Dota 2 has officially made the jump to Valve’s Source 2 engine and has been released as Dota 2 Reborn. In beta since June 2015, Valve announced on Twitter that it was “rolling out the Reborn update over the next couple of hours” and matchmaking is only possible with the new update.

Along with an engine change, Dota 2 Reborn includes a revamped interface and Custom Games. It also boasts some new features like being able demo your hero’s abilities; the ability to personalize and preview cosmetic items before deciding if you want to pay for them (and this can also be done in matches); an expansion of Dota TV; a Watch section to check out various matches; and new Guided Bot matches for those who their friends to get into the game.

What are your thoughts on the changes with Dota 2 Reborn? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information as the update picks up Steam.

Valve debuted its revolutionary new VR headset and technology at GDC this year, and to do so, it also showed off some great tech demos. The one that instantly caught our eye, and instantly got the internet buzzing, was this one that you can see above- you see, it is a new tech demo showing off the Aperture Science facilities. Yep, Aperture Science. As in from Portal.

It looks pretty neat too (though of course it needs to be seen in VR for maximum impact), though Valve was quick to shoot down any rumors and speculation that this might be a tease for a Portal 3. Apparently, this is a tech demo, and nothing else. So don’t go on getting your hopes up too high, because Portal 3 is not happening.

Which makes sense too- after all, Valve cannot count to three, remember? Stay tuned to GamingBolt and we will keep you posted on more of the latest and greatest.

Valve Software’s free to play juggernaut DoTA 2 received a new update yesterday and according to a modder on Reddit, it apparently uses the heavily talked about Source 2 Engine.

The modder stated that “Everything in this package is a new game. It’s all the Dota assets and code ported over to Source 2. Guys. Valve just soft launched the entire Source 2 engine.”

“Everything that would share a name with Source is named ‘…2′. That’s ‘engine2.dll’, ‘vconsole2.exe’, ‘vphysics2.dll’. When you go to open a map in Hammer, it asks for .vmap files. One of the other options is ‘.vmf (Source 1.0)’ files.”

This coincides with the release of new workshop tools for DoTA 2 to allow developers to create their custom games. Interestingly, the new workshop tools support Windows 64-bit editions and Direct3D 11 compatible GPUs. As for Source 2, it was heavily rumoured that Half Life 3 would be the first game to usher in the new engine. With the recent soft-launch, it’ll certainly be interesting to see what comes out of Valve next. Stay tuned for more information.

There are multitudes of theories as to why Half Life 3 hasn’t been released yet. Of course, the main reason is that Valve has no clue where to take the franchise and as such, only has Half Life 3 in bits and pieces at this stage.

However, there’s another theory that’s been doing the rounds. It could be that in its current state, Valve doesn’t believe that current technology will bring the vision of Half Life 3 to life. It could be that Source 2 – or whatever the new engine ends up being called – is being tinkered with in order to full realize Half Life 3.

Of course, it could also be possible that Valve is just too busy with Steam, Steam Machines, SteamOS and so on to care about Half Life 3. But we’ll keep talking about it if it makes you feel better. What are your thoughts on the long development period for Half Life 3? Let us know in the comments below.

Several months ago, Source 2 references were spotted inside the Source Filmmaker code. Now, it’s the turn of Half Life 3 to appear with new scripting fragments added as of January 2014.

You can think of them as placeholder text more than anything else and point to file locations that just might exist in Valve’s render farms. While it’s not the best possible explanation that Half Life 3 is in development, and it does nothing on its own, it at least points to a possible connection between Source Filmmaker and Half Life 3 in some way.

As of now, Half Life 3 remains elusive, as Valve has pointed out time and again that it’s only in bits and pieces right now, and no where near a final playable state. We’ll have to wait and watch yet again – nonetheless, the truth is out there.

Check out the code fragments below. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below and stay tuned for more news and updates regarding Half Life 3.

(Source)

A screenshot was leaked showing off some of Valve’s own upcoming Source 2 engine. The shots were from Left 4 Dead 2, but are being rendered in the Source 2 engine, meaning they look infinitely better than the do in the actual Left 4 Dead 2 game.

But the implications of this are not that Left 4 Dead 2 is getting an update to the source 2 engine—no, what it really implies is that this is our first glimpse of what we can expect to see from Left 4 Dead 3. It’s possible that some levels will make a return, but the gameplay and enemy mechanics are sure to be completely overhauled and updated.

There’s still no word on the official release for Left 4 Dead 3, and no reason to believe that we’ll be seeing one soon. But as these screenshots are a leak and not an official release, it stands to reason that Valve will soon come out with an official statement regarding what exactly we are seeing and what we can hope to see in the near future.

Via: Neogaf

Half Life 3 is like the treasure at the end of the rainbow. Except, there is no treasure, the rainbow faintly resembles a mushroom cloud and the one leprechaun that will guide you there is from those movies (i.e. not very nice). That being said, we know of its existence and one way or another, it will revolutionize the single player first person shooter genre.

However, since Half Life games are known for their other contributions – the first game bringing us some of the greatest mods of all time with Counterstrike and Team Fortess, both which received their own full releases and the second game introducing the Source Engine which has been used to create a new wave of Machinima – what will Half Life 3 do to revolutionize the genre outside of the single player campaign?

If it releases, it will be on Source 2 making it ideal for Machinima. Mod support remains to be seen, but how can it contribute in ways we’ve never seen? Maybe an innovation on Cloud computing or large multiplayer caps we haven’t thought of yet? It will certainly be interesting to see when – and if – it ever releases.

Don’t believe us? Check out the images for yourself below.

While Left 4 Dead 3 hasn’t exactly been reaching Half Life 3 levels of hype and “where is this f**king game?” complaints, there’s still been a fair amount of confusion regarding the third game’s release. Especially since the second one released, oh, a year after the first game.

Source 2 has been more obvious, since files and hints have been popping up all over the Internet for the past year or so confirming its existence. Will Left 4 Dead 3 be the game that introduces the engine? Will Valve be making announcement soon? Is the lack of Half Life 3 in the change log a sign that it really isn’t in development?

Stay tuned for more details

Which makes it even more suspicious.

Nonetheless, there are similarities to the structure and file paths for Valve’s own Left 4 Dead site. It could be that this was created with that in mind, just to mess with people. Wouldn’t it be nice if that wasn’t the case and the tag for “Source 2” at the bottom meant we’d be seeing the engine debuting with the game.

We’ll wait and see what this actually is – and if Valve doesn’t take it down immediately, well, that has to be a sign right? Stay tuned for more.

So really, to say that it doesn’t matter right now is a bit of an overstatement. Look at the shooters that developers have been churning out this year. Does any single one of them, except Far Cry 3, approach the brilliance that Half-Life 2 delivered?

Concept art that has been doing the rounds for a while now shows the Borealis, embedded in an icy canyon, with Combine Advisers floating hither tither (there are plenty of nods to the ship within the most recent Valve game, Portal 2, as well).

Everyone mimics Call of Duty, even non-FPS developers, hoping to cash in on a modicum of success. Innovation is dying a slow death. Wouldn’t a game like Half-Life 3 be most necessary, to reignite the industry and pave the way for a new age of brilliance?

Well, that’s just it. For all our needs and wants, Half-Life 3 isn’t the future. It’s certainly what we want, in this instant, but as soon as it’s over, we’ll just be pining for the next one. It might not seem at all possible but we are gamers after all. We don’t devour games so much as meticulously pick them apart, byte by byte, again and again, until it makes us past the point of crazy. After which we go back and do it all again. After completing Half-Life 3, the hype will be on for Half-Life 4. And then 5. And then 6. And so on until Valve decides to just monetize the sumbitch and release a yearly sequel.

It’s the long run that deserves a closer look.

Steam Greenlight.

News has been circulating for a while now about Valve’s “Steam Box”, the latest indicating that it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Couple this with the current Big Picture, which is bringing PC gaming to living rooms in a way that makes Xbox Live and PSN look perfectly antiquated by comparison, and Steam Greenlight, which is serving as an excellent medium for independent developers to have their games featured and distributed via Steam in ways that make Microsoft’s current policies look downright muggish by comparison. Let’s not forget the Source 2 engine which is reportedly in development.

Valve is quickly becoming more than just a developer who survives from paycheck to paycheck, living in fear of a bigger publisher that only cares about the bottom line. Compare companies like EA pressure the founders of Bioware so strongly due to negative fan response, which in itself was utterly asinine, that they retire – to Valve’s Gabe Newell, who’s famously pissed off the entire PS3 fan base time and time again before trolling everyone and announcing Portal 2 for the console.

Image courtesy: Deviantart.

They know they’re in a position to deliver big on innovation. Heck, they love it. So while we may complain about when Half-Life 3 will be announced and subsequently when it will be released, ask yourself this: What if Half-Life 3 is only part of the plan? What if it’s just another cog in the machine, along with Big Picture, for its Steam Box? Conspiracy-talk, sure, but Valve has proven time and time again that it’s more than capable of living up to the hype.

Which brings us back to the matter of time. It’s a joke that Valve has its own perception of time, and it could be a while before we even get a sliver of official information on Half-Life 3. So the issue isn’t whether Half-Life 3 exists or doesn’t, or when it’s releasing because those are questions bestowed on typical sequels. The real questions are “How?” and “Why?”. And you can bet that Valve will go all-out with the answers.

(Cover Image from Deviantart).