Along with its list of the most-played consoles in 2008, research group The Nielsen Company has provided its list of the past year's most popular PC games in the US.

Of the ten titles, none were released in 2008, and only 2 debuted in 2007. The list is based off data from January through October 2008, meaning that the impact of the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was not taken into account.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard's World of Warcraft topped the PC charts, with those surveyed playing the PC MMO an average of 671 minutes, just a bit over 11 hours, per week. Blizzard's Diablo II also appears on the list, as do three games from Valve.

Unfortunately, Nielsen did not specify the methodology behind this year's results. In 2007, the firm based its list off an extremely small pool of participants, a mere 1200 gamers, which could explain the unexpected results. It is not known if this was changed for 2008.

Top 10 PC Game Titles in the U.S.
1. World of Warcraft (2004) / Blizzard Entertainment
   671 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.723% AU*
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) / Infinity Ward
   403 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.163% AU*
3. Halo: Combat Evolved (2003) / Gearbox, Bungie... Read more

Beloved developer Valve has released lifetime retail sales figures for some of its more popular games, including the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series, revealing that the studio has sold over 32.8 million games since the 1998 release of the first Half-Life.

Sales from Valve's digital distribution client are not factored in, with the figures only accounting for worldwide retail sales. With Half-Life 2, Valve began simultaneously releasing all of its PC games at retail and via Steam. The numbers were originally printed in the November issue of Game Informer, then republished by Gamasutra.

Furthermore, it was not specified if the figures of multiplatform games--Half-Life, Half-Life 2, The Orange Box--included both PC and console sales, or just PC.

• Half-Life (Valve) / 1998 - 9.3 Million
• Half-Life: Opposing Force (PC, Gearbox) / 1999 - 1.1 Million
• Half-Life: Blue Shift (PC, Gearbox) / 2001 - 800,000
  
  
• Counter-Strike (PC, Valve) / 2000 - 4.2 Million
• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC, Valve) / 2004 - 2.9 Million... Read more

The topic of a full Counter-Strike sequel has been cautiously broached by Valve during a series of interviews with GameTrailers TV.

"We will never abandon Counter-Strike," asserted Valve director of marketing Doug Lombardi, who went on to explain why the game hasn't received a major update since the release of Counter-Strike Source in 2004.

"It's a little bit unfair to compare Counter-Strike, I think, to your classic game that's gonna have these sequels. It looks a little bit more like an MMO where it's constantly [being updated]."

Of course, even the most successful MMOs get sequels eventually, and it appears that Valve is at least tentatively working out the details of a Counter-Strike refresh.

"With Counter-Strike 2, there's a big question between, do we go start over from scratch and build this whole new game, do we do something that looks more like Team Fortress 2 that is rooted in the old game but has a ton of new stuff, or do we just sort of take everything that's new that we've released and put that out in a new box," remarked Lombardi.

"I think we're leaning more towards the two more radical places than... Read more

Valve let us know that guest passes are now available for Counter-Strike: Source owners. Should you have friends who don't have the game, you can now invite them to play the full game for 3 days. Obviously they will need to install Steam to use their guest pass.

As expected, an update for Counter-Strike: Source is now available. Here are the changes: "Increased ES57, Compact 228 and Dual Elites damage by 25%", "Lowered allowed number of dropped weapons in a level to prevent gun spamming" and "Updated foliage quality in cs_militia".

According to the latest Valve news update, available through Steam, Valve will be changing the pistols in Counter-Strike: Source. Right now pretty much everyone uses the Desert Eagle causing a dramatic increase in price since the introduction of dynamic weapon pricing. Valve will attempt to rectify the situation by making the other pistols more effective. All pistol prices have been reset while Valve prepares the update.

CS-Nation has posted an interview with Valve's Doug Lombardi, asking him about Valve's plans to introduce advertising to Counter-Strike 1.6 early next year. Ads will be on walls in levels, the scoreboard, and the letterboxed area of Spectator mode though Lombardi notes "levels aren't going to turn into Times Square or a Nextel Cup racecar". There are no plans for ads in Counter-Strike: Source for now.

CS-Nation: Any change to the basic Counter-Strike formula tends to send shock waves and produce what can best be described as "community riots" that reach far and wide. I've experienced this first hand as a former mod at Steampowered and a staff member at CS-Nation, just as I'm sure most every Valve staff member has experienced via emails. How is Valve prepared to address these sorts of concerns? Will the ads remain if the community collectively voices their displeasure to the ads, or will you keep them in no matter what? Essentially, will there ever be a point where you go "alright guys, this isn't going to work" and you pull the plug?

Doug Lombardi: Community feedback will be an important input in to how judge the success of advertising in our games, when we do it and when we don’t, and how we implement advertising in games. Initially, when ads move into a space where they haven’t existed before, like onto a Web site that hasn’t previously advertised, they are pretty noticeable for a while. But as long as the ads don’t interfere with the use of the site (like those annoying ones which sit on top of the content you’re trying to read) they quickly become part of the accepted experience.

The latest Steam news update mentions that Valve has recently banned 10,000 Steam accounts after new Valve Anti-Cheat technology found people cheating in Counter-Strike: Source and other games. 'We expect to see a surge of forum posts laying blame squarely at the feet of "my little brother."'.

According to the latest Valve news update available through Steam, they'll start beta testing the Counter-Strike: Source weapon pricing change on Wednesday. The news item mentions that major CS websites should soon have information on how to join this beta.

Valve has added this page to the Steam website, outlining the upcoming weapons pricing changes for Counter-Strike: Source. On October 11, the game will switch to a dynamic pricing model with updated prices every Monday based on the amount of purchases the previous week. Here a few samples from the page

Assault Suit
current price: $1,000
projected price: $1,104 (+10.4%)
Total purchases this week: 12,373,054
Dollars spent this week: $12,373,054,000

Maverick M4A1 Carbine
current price: $3,100
projected price: $3,390 (+9.35%)
Total purchases this week: 3,571,778
Dollars spent this week: $11,072,511,800

Nightvision Goggles
current price: $1,250
projected price: $1,084 (-13.26%)
Total purchases this week: 141,883
Dollars spent this week: $177,353,750

There is information about the pricing algorithm here.

According to the Steam website, updates to Counter-Strike: Source, the Source Engine and Source TV are now available. The CS:S update fixes two exploits, while also adding zoom/scope to the first person view for Source TV spectators.

According to the Steam website the promised Counter-Strike: Source update is now available. It features the new radar system and a HDR version of de_train. Other changes

- The players eye height while crouching now matches their in-game player model eye position more closely
- SourceTV now shows the weapon in first-person view
- SourceTV supports the tv_transmitall command
- Assorted exploit fixes

Thoughts on the new radar display?

According to the latest Valve news update that's available through Steam, the Counter-Strike: Source radar change (coming out next week) won't be the only change being made to the game. After the radar update, "we'll be taking a look at the economy of Counter-Strike and how we're pricing weapons."

The latest Valve news update is now available through Steam, mentioning their plans to update Counter-Strike: Source. The first update will offer an updated version of Train, which will include HDR lighting, minor layout changes and some bug fixes (screenshot here). Another upcoming update will rework the game's radar system.

There will be a significant change to the aesthetics of the radar, but there are also some fairly significant gameplay ramifications to the new system. One example: when you look directly at an enemy for a long enough time for their name to appear on your screen, everyone on your team will be able to see that enemy in the radar. We're planning on releasing this first update in about two weeks.

In other Valve news, an updated Source SDK is now available.

There's a new update available through Steam, updating Counter-Strike: Source and Earth 2160. Among other things the CS:S update adds the GSG9 and Arctic player models and HDR lighting for de_dust

The latest Valve marketing message is available upon restarting Steam, offering two screenshots showing SAS and Leet Crew in Counter-Strike: Source. Both player models will be added to the game this month.

Word on the Steam website is that a new update for Counter-Strike: Source is now available. There is one change: "The grasses and shrubs in cs_compound and de_port have been restored to their original state". Restart Steam to grab the update.

A few days ago, Engage Advertising sent out a press release announcing that the company had officially launched. Its first public project was working with sandwich chain Subway on a three week in-game advertising campaign in "the most popular online action game played among men 18 to 34." Most online gamers would recognize this as Counter-Strike, but there was no mention of the game or of developer Valve anywhere else in the release. However, Engage's web site does have a few images that clearly come from the game (hosted locally here). I called Engage to ask if it was in fact Counter-Strike, and received what was essentially a confirmation of the game in question. Though this was Engage's first venture, the company does have plans to expand into other spaces, including the console market.

Interestingly, Engage's VP of business development David Smith informed me that he was not permitted to say the name of the game's publisher. This struck me as a bit odd, so I contacted Valve to see what their involvement with the product was. I was met with the following response from marketing director Doug Lombardi:

At no time did Valve grant permission nor discuss these advertisements with Engage. As such, this is now a legal matter. Advertising or any other commercial use of our games requires our written permission.

In my discussions with Mr. Smith, I learned that Engage did not handle the technical aspects of the project; this is done by another firm called IGA International. IGA has apparently developed a propriety technology called Radial Network to handle this kind of advertising. It seems that the advertising might be achieved through some kind of agreement with server administrators. IGA's exact approach is unclear, because as of this writing, my calls to the company had not yet been returned. I have also contacted Engage for a followup inquiry, but have not yet received a response. Updates will be provided as new information is received.

A day later than expected, de_nuke is now available for Counter-Strike: Source. It is the first map to include High Dynamic Range lighting, which is also used in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source. The update available through Steam does not just include the map, it also offers bug fixes and bot changes. Here are some of those bug fixes

- The Bomb (C4) can no longer be planted on breakables, movable physics props, or other players
- Fixed problem where players were not always "grabbing onto" ladders that were approached from above
- Crouching while traversing a ladder reduces the player's speed (matches CS 1.6 behavior)
- Improved door logic to prevent doors from opening into the player using them
- Bomb-related sounds play for everyone correctly now (not just the bomb-planter)
- Fixed incorrect bullet penetration calculation through concrete+grate materials
- Fixed changeteam exploit
- Fixed apparent lockup/hang due to the disconnect dialog showing up over the quit menu and hiding it

Valve has released updates for the original Half-Life and Counter-Strike, offering some game changes and exploit fixes as outlined on the Steam news page.