It’s here, folks. Valve has launched its annual year-end holiday sale, offering deep discounts across its entire Steam catalog. Like previous sales, each day will highlight an assortment of time-limited deals.

Today, Metro 2033, Singularity, Portal 2, Bunch of Heroes, Just Cause 2, Fable III, and Max Payne are among the wallet-tempting daily deals.

Additionally, Valve has put together a Great Gift Pile, giving users the opportunity to win coupons and other gifts on Steam simply by playing games and completing listed achievements/objectives. A total of six will be offered each day, with more details offered here. Time to dig into that backcatalog!

Just as many PC faithful had begun to lose hope, developer Remedy made the surprise announcement today that its physiological thriller Alan Wake is receiving a belated release on PC in 2012. It’ll include both downloadable content scenarios, The Signal and The Writer.

This comes mere days after the announcement of Alan Wake: American Nightmare, which is an XBLA exclusive affair for now. Remedy says the PC version of Wake will be situated in the same release window, so expect it around first quarter of 2012.

“Coming in early 2012, the game will give PC gamers the Alan Wake experience they have been patiently waiting for. Remedy is a developer with deep roots in the PC space (Death Rally and Max Payne 1 and 2), so the game will have the high resolution polish that longtime fans will expect,” reads the announcement.

There’s no word on pricing. The title did show up in Steam registry files a few days ago, so it would appear it’s coming to Valve’s digital distribution service.

Offering more ways to save, Valve has quietly added the ability to use one-time use coupons on Steam. An FAQ on the matter notes that coupons apply to specific products and have a defined expiration date. more »

As we await Valve’s annual year-end Christmas sale on Steam, the company is kicking off its festivities a bit early, announcing a new initiative in which Steam users can score free games. It’s called the The Daily Wishlist Giveaway. To enter, just visit the featured daily deal page on Steam each day. You must also have at least 10 games on your wishlist.

A total of 10 Steam users will win the top 10 items from their wishlist, each and every day. It’s not clear how long how the promotion will run exactly, but Valve says it’ll “continue into the holiday season.” Minecraft-inspired Terraria marks the first featured deal.

Score another victory for Steam. Stardock has announced that it is bringing its entire catalogue of titles over to Valve’s dominions. This comes following the sale of its own digital distribution platform Impulse, which is now in GameStop’s hands as of March earlier this year. My, how times have changed.

Currently, Stardock’s well-received RTS Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity is up for sale on Steam at the discount price of $14.99 — 25 percent off to celebrate its arrival. More titles are on their way in the coming weeks, we’re told.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might just be the most popular PC title to grace Steam — ever. The concurrent player count, as of today, peaked at an impressive 231,593.

We’ve never seen it reach that high. The closest contender is probably Portal 2, which peaked at just over 90K in release week. This is a significant achievement, and makes us wonder what the total sales count stacks up to.

Generally, you can multiply the concurrent player count by 10 to get a rough estimate of total sales, which means Skyrim may have sold around 2 million copies on PC alone. If it did similar numbers on consoles — well, Bethesda must be very pleased indeed.

Following an intrusion on the Steam forums last weekend, Valve has since discovered that the breach runs deeper. Attackers gained access to a Steam database separate from the forums, which houses “user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.”

At this time, an investigation is still ongoing. Valve “does not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked.”

Moreover, there have been no reported cases of compromised Steam accounts and as such, Valve is not forcing users to change their passwords at this time.

“We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely,” reads the email.

“While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.”

“We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password. “

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to play (or replay) 2005′s gem of a psychedelic platformer — Psychonauts, a massive update has been pushed out for Steam owners of the title. It now wears the Steam Play banner, which means your Steam copy will also run naively on Mac OS. Achievements and support for cloud saving have also been added into the mix. more »

Ever since Electronic Arts announced that Battlefield 3 will be offered exclusively on Origin on the PC a lot of gamers have been up in arms, myself included. However someone went through the small task of reading the Origin’s End User License Agreement (EULA) and found out that Origin is “spying” on your computer (area of contention posted after the break).

Now I’ve been an outspoken opponent of Origin but it doesn’t deserve a bad rap for this. Yes, Origin, as well as all other major distribution systems (Steam, GFWL), monitors your computer hardware and software activity.

Unlike the other two systems however, the wording in Origin’s EULA is somewhat vague in areas, stating that it may share its collected information with third-parties, resulting in a recent uproar. This concern has gained traction on a few sites and someone is already suggesting that users voice their opinions to EA as a result of this “privacy-invasive software.”

While I appreciate the community’s effort to bring change to a “corrupt” system, one must first be take a look at similar EULA’s and systems already in place.

Hit the break for more of the discussion.

more »

While EA continues to shun the service with its nearest competitive title Battlefield 3, pre-orders for Modern Warfare 3 have went live on Steam, alongside a massive banner spread occupying the front page of the Steam storefront.

There are no bonuses for pre-ordering early at the $59.99 price right now, though Call of Duty community guru Robert Bowling has confirmed on Twitter that Activision is throwing more support behind the PC version this time. While MW2 shipped with a peer-to-peer matchmaking system – a move that did not sit well with PC gamers – MW3 will boast full blown dedicated server support on day one.

“Yes! Modern Warfare 3 on PC will support dedicated servers, day 1. You can fav or admin your own to control setup, rules, bans,” said Bowling. more »