“I have had the good fortune to watch the competitors as they prepare for the tournament, and the level of play is extraordinary,” said Valve president Gabe Newell.

And impressing Newell isn’t the only prize here. The winners take home a million bucks. That’s million with an ‘M’.

The tournament will be broadcast live in Chinese, English, Russian and German, for those of us not lucky enough to be in Cologne.

GLaDOS loves deploying surprises. She had one for the gaming world this afternoon at Sony’s E3 press conference in the form of Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve, making a very important announcement.

All this time, we’ve been hearing that Portal 2 wouldn’t debut on the PS3 at the same time as the PC, Mac, and 360 versions. Fortunately, we now know that this isn’t the case at all. Portal 2 will debut on the same day as these other versions, and in addition, it will be the only console version to include Steamworks. Newell took the stage to deliver this information as well as debut the very first Portal 2 trailer (embedded below).

Steamworks will allow Valve to implement automatic game updates, community features, DLC and other types of service that were previously difficult to implement on a console. There won’t be any cross-network play like on the consoles’ computer brethren, unfortunately.

“When the PlayStation 3 was introduced, I was the one of the platform’s biggest critics,” said Newell. “However, Sony Computer Entertainment has proved that the PlayStation 3 is the most open platform of all the current generation consoles and has worked extremely hard to make the platform the most desirable for consumers and developers. As such, we are delighted to announce Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 and believe the Steamworks support included will make it the best console version of the game.”

The game is expected to launch in 2011. For more information, visit www.thinkwithportals.com.

And now, a treat. (You monster.)

(Video from Joystiq.)

This year the Game Developer’s Conference honored Valve’s co-founder, Gabe Newell, with its Pioneer Award. In addition to all the kick-butt games Valve has developed over the years, Steam was also cited as one of the many reasons Gabe Newell was honored with this award.

But do you remember the first time you installed a new Valve game and it insisted upon installing Steam, too? Remember how happy you were when you started to install Half-Life 2? Remember how hacked off you were when you had to install Steam?

Way back then, you probably went to the store – Yes, you probably actually got in the car and drove to a store. – to buy Half-Life 2. It was just 6 years ago, but those were very different times. Egghead had filed for bankruptcy, Newegg was still in its infancy, and everyone who sold and developed computer games was in a tizzy about digital piracy.

The era of brick-and-mortar stores was dying, and digital downloads were still just a sparkle in Valve’s eye. Armed with the selling-power of Half-Life 2, Valve was about to impose a new paradigm on the gaming community. Steam would make gamers rethink the way they buy computer games, but it would also make them rethink what they considered an acceptable level of intrusion into their gaming lives.

When Steam came out it was not met with loving, open arms by the gaming community. In order to play Half-Life 2, a first-person-shooter everyone wanted to play, you had to install Steam. You had to sign up for a Steam account, give Valve your personal info. You had to let them install their intrusive sales app on your computer, sucking up your valuable RAM. You had to let them sell to you directly on your very own computer.

Was there a gamer on planet Earth who wasn’t pissed about this?

But you wanted to play Half-Life 2. Everyone did. So you sucked it up, signed up for Steam and installed Valve’s annoying sales app.

And you know something? With each passing year you’ve grown to accept it, even love it.

Why? Because it makes everything so easy. You can buy and download games without leaving your basement. When updates come out, Steam patches the games for you. How sweet is that? You never have to worry about losing your games, because Steam maintains your entire gaming library online.

All and all, Steam has made the entire process of buying and owning games about one quadrillion times easier. Who wouldn’t love that?

You probably don’t even mind them selling to you, anymore. In fact, you probably even look forward to their latest deals. Everquest for $2.50. Really? Yes, really. Dude, never played it. Heard it’s grindy. But for $2.50, why not?

And there’s those enticing bundles: Pre-order Metro 2033 and get Red Faction: Guerilla. Wow! That’s awesome. Pre-order Bioshock 2 and get the original Bioshock. Love it.

Looking for demos and betas? Steam has those, too. You’re not going to get those at Best Buy or Walmart.

And why are you even going to those stores? Steam lets you pre-download the latest games and play them at one minute past midnight the day they’re released. No standing in line. No waiting. No gas used contributing to global warming.

Steam has games you can’t get anywhere else. Those brick-and-mortar stores are only going to carry what sells and sells well. That mean the newest releases. You want retro stuff. Forget it.

But Steam has retro in bulk. What do they care? They’re not taking up shelf space: Just some space on their server. Steam is Mecca for PC gamers. Take a look in Steam’s bargain bins. For less than 10 buck you can get Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic; Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and lots of other games you might not have played but meant to. They’re there waiting for you.

And Steam is actually doing gaming a service. Have you played Plants and Zombies? Have you heard of Plants and Zombies? It has a metascore of 88 and it’s available through Steam for $9.99. Hard to resist, huh? There are lots of games by start-ups in the Steam store. Many of these games have gotten great reviews and many of them are pretty cheap. While you’d be hard pressed to find any of these games in a store like Best Buy, Steam makes a lot of them available and helps to promote them.

Yep, there’s a whole lot to love about Steam. We’re still ever so slightly annoyed we have to install this sales app to play Valve games. Oh, and don’t think you’re fooling us, either, Steam. Part of the advantages of Steam is it provides better enforcement of digital copyrights. We know that. If this helps Valve to keep producing games like Half-Life and Left for Dead, that’s fine, we can roll with that.

Perhaps, it’s just some weird, gamer Stockholm syndrome, but our feelings have changed. We don’t hate you, anymore. As long as you keep sending us flowers and offering us great gaming deals we’ll hold your hand.

We <3 Steam.

This year’s panel included gaming greats such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft). Newell was selected for the award for his work in co-creating the PC download service Steam, as well as helping to make some of the best games of the past decade (think everything included in The Orange Box) possible.

Over 3,000 of the industry’s top developers will be present at the awards ceremony, which will honor Newell, recipients of other special awards, and the top games of 2009.

Newell co-founded Valve in 1996 after leaving megacorporation Microsoft, and was instrumental in the creation of the groundbreaking PC FPS Half-Life. This title brought actual narrative and story to the first-person shooter genre unlike anything that came before it, and has inspired thousands of games (and spawned its own fantastic sequels) in the decade since its release. Valve is one of the few companies (maybe the only company?) that openly embrace the modding community, and legions of gamers continue to play these titles just for the modding capabilities alone. (Search YouTube for “Garry’s Mod” and see what I’m talking about.)

Valve has only gotten better with age, and titles like Portal and Left 4 Dead have done nothing but bring much-deserved critical acclaim to their doorstep.

Congratulations, Gabe. GamingAngels salutes you and wishes you the best in the years to come — it’s in our best interests for you to keep doing excellent work, after all!

Last year’s contest must have been so successful that Valve has decided to use the photo contest again for this year’s advertising campaign for Left 4 Dead 2.

Just like last year, Valve is asking gamers to take creative photos of themselves in front of one of the outdoor media placements in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, Phoenix, Dallas, Minneapolis, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The entries will be judged by Gabe Newell and the top 25 entries will win a free copy of Left 4 Dead (probably the second although the press release just says Left 4 Dead) and one overall winner will get a custom engraved L4D2 Xbox 360.

“Last year’s out of home media campaign proved to be one of the most effective vehicles for helping land Left 4 Dead on 2008′s top 10 seller list in the North America,” said Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve. “Valve has once again partnered with Gibson Media to execute the Left 4 Dead 2 out of home campaign and extend it to more markets across the US.”

To read all the details on how to enter go to www.L4D.com/contest

Left 4 Dead 2

GTtv sat with Gabe Newell and they talk about things like the petition on Left 4 Dead 2 and they even cover the new Left 4 Dead 2 fairground level. Something no one else has seen yet. They also talk about Left 4 Dead DLC, Crash Mode.

Valve has announced new DLC coming to Left 4 Dead this September. The DLC is titled, Crash Course and has new single-player, multiplayer and co-op.

“Since the release of ‘Left 4 Dead’ last November, the design team has been excited about creating new experiences for this world and allowing players to do the same, by releasing much of our internal toolset, like the Survival Pack and Authoring Tools,” said Gabe Newell. “We’re working with the fans toward the ongoing entertainment value of the product.”

“Crash course” will deliver the complete Versus mode in just 30 minutes. It also has new locations and new dialogue.

Left 4 Dead: Crash Course will be released in September free of charge to PC users and 560 Gamer Points on Xbox Live.

In a conversation with G4, Gabe Newell assured gamers that Left 4 Dead will still be getting content updates even though a sequel is on it’s way.

“From a customer’s perspective, we think that given the sort of insane popularity of Left 4 Dead, that people are going to be super excited about getting a sequel to that,” said the exec.

“We’re going to continue to do Left 4 Dead updates and release more content for Left 4 Dead, and then also have Left 4 Dead 2 coming out as well.”

Currently, more than 20,000 people have signed a petition saying they’ll boycott Left 4 Dead 2 due to a variety of reasons but mostly because of the lack of updates to the first Left 4 Dead.

Mr. Newell also explains in the interview why they made Left 4 Dead 2 so quickly, “Well, there are a couple reasons for that. One was when we were shipping the game, a bunch of the people who were working on it had all the stuff that they wanted to do right away. It really grew out of the fact that we all played Left 4 Dead pretty religiously and so people said, “You know, we don’t really want to stop. There’s too much fun stuff to go and do here.”

Read the rest of the interview over at G4 where they briefly talk about Episode 3 as well.