Over the weekend Valve released the beta version of its Steam OS to the public at large. Steam OS is a Debian variant of the Linux operating system, in case you are interested. Valve has warned those that are eager to install the Steam OS on their PCs that the release is meant more for technically savvy users, and not casual fiddlers.

At about this time today (5:00 pm EST) 300 individuals in the United States will get an email from Valve Software announcing that they are one of the lucky few to get a Steam Machine. The beta quality Steam Machines and Steam Controllers will be shipped to those 300 testers beginning on Friday, according to Valve's announcement today. The system will support a selection of games that currently are capable of running on Steam OS, which will be added to users' libraries.

Valve has approved 100 more titles to be a part of its Steam Greenlight program, Valve Software announced this week. There's very few familiar titles in this latest batch (the most recognizable being Company of Heroes: Eastern Front, Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore, Pixel Piracy, and Saturday Morning RPG). Nevertheless, there's certainly a few gems in this latest batch worth checking out depending on the kinds of games you find fascinating. As always each of the games in this list will release on their own schedules.

You can check out the full list below:

With Valve Software pushing towards a future in which it is at the center of our big screen gaming experience in the living room using a system that is entirely powered by the Linux operating system, it should come as no big surprise that the company has joined The Linux Foundation this week. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of the titular open-sourced operating system.

Valve Software's Mike Sartain says that joining the foundation is just one of the ways that it is putting a spotlight on the operating system.

Valve's Steam digital distribution platform managed to hit a major milestone as its biggest sale of the year continued to play out over the weekend. On Sunday, over seven million users logged in to the service concurrently as they searched for deals in the company's annual Steam Autumn Sale.

Valve Software has kick off its annual Autumn Sale today with daily deals running every 24 hours, along with flash sales every 8 hours until Dec. 3. Highlights include Terraria for $2.49, Skyrim for $7.49, Prison Architect for $14.99, Outlast for $6.49, Sleeping Dogs for $4.99, Left 4 Dead 2 for $4.99, Rogue Legacy for $5.09, The Walking Dead for $6.24, and Anti-Chamber for $4.99.

My personal favorites right now? DLC Quest and Breath of Death VII for $0.98.

As always the Steam sale offers listing for top sellers, games under $10, and games under $5.

Voting is now open for the Saxxy Awards, Valve's annual film-making awards competition. This year, the competition is exclusively based on the Source Filmmaker tool. The animation suite from Valve has been out long enough so that the community is familiar with it enough to create some amazing shorts - like the Team Fortress 2-based short about a mini-Pyro called 'Lil Guardian Pyro.'

You can check out the video to your left, and if you like it, you can vote for it here.

Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage has launched on Steam this week and is discounted to $9.99 until Nov. 18. This particular game is unique because it is one of the few games imported from China that isn't a free-to-play MMO game. Developed by ORiGO GAMES, Mirage is a "Wuxia" (which means "Martial Hero") story that pays homage to a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists.

Valve has opened up registration for the Steam In-home Streaming closed beta, which will begin within the next two months (before the end of 2013). Those interested in getting in on the closed beta can do so simply by joining the official Steam group. The beta will let users play PC games on other machines within their house.

While revealing its new Steam Machines this week Valve Software emphasized that the Linux-based hardware will not have any exclusives. We assume this also includes games in popular franchises it owns such as Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Left 4 Dead, DOTA, and Counter-Strike too.

What started out as a goodwill Halloween gesture to the community by indie developer Wadjet Eye Games turned into a nightmare last night. Wadjet Eye Games made the latest game in its popular point-and-click adventure game series Blackwell Deception available for free. It was supposed to be available until midnight on November 1, but Wadjet Eye Games was forced to shut the promotion down early, leaving many who found out about the freebie later to miss out. Fans who didn't know what was going on were obviously peeved with the indie developer.

If you laughed when Valve introduced its new Steam OS, Steam-based hardware and a controller along with it, then you'll understand why the company thinks it can take up space in gamers' living rooms alongside current and next generation consoles when you hear how many people in the world have Steam accounts. According to an announcement made today, Valve's digital distribution platform and soon-to-be living room entertainment destination has over 65 million registered user accounts worldwide.

According to a Gamasutra report, many of the developers working on the indie title Dark Matter were laid off after the game's Kickstarter failed this summer.  But that didn't stop an abbreviated version of the game hitting Steam and GOG last week.  This week, the game has been yanked from those digital download services after complaints that the adventure title didn't have an ending.

Id Software co-founder and Oculus Rift guy John Carmack says that he is not convinced that Valve Software can pull off the lofty goals of SteamOS and Steam Machines - while at the same time admitting that he has been very wrong in the past about what Valve is capable of.

"There's an interesting kind of retrospective on it," Carmack said during Nvidia’s Montreal conference.

He also pointed out the time when Valve approached Id Software about adding Doom 3 to Steam's launch lineup.

A post on Steam this morning reveals that if you purchased Batman Arkham Asylum or Batman: Arkham City through anywhere other than Steam then you will have to jump through a few hoops to have the games maintain their functionality and you may have to start playing the aforementioned games from the very beginning.

Valve has greenlit 37 new titles through its Greenlight program, including games, mods, and some software applications. At a glance, the new greenlit titles include Towerclimb and Ikaruga, a Half-Life 2 mod, and more. All of these titles will appear on Steam in "the coming weeks or months", Valve announced earlier today.

Greenlit titles are voted on by the Steam community, with press reaction and past performance on other platforms also affecting the process, according to Valve's criteria for Greenlight submissions..

In a recent interview with Polygon, DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson said that the Linux operating system is one killer game away from having a major impact on gaming. He believes that the open-sourced OS one "killer app" away from that possibility.

Valve today released a video showing off how the new Steam Controller will work with different types of games. In the video Valve shows off how games such as Portal 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Papers, Please; and Civilization V work with the new controller - including some games that use the legacy mode (games that have not been modified specifically to support the controller). Valve promises more of these videos in the future.

Valve Software has announced a two-day event in January of next year for developers that showcases the new Steam OS, and its own hardware. The goal of the event set for January 15 - 16, 2014 is to get developers interested in supporting the controller and the OS.

It will cost $95 to attend and will take place at Valve headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Seating is limited, according to Valve.

A new report from International Data Corporation (IDC) suggests that the PlayStation 4's lower price point will help it beat out Microsoft's Xbox One this holiday season. IDC said that this will occur due to a "variety of factors," but the biggest determining factor is that the PS4 costs $100 less than the Xbox One: the Xbox One will retail for around $500, while the PS4 will cost $400. The price difference is mostly due to Kinect being bundled with the Xbox One, while Sony's PlayStation Eye will be sold separately.

Valve announced today that it has green lit a fresh new batch of games via the Steam Greenlight program.

A total of 32 new games get the thumbs up from the community including a batch of simulations, action games, RPGs, horror adventure titles, and many more. Many of these titles are familiar but the majority of them are interesting indie titles.

You can find the full list of games below, or you can visit the Steam Greenlight page for more details.

Valve's third and final "big announcement" for this week is a new controller designed to work with Steam OS and its SteamOS-based hardware. The controller features two trackpads (instead of thumbsticks) that uses haptic feedback, a touch-enabled surface with a high resolution screen similar to what Sony is offering on the PS4 controller (which can also be used like four separate clickable buttons), shoulder buttons, four face buttons, and three buttons below the touch enabled surface.

Valve is likely quite delighted to hear that the creator of one of the biggest hit game franchises in recent memory is fully behind its freshly announced operating system, SteamOS. Marcus "Notch" Persson, co-founder of Mojang and creator of the hit franchise Minecraft took to Twitter to praise Valve's announcement and said that - in the face of all his concerns about Windows 8 - this was welcomed news.

Valve promised three big announcements and the first - revealed today - is that it is working on its own Linux-based operating system called SteamOS. Valve said that it came to the conclusion that the best environment for delivering games is one that it has created. While Valve promises that the new OS will be open-ended as Linux-based operating systems usually are, some are concerned that Valve is creating its own version of the "walled garden" that the company complained about with Windows 8.

Valve Software has revealed the "Steam Family Sharing" program, which allows friends and family to share their library of Steam games online. A limited beta for the program will launch next week. Valve says that the Steam Family Sharing plan allows family members and friends to play each other's games, and individual members can earn their own achievements and keep their own saves and application data intact via the Steam cloud too.

Steam has greenlit one-hundred games today including Precursor Games' Shadow of the Eternals, which failed to meet its funding goal on Kickstarter earlier this month. Addressing the community in an update today, Valve Software's Alden Kroll said that the company decided to release all of these new games as part of a stress test of the Steam Greenlight system.

Game Dev Tycoon is coming to Steam on August 29, according to independent game development studio Greenheart Games. The game allows players to create a video game start-up company in the 1980's and make it a successful enterprise by developing cutting edge video games. Players will have to design games, research new technologies, build custom game engines, manage office space, build out their development teams, and avoid pitfalls like piracy.

Warner Bros. has confirmed with IGN that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Origins will use Valve's Steamworks for its multiplayer and achievements, distancing itself from Microsoft's Games for Windows Live service. Microsoft announced last week that it planned shut down the marketplace portion of the service at the end of this month.

Former Valve executive Jason Holtman has joined Microsoft, according to GamesIndustry International. Holtman was in charge of Steam for eight years, helping to turn it into the digital distribution platform juggernaut that it is today. Holtman was the point man for developers looking to get their games on the platform, and is credited with convincing big third-party publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts to hawk their PC wares there.

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community has made over $150,000 from the sale of the online passes related to the Operation Payback initiative. The news comes from the official Twitter account for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Launched in April of this year, the initiative features seven maps created by the community and chosen by players as the very best. The seven maps were later released on Steam as a map pack for $5.99. It will be available until the end of this month.