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KrunchTime writes "The Steam network seems to be having some problems tonight. This is not good new for fans of counter-strike, day of defeat and other half-life mods. Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like me :(, cannot connect at all. The steam forums were filling up with invective when I was last able to get on. The forums now seem to have imploded under the strain of complaints. The question that was being asked most is why there isn't more redundancy on the log-in side of steam. They say that if one of the master servers goes down that the accounts held there become unavailable immediately. The other big problem is that while the Steam network is down even the offline games are unplayable. There was no sign of responses from Valve staff or forum moderators."

Entropius writes "Natural Selection, a free Half-Life mod that contains elements of both traditional first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, has just gotten a complete overhaul with the release of version 2.0. In a nutshell, it combines the best elements of StarCraft and Counter-Strike. NS 2.0 adds new alien abilities, commander interface changes, changes to the resource model, four new maps, and more flexibility in alien evolutions. It's a whole new game now, and a blast to play... one of the most innovative new mods in a long time. The mirrors are straining to keep up, but here's a list of download links via readyroom.org." Update: 08/01 14:43 GMT by S : Here's a very necessary BitTorrent link, thanks to commenters.

Thanks to several readers for pointing out that Half-Life developers Valve has launched the public Beta of Steam, their "broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content." It currently includes free downloads of the new Counter-Strike 1.6, as well as the original Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force, and more. This audacious move to build a truly popular digital delivery content system by Valve, already through an extensive closed Beta stage, also indicates Steam users should "..stay tuned for a blast of HL2 full-motion goodness."

Laurens Simonis writes "Yesterday, the Dutch ISP Planet Internet introduced a games subscription service. For a small monthly fee, about $10, you get unlimited access to a growing list of (sort-of) current games which you can legally download from them. Currently, you can pick from 20 titles including Tomb Raider Chronicles, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and Commandos 2. New ones are added monthly. To my knowledge, this is the first time an ISP offers this kind of service. Personally, I'm all for the idea. Could this be the future? Half-Life developer Valve Software seems to think so." This looks really cool, but I'm curious as to how well it will catch on. It feels about 5 years too early to me, but here's hoping it performs well.