"Today Valve disabled more than 30,000 Steam accounts which had been used to try to illegally gain access to Valve games without a valid purchase. Here's the quote for non-Steam forum members.

Valve takes such activities seriously and reserves the right to disable Steam accounts engaging in piracy, cheating, illegal activities, or any other activity in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. The accounts that are disabled today will not be reactivated. - Erik Johnson (Valve)"

Counter-Strike: Source and Source Engine update. The changes include:

Counter-Strike: Source
 

• Added map: de_prodigy - Yay
   
• Improved player movement against walls
   
• Improved choppy player movement when bouncing down slopes
   
• Purchase icon for defuser is shown
   
• Physics prop avoidance is scaled by the object's mass
   
• Detail prop fade distance can be controlled on a per-map basis with env_detail_controller
   
• Spectator GUI last mode is saved
   
• Added spectate player by name
   
• Grenades, weapons, etc., splash when they land in water
   
• Frag grenade deafness is delayed so the explosion is heard
   
• Fixed viewmodel lag
   
• Added consistency checking player model bounds
   
• Weapon reloads finish when the round restarts
   
• Autobuy and rebuy trigger a reload if you don't buy a primary weapon
   
• Rebuy doesn't drop pistols the player has picked up
   
• Dropped weapon ammo isn't lost if the player has another weapon using that ammo
   
• Re-added hostage hint messages
   
• Smoke grenade canisters fade out and are removed when smoke is dense
   
• Breakable glass is blown outward proportional to the damage received
   
• Soundscapes update for observers
   
• Fixed not being able to attach to ladder tops
   
• Misc fixes to spray import
  
   

Source Engine
 

• Fixed crash when trying to play an MP3 that doesn't exist or is an invalid format
   
• Fixed a crash when playing MP3 files with ID3 tags
   
• Fixed network being started early enough so UDP remote logging works
   
• World rendering optimisations
   
• Fixed problems with demo recording
   
• Added command "setinfo " to allow clients to add custom user info fields (creates a new cvar flagged as FCVAR_USERINFO)
   
• Enabled sv_downloadurl & sv_consistency on dedicated servers
   
• Fixed "kick " command via rcon if the name is surrounded by quotes
   
• Fixed bug in "logaddress_add" that wouldn't add the correct port if the port and address were surrounded by quotes
   
• Added "player_say" event for 3rd party plugins
   
• Fixed crash in dedicated servers when issuing a say before the map is run

Steam

* Source MODs will now automatically appear in the games list
* Improved startup process for Steam
* Fixed crash when creating a backup that would span multiple DVDs
* Fixed a bug that would unnecessarily validate Steam caches after a cache corruption
* Fixed Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes and Codename Gordon failing to backup correctly
* Fixed a bug where the message "the game files will be deleted and re-acquired" would repeat
* Fixed offline mode failing after not connecting to Steam for more than a month


Half-Life 2

* Optimization to the Steam filesystem to reduce game launch and level transition time


Source SDK

* Simplified debug-launch process for MOD developers. MOD developers no longer need to place a config file in their directory
* Added a registry key for MOD developers to use to locate a user's Steam installation located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\SourceModInstallPath

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
 

• New multiplayer game featuring physics simulation system

Half-Life 2/Source SDK
 

• Includes game code needed to create Half-Life 2/Source MODs
   
• Ability to edit Half-Life 2 maps
   
• Maya model exporter
   
• 3d Studio Max model exporter source code
   
• Sample MOD with vehicles
   

Source Updates
 

• HTTP and non-HTTP map auto downloading functionality
   
• Enhanced dedicated server logging capabilities
   
• Various tweaks and fixes

Restart Steam to apply as per usual.

"The changes in this release are directed at reducing the problem some users are experiencing with sound stuttering. The sound stuttering is not indicative of a sound problem, sound stuttering is only a symptom of texture thrashing on your video card or AGP memory. For information on how to reduce texture thrashing visit this link on our support site:

http://steampowered.custhelp.com...

This update will fix sound stuttering that users were experiencing that would last for longer than a few seconds during normal gameplay. This update will also eliminate this same behavior following a quicksave or autosave. There will still be a short pause while the autosave happens, but not the more drawn out stuttering behavior.

We are still investigating another performance problem on some hardware, which will manifest where the game is getting into a state where performance drops to less than 5 fps and does not recover or crashes.

Next week we will be releasing the Source SDK, along with a surprise for the community."

Wonder what the surprisig part is........