A protest against Valve for its lack of information on Valve's "lack of information" regarding Half-Life 2: Episode 3 seems to have missed its mark slightly. The protest - which had the support of 30,00 players who pledged that they would play Half-Life 2 on Steam over the weekend - saw only half of those players playing over the weekend. They increased the usual amount of players playing Half-Life 2 by about 10,000.

Valve has started the closed beta testing phase of a new Steam App for both Android and iOS devices. While the device won't let you do too much beyond being social with your Steam friends and mucking about with your account, it's a first step into the world of mobile devices for Valve's popular PC games distribution platform.

Valve says that Steam has enjoyed 100 percent growth in 2011, marking the seventh consecutive year the digital retail and distribution platform has doubled its sales. In 2011 Steam’s catalogue of titles grew to 1,8000 titles and its user base grew to over 40 million. The company also claimed that 780 Petabytes of data was purchased by customers.

Over 14.5 million Steamworks-enabled games were registered in 2011, a 67 percent increase over 2010. Steamworks is included in over 400 individual titles.

A quick note to anyone buying the Humble Indie Bundle 4: if you want Steam keys you'll have to pay at least $1 USD for the bundle. According to the official blog for the promotion, some "un-humble" buyers are paying one cent for the bundle and using/reselling the Steam Keys to game the Steam Holiday promotion currently underway. More from the blog:

Valve managing director Gabe Newell said in a recent interview that piracy is a "non-issue" for the company's Steam digital distribution platform. In an interview with the Cambridge Student, Newell said that there is a fundamental misconception that piracy is motivated by high prices. Newell repeated what he has been saying a lot this year: Valve sees the piracy problem as a service problem.

After a day or two of speculation, Valve has officially confirmed to the public that the Steam database suffered a security breach earlier this week. Valve Software co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell issued a statement to members letting them know what happened and if there might some concerns about the security of their Steam accounts. The take-away for Steam account holders is that passwords were "hashed and salted" and credit card information was encrypted. Still Newell cautions Steam users to pay attention to their account activity. The full statement is below:

The Steam forums are offline, with a message to visitors declaring that they are undergoing maintenance, but some users are telling Eurogamer that the forums may have suffered a security breach. Currently the forums are displaying the following message:

"The Steam Forums are temporarily offline for maintenance," a message on Steampowered reads. "Your patience is appreciated."

In an interview with Develop Epic Games President Michael Capps says that console makers need to loosen the stranglehold they have on developers when it comes to pricing. Capps says they need to do this because game revenues have shifted to service and micro-transaction model. Currently developers can't decide what the price of their games on consoles should be because those prices are already set by the console makers.

Valve front man Gabe Newell says that there is a way to beat piracy, and it involves content creators and publishers providing better service. In other words, obtrusive DRM solutions are not the answer to the problem.

"One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue," said Newell at a tech conference in Seattle. "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."

Steam is doing all that it can to tap into the lucrative Russian game market - including making it easier for customers to put rubles in their Steam wallets.

Speaking to GameIndustry.biz, Jens Uwe Intat, the head of Electronic Arts Europe, said that his company continues to have a good working relationship with Valve Software, despite launching its own rival digital distribution services earlier this year. He is referring to the companies' continuing their retail relationship, and not necessarily the rivalry between its Origin digital distribution service and Valve's Steam.

While some within the Ubisoft studio structure may think that DRM is a grand idea, Ubisoft seems to have relented once again - this time patching out the protection on From Dust. The company apologized for the "always-on" DRM being in the game last month because when they announced the Pc version the company said it would have an "activate once" style of protection. Obviously that didn't happen and fans were ticked off about it. The company said when it apologized that the DRM being put in the game was simply a "misunderstanding."

While some publishers think that obtrusive DRM is the right way to go in protecting their PC game titles, Valve Software founder Gabe Newell sees the whole practice as wrong-headed and misguided. Speaking to Kotaku for its "Well Played" column, Newell said that Valve is a broken record on the topic:

Speaking to Eurogamer recently, EA Europe's top executive said that seeing future games on Valve's platform, despite recent disputes, is still a possibility.

"Never say never," said Jens Uwe Intat when asked by Eurogamer if EA could fully embrace Valve’s Steam platform again. "When we were talking about it's best for the consumer that competition is a good thing, for the consumer also choice is a good thing."

When it comes to Portal 2, it seems that most gamers prefer the game on PC and via Steam, according to Valve Software. That's according to Valve's Gabe Newell, who talked at length with Gamasura in a recent interview on a variety of topics. On the other end of the spectrum (and somewhat surprising), PC gamers didn't enjoy Left 4 Dead as much as console users did - at least when using sales as a metric for popularity.

Mojang front man Markus Persson has revealed that Minecraft is not and probably will not ever be sold through Valve's Steam service because of its "restrictive terms of service." In a post on his blog, Persson said that while Steam is "the best digital distribution platform I've ever seen," Valve's control of the platform (which he doesn't have a problem with) limits the freedom Minecraft requires.

Valve Software announced today that Activision's next Call of Duty game will use Steamworks. On a related note, over the weekend at PAX in Seattle, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford revealed that the PC version of its role-playing game shooter, Borderlands, would add Steamworks support with a new update. The PC version of MW3 will be powered with Steamworks for both the digital and retail versions of the game. It will support offline play, auto-updating, achievements, and dedicated servers at launch. Naturally Steamworks adds a DRM layer as well.

While Valve has hinted at it in the past, a recent interview with Gabe Newell on Eurogamer is keen on letting Steam users trade games and other items, saying that he sees games on this platform moving in a direction "where everything is an item of exchange."

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell says that Microsoft needs to relax the terms and conditions of Xbox Live to allow other platforms onto Xbox Live. Newell made his comments related to the upcoming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive release, which features Steamworks integration. Newell said that Microsoft would do well to emulate Sony, whose decision to allow Steamworks support in the PlayStation 3 release of Portal 2 resulted in better experience on that platform.

As reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, some astute Escapist forum users have noticed an interesting clause in EA's Origin End-User License agreement that basically give the company carte blanche to collect and use data from your PC. From section 2 of the EULA:

Customers, disgusted over Ubisoft's bait-and-switch relating to the DRM in the PC version of From Dust are authorizing Steam to give its customers refunds. The decision to give people back their money for the game came after the company flip-flopped on DRM inclusion in From Dust.

Valve Software President Gabe Newell says that his company has a responsibility to show Electronic Arts that it is "smarter business" to add (and keep) its games on Steam instead of removing them. In a recent interview with Develop, Newell lamented EA's decision to remove games from the Steam service and put out an olive branch to the company.

"We have to show EA it’s a smart decision to have EA games on Steam, and we’re going to try to show them that," he said.

Valve is beta testing a new feature that allows users to trade in-game items, games and other stuff called Steam Trading. Right now they are testing it with Team Fortress 2. From the Steam blog:

"Team Fortress 2 items and Steam Gifts can currently be traded in the Steam Trading Beta.

Any game you've purchased from the store as a gift, or received as an Extra Copy, can be traded to other users. They can be used to trade for other Gifts, or for items in Team Fortress 2.

Dragon Age II is the latest game from Electronic Arts to mysteriously disappear from Steam, but the publisher of the game is pointing a long finger back at Valve Software. The game has been removed from Valve’s digital distribution platform on the eve of the launch of the new downloadable content, Legacy, to boot.

Electronic Arts is blaming Steam owner Valve for the disappearance - or more precisely, a new Steam policy:

Valve Software announced that its digital distribution platform Steam is getting an upgrade to make it faster with smaller downloads and an overhauled content system. The first game to take advantage of the system's new features will be upcoming online fantasy strategy-RPG game, DOTA 2.

"The maximum aggregate bandwidth of the system will be greater than the current system; this will help us satisfy spikes in demand when there's a big release," Valve stated on its official web site. "We will also be able to send content from more places, to better serve people all around the globe."

Valve also claims that the new system will allow the company to add new features to Steam in the future such as download scheduling, bandwidth throttling, prioritizing downloads, and update downloads while playing a game.

Hopefully this new system will turn an 8 hour download into something less time consuming. Here's to hoping.

When EA launched its personal digital distribution service late last month, the company insisted that it was never meant to compete with other digital distribution services like Steam. Now a company representative seems to be singing a different tune.

David DeMartini, head of Origin is talking about a "conflict" between its service and Steam. DeMartini says that recent business decisions by Steam have shown "areas of conflict" between the two services "on a going forward basis." DeMartini is referring to the sudden disappearance of Crysis 2, which, EA says, Valve took down because DLC for the game was being sold exclusively somewhere else.

Yesterday we reported that Square Enix had filed a lawsuit against unnamed Italian citizens who (they allege) stole a preview build of Deus Ex: Human Revolution (see this story). The latest wrinkle in the story is that the company wants Valve Software to help them because the stolen build was a copy that was hosted on Valve's Steam service.

For its part, Valve says that it has plenty of information on those individuals responsible for stealing and leaking the file onto the internet, but it is unable to give that information to Square Enix without them presenting Valve with a court ordered subpoena.

It may seem like an odd position for Valve to take with a publishing partner, but the company is simply protecting itself and following procedure.

We'll let you know how this situation plays out.

Are retailers in the United Kingdom discriminating against games that dare to associate themselves with Valve's popular digital distribution system? One publisher says says yes. According to Russian publisher 1C Company, some brick-and-mortar retailers are refusing to stock its PC titles that have ties with Valve's Steam platform. 1C Company claims that UK retailers have told them that if their game uses Steamworks, they won't be allowed on store shelves.

"[Steam's confidence] compares very favorably to that of the retail chains," 1C's UK publishing director Darryl Still told CVG in an interview. "[Those retail chains] recently sent a command to publishers that if they include Steamworks in their title it will not be stocked."

"Those guys need to grow up, stop bullying, and focus their attentions on making their offerings as attractive as the people they are obviously looking over their shoulders in panic at," he added.

Valve announced today that it is now offering Free-to-Play MMORPG's to its customers via Steam. The move follows a similar announcement earlier this week from rival digital distribution platform GamersGate. Games available for play immediately includes Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms (AVA). All of the titles will be supported by Steam's micro-transaction backend system that is available to Steamworks partners and used in Team Fortress 2.

"The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. "Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers, while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P."

It looks like Electronic Arts wants to go head-to-head with Steam - or at least save some money by avoiding Valve's digital distribution platform altogether. This morning the company dusted off its Origin label (you know, the company founded by Richard Garriott) as the name of a new digital distribution service. EA is calling Origin a "direct-to-consumer gaming platform where consumers can find, purchase and download all the best content from EA." Origin launches today with more than 150 games. In the months ahead, Origin will be the place to purchase and download exclusive limited edition copies of EA games, including Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12, and content from EA Partners including Alice: Madness Returns and 38 Studios' Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Later this year, digital downloads of Star Wars: The Old Republic will be available exclusively on Origin.