Now, why you people bother to get your news from us, I'll never understand. We're hardly reputable, never on-time, and the amount of news that has come out since our last news posting is astounding.

Nevertheless, here's some super big news worthy of immediate action (read: immediate=25 days later).

Game Informer Magazine took a trip to Valve's office to check out what they've been working on. And in this synopsis they published online, they officially announce Valve's next big title in 2011: Defense of the Ancients. If you've ever played Warcraft III, you'd probably know about this mod. It was/is super popular, and a refined sequel was in high-demand. Valve picked up the developer Icefrog and gave him a job working on a better sequel with Source technology. It's been on the rumor mill ever since Valve hired him a year ago. In other words, we saw this coming for a while.

If you have no idea what DotA is, I recommend reading the article on the Game Informer website.

In other older news...

• Beyond Black Mesa Trailer (short indie film)
  
• Steam surpasses the 30 million mark
  
• New sticky bombs in the Valve Store
  
• Gaming Heads release headcrab zombie
  
• The Sacrifice DLC for L4D 1 & 2 is out
  
• The rise of Minecraft

So as you can see, lots have happened! (not to mention a bunch of Portal 2 media)

Lay the fuse and light the match, because the new SnarkPit Mini-Competition has begun!

We're doing things a little bit differently this time around. We're accepting ALL FPS GAMES! You can map for whichever FPS game you can get your hands on (assuming it has a public SDK to make maps with) and submit it. We're also currently taking proposals for judges; no prior competition experience required! If your interested, be sure to check out the official competition thread for more info!

Remember, this is a Mini competition, so don't fret, we're not expecting masterpieces here. We simply want to see the concept realized in whatever state it's in. Yes, we have two categories for which you may submit your map to:

1. Finished
   
2. Work In Progress (WIP)

Maps within each category will only be judged against other maps of the same category. We want to see as many entries as possible, so we'll take anything you started, but didn't have time to finish.

So lay back, and enjoy an end-of-the-Summer brief mapping competition to let the worries of the day go by. -That is, if mapping is therapeutic for you too!