause for the meeting to be cancelled.

Ultimately, the 12th grader has been barred from graduating from the school and has been transferred to  M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center. What do you think? Feel free to discuss, but keep it clean people. We might just give out two-cents worth on this, too.

Eidos Interactive and Valve Software are poised to slap those who claimed "the PC is dead" back to the age of the Commodore 64. With their agreement of a team-up for the online distribution of Eidos titles, the PC games industry just started to give the next-gen consoles a run for their money, using means to avert piracy.

Eidos Interactive, the UK-based world-class publisher for titles such as Tomb Raider, Commandos and Championship Manager, will now be distributing its new line of games and their bestsellers over Steam's online digital distribution network, including Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Championship Manager 2007. Other titles to be distributed include Hitman titles, Battlestations: Midway, Just Cause and the entire Commando series.

Gabe Newell, Valve Software's co-founder and president, was happy to extend their services to a major PC games publisher, toward an online community that is overly loyal to the PC platform. Steam is the premier distribution network for Valve Software, where they have been distributing games such as Rag Doll Kung Fu and Counter-Strike: Source. Tom Marx, development manager at Eidos, replied:

Eidos is delighted to add Steam to our extensive digital distribution network. Steam represents an opportunity to distribute our games electronically to millions of gamers around the world. It also provides us a direct connection to these extremely active PC influencers who frequent Steam as a source for new content and information. As a result of being a spotlight feature on Steam this year, we expect to see sales of Tomb Raider: Anniversary benefit across all channels.

Fans of the classic multiplayer shooters Half-life and its famous mod Counter-Strike are up and ready for another download to enhance your fragging experience.

The updates are easy to apply: simply restart your Steam client and you're all set. Changes in Half-life include allowing screen resolutions up to 2560x1600 and the bug player names with really wide characters getting ellipses and being indistinguishable from one another scoreboard has been fixed. For Counter-Strike, on-screen advertisements have been added.

The updates will not affect the gameplay and the action remains as fast and furious as ever. Fans may want to take advantage of the resolution tweak to suit their visual tastes.

 

While they don't necessarily do anything to hamper gameplay, some folks will definitely find themselves getting annoyed by the recent news of in-game ads leaving beta. CS Nation reports that the ads for Counter-Strike v1.6 are out of their trial phase and apparently in front of gamers' faces.

Zips, CS Nation's reporter, notes them only in the de_dust2 and Aztec maps, but it's possible that they may have popped up in other maps. Whether or not they'll represent a new wave of gaming in Counter-Strike has yet to be seen, but it does make it easier for certain skins to hide in front of an ad, if they can pull it off.

They're currently placeholder ads that show off stuff for Valve Corporation's Half-Life 2, but they do happen to be prominently placed on the maps themselves. It's expected that the maps will have real ads soon enough for a variety of products, but for now, they're a constant reminder of what's to come.

 

Well, it looks like there's no turning back now.

As it turns out, Valve is starting to test out the use of in-game ads for their titles, and the first guinea pig for this experiment is none other than Counterstrike 1.6 (screenies above, both courtesy of SK Gaming). Despite the flurry of protests that the mere mention of in-game advertising tends to generate, many game companies may soon be following Valve's lead.

While some fans argue that the sight of a real-world item being advertised inside a game tends to be detrimental to the whole experience, devs have noted that this form of advertising is actually beneficial for everyone in the long run.

After all, it generates revenue for game-makers.

Revenue equals more (and better) games.

More games equals happy gamers.

On top of that, there have been promises that the ads will remain discreet and out of the player's way.

At the moment, Valve is displaying advertisements for Portal and the upcoming Orange and Black boxes, all of which are their own products.

There have been earlier reports that Google ads may also end up invading the gaming world, and this has caused many to fear the possibility of having to encounter an in-game advertisement for Starbucks in a war-torn, World War II setting. After all, can you imagine running into an ad for McDonald's as you're crawling the trenches in games like Call of Duty or Brothers In Arms? Or perhaps one for Pedigree puppy food during an Unreal Tournament deathmatch?

On the other hand, there are also those who are willing to reach a compromise between revenue generation for the game companies and immersive gaming experience for the gamers. One point of this compromise involve the conditions which specify that ads that appear in games must be carefully chosen to match the theme and setting of the game itself.

Read the rest of the article after the Jump!

Because we lack the intellect to really explain all of this, we'll begin with just one word: "heeheehee... pretty." At least, that's what we'd use to sum up our feelings towards this new Black Mesa teaser that's on YouTube.

For those who haven't heard of it, Black Mesa is a Half-Life 2 mod that attempts to recreate the original Half-Life game using the stuff you'll find from Valve's HL2 and the Counter-Strike: Source game. This teaser only carries visuals however, so if you're looking for gameplay and a re-envisioning of the G-Man, you're definitely out of luck.

The good thing is, at least there's a video for the mod now. You'll need a full copy of HL2 and CS: Source to play this when it comes out though. You might as well grab one of their spiffy boxed sets for Episode 2 while you're at it.

For all those people who were hoping to try out their new pistols in Counter-Strike Source or download some new games or programs, we have bad news for you. It seems that Steam is currently down for the count, and will remain down for an indefinite period of time.

Kotaku got word of strong wind and rains knocking out the power in some areas in the Pacific Northwest, and Steam happened to be affected by this. For the most part, this is because Valve's headquarters are located in the Bellevue/Seattle area.

Blinxx, a volunteer moderator for Steam, put up notice of the Steam server's current predicament, saying:

There is currently a wide spread power outage in Bellevue/Seattle impacting Steam Server availability. Unfortunately ETA for when the power will be restored is unknown as the power company will only work on restoring it once the storm has eased and the high winds have died down.

Any issues you are experiencing with connecting to Steam are only temporary, as this isn't an end-user issue.

For now, you guys are going to have a bit of patience until power gets restored. Let's just hope no one got hurt from all the bad weather over there.