It started off as a simple joke. A modder from Brisbane sent an email to Gabe Newell defaming the Valve boss for not inviting the modder to play L4D2, something Newell had done for the organizers behind the L4D2 boycott. Newell and the modder, named Joe, are friends, and through a series of responses got to the point that Joe started flygabenewell.blogspot.com, a site where you could donate for Joe to purchase a ticket for Newell to Brisbane to see Joe’s latest mod.

Confused yet? Well, there were a lot of commas in there. My apologies. As it turns out, though, Joe has actually accrued enough cash to fly Newell and L4D producer Erik Johnson down to Brisbane. All we’re waiting for is Newell’s acceptance.

No matter the outcome, it’s absolutely hilarious that Joe could raise enough money to do this. If Newell declines, Joe has decided to give the money to Child’s Play, a local charity, so everybody wins in the end. For Joe’s sake, I hope Gabe goes.

Since removing the achievement-based item system, Valve has had about all the grief they can handle from unruly players. Where the old system led to players creating achievement servers just to unlock the goodies, the new system made prevalent the use of idling programs to attain the items.

Well Valve’s not happy with that second situation. They don’t want you idling your way to glory any more than they want you hacking, so they’re removing the items attained by idlers, and giving non-cheating types a little reward. If you didn’t idle your way to items, check for a level 1 Halo in your inventory. The headpiece gives you a level 1 “Aura of Incorruptibility”

As for future cheating, Valve’s Erik Johnson says they will “adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system.” In other words, don’t do it.