Non-game related gambling remained rampant on the Twitch service despite the aforementioned controversy, with gambling content quickly rising to be one of the most popular topics on Twitch in recent years. With the rise of cryptocurrency coming hand-in-hand with increased attention on gambling on the Twitch platform, the marriage of the two controversial subjects seemed like an inevitability to many view

Platforms: PC

It’s thanks to Quake Champions that fans of this iconic franchise can rejoice in the hit shooter’s return to the gaming scene. After all, before Quake Champions ’ 2017 release, the last installment in the franchise was Quake 4 in 2005. With this in mind, Quake Champions marks not just a return to form to the arena shooter, but the introduction of additional elements that make it just as exciting an experience for modern f

The platform is not quite finished yet, mostly because there are plans to expand and breathe more life into it. "We have a lot of plans for the platform," Alex says. "Everything you see has been coded by just two people. I have a background in design and front-end web development. David - our CTO - is an ex-military software developer and created the system and servers behind it all. Our most requested thing right now is a native app, which we plan to work on later in the year once we feel the website is more complete. For now, we have sub-communities for major Half-Life games, mods, and topics in the work. We’re also releasing new features every week. Last week, we added mentions. Now we’re working on multi-image posts."

Valve’s newest effort at matchmaking assigns players with a value known as the Trust Factor. This is a hidden value that considers several points to help place a player into a match. Valve has made it perfectly clear in this blog post that they will not revealing the specifics that modify this value because they do not want players to alter their behavior in an effort to manipulate the system. This is perfectly fair on their part, as players will go to great lengths to break video games, either just for fun, or to gain a competitive advant

Websites quickly began exploiting the craze surrounding Counter Strike 's in-game items, with sites like CSGO Lotto allowing players to trade their items for CS Legacy eligibility into raffles for extremely valuable prizes. Many streamers began promoting these kinds of websites, often without disclosing their financial stakes in the services they were promoting. For example, popular streamer Phantoml0rd was famously permanently banned from Twitch for just this reason, despite later winning a civil suit against the platform. Twitch would quickly go on to ban these kinds of raffle or gambling websites related to CSGO , marking one of the first major gambling controversies for the serv

"The concept for LambdaGeneration was simple - we wanted to create a site that would share all of the amazing fan content the Half-Life and Valve community make," Alex says." At the time, most Valve fansites were focused on official news and there weren’t any news sites dedicated to things made by the community. I remember being frustrated seeing some really cool stuff scattered around various forums just going unnoticed, and I wanted to fix that.

Geographic location on the other hand is a strange one. Perhaps a player needs to move often, and that is outside of their control. Perhaps players need to use VPNs for undisclosed reasons, and that too may be out of their hands. Whatever the case, it would be fascinating to know more about how Valve uses this d

Some of the sites Alex is talking about were centered around maps, while others focused on larger overhauls. There were also a few that dug into leaks, rumors, and speculation, propping up the fans who were trying to sift through Valve’s silence to find answers.

Ultimately, we can only really guess as to how Valve weighs each of these points, or if it even uses all of them at all in determining a Trust Factor value per player account. There is much more to consider, and everyone should take the time to check out the patent for themselves. It can appear to be a long, daunting read, because it is, but there are some interesting pieces of information to glean from such an endea

It is fascinating that before even mentioning the skill-based aspects of matchmaking, it is behavior associated with cheating or what we could interpret as toxicity is addressed first. Obviously there needs to be a focus on isolating cheaters from non-cheaters, but one might have guessed that skill would have taken a predominate spot in determining the Trust Factor for placing one player with similarly skilled oth

Ultimately, the Trust Factor has a clear focus according to the patent, which, "may provide an improved gaming experience for users who desire to play a video game in multiplayer mode in the manner it was meant to be played." This description playing a game as intended refers to players who respect the game in its core design, meaning those who do not cheat or act in toxic w