As you may have heard, yesterday Valve (mostly) met one of their rare scheduled dates and released the OS X version of their popular digital distribution client, Steam. While the move to OS X is certainly a welcome one, as it gives access to a subset of computer users often left out when it comes to games, Steam's arrival hasn't been completely graceful.

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When Half Life 2: Episode One was announced, it was with the promise of things will be different this time. Fans, many of whom remembered all too well the bizarre turmoil of delay after delay for Half Life 2, were afraid of waiting another six years for the third segment of the series, and the phrase 'Episode One' conjured with it all manner of ethereal promises: chief among them being "faster releases and cheaper games." In practice, however, this hasn't been the case, and increasingly, it's looking as if Half Life 2: 'Episodes' will have taken the same amount of time to go to shelves as it took for Half Life 2 in the first place, but with a total game playtime a fraction of the length of Half Life 2.

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I wanted to take a moment to post an update on the issue I wrote about earlier regarding Valve's swear-word filter on their forums. A short time after I posted the original article, the filter itself was edited and "gay" was removed; unfortunately this appears to be a Pyrrhic victory.

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"With Rockstar Games releasing The Ballad of Gay Tony, will Valve ever include a gay character in any of their games?" That was the gist of a thread created on the official Steam forums several weeks ago. Innocuous question or not, however, the thread itself was quickly locked and hidden from public view by one of Valve's volunteer moderators, a fate that almost every other discussion of LGBT topics on the official Steam forums ends with, as well.

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Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification has had a contentious history when it comes to handling violent video games. Unlike the United States' ESRB, video games require a mandatory rating before they're qualified for sale in this country and many of the more "adult" titles routinely come into problems when they skirt too close to the line. The most recent title to come under fire is Valve's gratuitous zombie action/thriller Left 4 Dead 2. Although the original was classified without incident, its sequel has been denied at present.

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