One suggestion in the mean time to avoid the filter is to post a very short message first, then make an edit to that message with what you really want to say. This seems to work, and it prevents you from losing the epic post that took you 30 minutes to write. Also, CTRL-A and CTRL-C does wonders before you hit submit!

If one or more of your comments have gotten rejected by the system in recent times please do us a favor by chiming in here with a comment. We'd like to know what you were trying to post, and how you felt about having your comment scrapped by the system.

Comments are disabled on this news entry, please leave your comments on the review page itself.

I missed out on Trine, but I like the sequel’s visual aesthetic. What did you all think of the first one? Are any of you excited about Trine 2?

Valve continues to churn out frequent Dota 2 beta updates, with consistent new heroes, extra functionality, and numerous fixes. Today's update in particular really interests me, because it adds a new enforcement system which takes action against trash talkers automatically. This is on top of the already implemented leaver punishment system, which I've heard is working great.

Today’s update adds Warlock, a master of the Dark Arts and the only hero capable of summoning a mighty flaming golem.

Among a variety of other fixes and additions, today’s update also adds another step in our ongoing work to tackle community health. A couple of updates ago we released a report and commendation system. This has given us a bunch of data about the various ways that some players are helping or hurting the fun of other players. One theme we noticed was that there are some players out there who reduce other people’s fun through the communication channels, but at the same time receive commendations in other games for being good players to play with or against. So with this update we’re adding a system that detects players who are clearly reducing the fun of other players specifically through text and voice chat – and temporarily removes their ability to use those chat systems. Once they return to being additive to the community, they can re-earn that functionality. As usual, we’ll be paying careful attention to whether this makes the Dota world a better place, and you can send us your thoughts after seeing it in action.

You can read Today’s changelog here.

So I get up, start reading up on the comments in the Skryim review that Jube kindly published at embargo lift, and got to making some replies. Despite the major setback from the internet outage I was still happy with what went live. I was actually running a little short on time, but nothing to panic about. That is, until I received an urgent IM notification. Yep, she forgot to take out the garbage.

Normally I'd just wait until next week, but we had some serious nastiness brewing. I'm talking a whole chicken carcass from rotisserie night, some leftover apple cider which was bubbling up something f'ing nasty (the one gallon container was literally about to burst), and of course the special little presents our dog creates every morning which we collect in scooper bags that can never seem to just keep the smell locked away. So I scramble my ass to get everything out as quick as I can, only to see the garbage truck rolling away from our neighborhood.

Given the risk of leaving such vile funk in our garage for another week I decided chased the truck on foot, garbage toter dragging behind me. I'm running at a pace that would make my old high school wrestler self proud, and I'm waving my free arm like a freak while barking out to the truck which is obviously several times louder than my voice. The neighbors must have thought I was a madman, but damnit I was determined to get rid of my trash.

Once I realized the foot chase was futile I made the trek back home as quickly as possible, and managed to find the truck in another neighborhood by car. Talk about a nice guy, he agreed to come back! Now I think I finally understand why some folks give presents to those guys around the holidays, I think I might start doing it myself.

Random video for you guys today, Jube and I were having a laugh at this.

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,

Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.

We don't have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.

We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.

I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Gabe.

Comments closed, please leave any feedback you might have in the review thread. Thanks!

Ooooohhhhhhhhh! Steam is telling me that Skyrim unlocks today, I think last time I checked the estimate it gave me it should be about 10PM my time. I know a lot of you are waiting for all the launch day junk to work itself out, but I can't help myself, I've got it pre-loaded and I'm ready to rock. I've always been versions of humans in the Elder Scrolls games, I think I might finally reel in my prejudice and try out an Argonian or Khajiit.

As for play direction, I plan to immediately run as far off the beaten path as possible, and probably continue in this way until I get bored of not seeing any dragons, and then finally do some of the main quest to get that rolling. I'll probably go for the stealth class first, being a bow assassin with magical tendencies. Also I plan to fully exploit the skill system if possible, and constantly jump everywhere I go, or put something on my keyboard so I am sneaking into a wall near an enemy for two hours and get my sneak skill mastered - assuming they haven't fixed that this go around. What I won't do is make a magical armor set that gives me 100% chameleon, that's just not fair.

Let me know what your first three goals are going to be once you enter the land of Skyrim. Mine will be as follows - 1. Water walking shoes, 2. Buy a house, 3. Avoid getting married as long as possible.

Happy Skrimday/Thursday everyone, and if you're not going to be busy playing, I'm sure OhmWrecker will be giving you his impressions in the near future.

Also, what would you do if you came across the following in-game while playing Skyrim? Tell me what you'd do in the comments, and I'll reply with the result. It's like choose your own adventure, but more random!