Team Fortress 2: Robotic Boogaloo is a new update hitting the popular free-to-play shooter with content that was made entirely by fans for fans.

Here’s the official word from Valve:

This update is 100% created by the TF2 community. And when we say everything, we mean everything—the in-game content, the update hub website, the animated short, the comic, even the splash images in the Steam store. Even better, everything you created avoided the classic trap of using other companies’ intellectual property. (Those of you working on a Darth Vader Pyro mask, we’ve got some bad news for you.) Plus, in a first for the Team Fortress economy, all the creators of the Robotic Boogaloo Update have decided to share the revenue earned from the sale of RoboCrate Keys. That means that everyone involved will be profiting from this update, not just the people making hats.

Those concerned about Valve stepping back from Team Fortress 2 development need not worry. Valve says that its own content will co-exist with fan-developed content from here on out.

Steam Early Access gives players a chance to play PC games before they’re officially released so players can give critical feedback to developers during the development of the title. Here’s how it’s going to work:

The goal of Early Access is to provide gamers with the chance to “go behind the scenes” and experience the development cycle firsthand and, more importantly, have a chance to interact with the developers by providing them feedback while the title is still being created.

To support the interaction between Early Access players and developers, Steam offers easy and automatic updating of games, letting developers iterate quickly to respond directly to bug reports and feedback from customers. And, like all Steam games, Early Access players will be able to interact with other players, making it easy to create and share screenshots, tips, and in-depth guides.

In essence, Early Access will have players buying into an alpha or beta build of a game to gain early access while helping the developers find bugs and work out balance issues before the game officially launches. This was a model employed most famously by Mojang for Minecraft as the game was available for purchase during its alpha phase, and players helped shape the game into what it is today.

To kick off Early Access, Steam will be making a number of games available as part of the new program starting today:

The one thing these games all have in common is that they come from small indie studios. It will be interesting to see if any major studios take advantage of the program as it could provide them with a form of QA testing where participants pay to beta test products. That being said, the democratization of game development is a slippery slope, and some games are better off sticking to their original vision.

Either way, Steam Early Access is another interesting experiment from Valve and it will be fascinating to watch what happens to the games that take part in the program.

[h/t: Kotaku]

Capcom announced today that Resident Evil 6 players will be able to play as Coach, Ellis, Rochelle and Nick in the exclusive mode. To up the ante even more, Capcom is also bringing two enemies from Left 4 Dead 2 to this mode – the Witch and the Mini-Tank.

As part of the working relationship between Capcom and Valve, the former will be bringing enemies from Resident Evil 6 to Left 4 Dead 2. Capcom is also calling on fans to put the human cast of Resident Evil 6 into Left 4 Dead 2.

The new characters are a nice love letter to the PC fans of both Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead. The new “No Mercy” mode sounds incredibly fun as well. The only disappointment is that the PC version still won’t fix Resident Evil 6′s boring, and lackluster, singleplayer campaign.

Valve announced today that Steam for Linux is officially out of beta. It’s available as a free download from the Ubuntu Software Center. Steam coming to Linux, as well as the efforts of many indie developers, may finally make Linux a viable gaming platform. That’s what the folks at Canonical think at least:

“The introduction of Steam to Ubuntu demonstrates growing demand for open systems from gamers and game developers,” said David Pitkin, Director of Consumer Applications at Canonical. “We expect a growing number of game developers to include Ubuntu among their target platforms. We’re looking forward to seeing AAA games developed with Ubuntu in mind as part of a multi-platform day and date release on Steam.”

All games purchased through Steam for Linux will also be playable on Windows and Mac through Steam Play. That’s great for those who already own hundreds of games on Steam for Windows, but perhaps want to start experimenting in Linux.

For long time Linux users new to Steam, Valve has a treat for you guys as well. Team Fortress 2, Valve’s hugely popular team-based shooter, is available day one in all its free-to-play glory. For a limited time, Team Fortress 2 players on Linux will also receive a free exclusive in-game Tux item. Other Valve titles available today include Half-Life, Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source.

To celebrate the launch of Steam for Linux, all the currently available Linux titles on Steam are on sale until February 21. There’s over 50 titles to choose from, and a lot of them are pretty fantastic. You can check out the full list of games on sale here.

Before you ask, PC and Mac gamers can get in on the sale too.

Gamers, and Valve fans in particular, can now rejoice as the talk has been posted online in its entirety. Learn how two of the most famous men in their respective fields compare storytelling in film and gaming. You’ll also get to see the announcement that shook the world – Valve collaborating with Abrams on Half-Life and Portal films:

Unfortunately, the video of his talk with Abrams has not been uploaded just yet. From reports out of the show, it sounds like it was pretty entertaining. As a bonus, the two announced their plans to work together on Portal and Half-Life films.

Today, Newell delivered the opening keynote on the future of Valve and the industry as a whole. Fortunately, that has been uploaded, and you can watch it all below. There’s some fascinating insights into how Newell views PC gaming as the next big thing, and what Valve is doing to capitalize on it.

For a company as secretive as Valve, it’s been nice to see Newell speaking so frankly at so many events over the past few months. That being said, I don’t think we’re going to start seeing Half-Life 3 details sprouting up anytime soon. Still, it’s nice to hear industry insight from one of the most ambitious and innovate men in the business.

Phoronix, the site that broke the news of Steam coming to Linux, has heard from an anonymous source that Microsoft is taking a “meaningful look” at bringing Office to Linux in 2014. This recent change of heart is apparently due to Microsoft finding that Linux may just a profitable platform now.

The past few months have been good to the Linux community as more developers start to see the platform as a viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS X. We’ve already mentioned Valve making a native Linux version of Steam available, but other companies like Nvidia have also been working to bring better software drivers to Linux.

Microsoft may see Linux as being even more financially viable as Valve plans to launch its Steambox later this year. The mini-computers will run Ubuntu thus increasing the marketshare for Linux even more. The upcoming Ubuntu smartphones and Ubuntu for Android may also serve to get Linux into the hands of even more people.

Truth be told, Linux doesn’t necessarily need Microsoft Office as there are already some great open source alternatives. It’s more about the principle than anything else as it means Linux is finally starting to get some recognition. Games are one thing, but getting official support from Microsoft would hopefully make Linux far more mainstream than it already is.

Valve recently released the data it collected in January on its users’ hardware and software setups. The operating system chart is by far the most interesting because it shows that all versions of Windows except for Windows 8 is declining in usage. Granted, there are no huge declines or huge gains here, but it shows that Windows 8 use is growing among PC gamers.

Going into the numbers, both Windows 8 and Windows 8 64-bit saw a collective increase of 1.83 percent with the majority of the increase going to the 64-bit version. All in all, Windows 8 is now 8.76 percent of all Steam users’ PCs. Windows 7 is still in the the lead, however, as both 32 and 64-bit versions make up 69.73 percent of the Steam user base.

It’s important to note that Steam users don’t represent all PC users. They do, however, represent a large chunk of the active PC gamer community. The increased adoption of Windows 8 shows that PC gamers, whom were largely skeptical of the OS, are starting to switch over to it from Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Now, Microsoft definitely needs to appeal to more than just PC gamers, but this is a great start. The company can use these gamers and enthusiasts as makeshift evangelists to spread the word of Windows 8 to more casual users who may be wary of the operating system. It’s a far more effective marketing campaign than confusing piñata ads.

[h/t: The Next Web]

Newell was recently invited by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs to speak on the future of business. The talk is officially titled “Reflections of a Video Game Maker,” and it covers “productivity, economics, political institutions and the future of corporations. If you find yourself with a snow day today, the hour long talk may just be what you need to pass the time. Who knows? You might even learn something.

Sega announced today that the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformer has a few nice bonuses for those who were waiting for this specific release. Valve has partnered with Sega to include characters from Team Fortress 2 in the racer. Not every character were invited to the races, however, as it’s just the Heavy, Pyro and Spy who pilot different transformations of the same vehicle.

Alongside the characters from Team Fortress 2, the PC version of the title will include two other characters from Sega’s critically acclaimed PC franchises. The first is the Tactician from the publisher’s extremely popular Football Manager series. The second is the Shogun from Creative Assembly’s Total War series.

PC players have had to wait almost two months to get Sega’s latest kart racer since its original release, but these new characters make the wait worth it. If that isn’t good enough, however, the PC version of the game will only cost $29.99 when it launches on January 31.