Charlie Sheen has been going through difficult times lately, having been kicked off his TV show, and dealing with various drugs and hooker-related problems. But if you ask Mr. Sheen, all is fine — he’s still winning.

The guys over at Reddit unearthed an old science fiction B-movie starring Sheen, a movie called The Arrival. Sheen not only plays a scientist who discovers alien life (hint hint), but he looks remarkably like Half Life protagonist Gordon Freeman. Considering the movie was released in 1996, it could very well be the inspiration for Gordon Freeman — development of Half Life started in 1996.

It’s no secret that Valve is working on several projects at a time, but it’s a pretty big secret what those projects are. Besides Half Life 3, or Half Life 2 Episode 3, we dunno much of what’s going on, besides the occasional hats for Team Fortress 2.

But according to new evidence, the studio is working on a science fiction game with the codename “SOB”. From the recently leaked DOTA 2 code, there are several references to “ep3″, “cstrike2″, and “SOB”. According to one rumor, the SOB includes code references to “nebula”, “npc_ship”, “ship_guns”, “client_ship”, “flightplan”, “server_ship” and more. We’ve also gotten some concept art from one of Valve’s artists, who featured it on his website — the concept art of a space ship which you can see above.

The cake is not a lie! At least this Portal 2 themed cake, made by Redmond-based Mike’s Amazing Cakes. The Portal 2 cake is certainly one of the best looking gaming cakes we’ve seen in a while, but after all, it is made by a professional. Now all all we need to do is to have a little tasting to make sure the quality is up to Aperture Science standards. You hear us Mike? Send over a sample and testing will commence!

Valve founder and all around holy man Gabe Newell recently did a brief interview with Develop where he gave some advice to developers and those looking to get into the gaming business. Here’s what Newell had to say:

Do not focus on anyone but your customers. Your reputation will follow you forever so always be fair to your customers, and certainly one thing you need to always remember is that your customers are not going to be fooled.

Some people think they can get away with something and just hope people won’t see through the bullshit. The internet is way smarter than any of us.

In terms of business, do not take out huge advances to fund projects, because they are only loans and have strings attached.

Great advice, Gabe! Now, where the hell is Half Life 3?

Half Life protagonist Gordon Freeman carried a wide array of weapons, from the trusty crowbar, to rocket launchers, grenades, and what not. While most modern shooters today let you have only a few weapons, usually two main guns and a sidearm, older titles like Half Life let the player keep all weapons he finds throughout the game, hence the image of the real Gordon Freeman. We’d love to see how the real Duke Nukem looks like.

If there’s one game we’re all eagerly awaiting to see, it’s the next Half Life game. Whether it’s called “Episode 3″, or just “Half Life 3″, we wish Valve would announce something soon. And they may be closer to announcement that we think, as Half Life 3 t-shirts have been spotted being worn by a Valve employee at an industry event.

Now, this could be a hoax, it could be that the employee just got the t-shirt made for himself, it could be that it’s Valve trolling us — it could be a number of reasons why this doesn’t mean that Half Life 3 announcement is around the corner. But we really want it to be true.

Half Life 2 was released back in 2004, and got two small “sequels” in form of Episode 1 (2006) and Episode 2 (2007).

After a brief delay, developer Valve has launched the beta for its upcoming Counter-Strike Global Offensive multiplayer shooter. So far beta keys are available only in limited quantities, but there are plenty of players who have gotten some game time and uploaded videos. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is scheduled for release in early 2012 on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Valve is one of the most influential game companies on the market today. Much of this success can be attributed to the highly popular Half-Life series which they created. However, Half-Life isn’t the only game franchise they’ve created as they are also responsible for other hard hitters including Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress.

Team Fortress in particular is currently on its second iterations appropriately dubbed Team Fortress 2. Powered by the source engine Team Fortress 2 has been giving gamers a unique experience since 2007. However, perhaps you’ve been straying awawy from Team Fortress 2 due to the fact that you have to, well, pay for it.

Well then it seems that today is your lucky day as Valve has completely abolished the price tag associated with Team Fortress 2 and made it free to play. But, those who already purchased the game aren’t completely out of luck as they now have  Premium Account. These accounts allow you to do things like accure more items, mechanic blueprints and much more.

Now, stop reading this and go get playing.

Everyone loves Steam’s offers: what’s not to love about paying a meager $5 for an awesome game that cost $50 just a few months ago? Steam has launched a new recurring daily offer, which each day will discount one game. Steam is kicking off the deal with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, which is 75% off and now sells for just $5.

Steam has been running a variety of new offers lately, from their regular weekend deals, to mid-week deals (where they offer a game on Wednesday), to random deals throughout the week. Now with recurring daily deals, we have a reason to visit Steam every day. And Steam has even more reasons for getting our money, and they know it — Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising is currently downloading on my Steam now. Which probably means I’ll be wasting a lot of time this week. Darn you, Steam, darn you!

Sales charts have been a way of tracking how well games sold and compared against each others. Other than what publishers themselves had announced — which isn’t always as accurate as one thinks — sales numbers were often aggregated by sales trackers like NPD, who surveyed all the retailers and then tallied the sales numbers up.

But since digital distribution is getting a bigger and bigger slice of the pie (it’s expected to hit 50% this year), it becomes more and more difficult to get realistic sales numbers, because most of the digital distribution platforms don’t publish the numbers. Now Valve has said that they have no intentions of publishing sales date. Valve’s Steam manager Jason Holtman said,

“The point is, it’s not super important for a publisher or developer to know how well everyone is doing. What’s important to know is exactly how your game is doing — why it’s climbing and why it’s falling; your daily sales; your daily swing; your rewards for online campaign number three. That’s what we provide.”

Which sounds very good. But keep in mind that people have an ego, and they’d like to know whether they’re winning or losing against the competition.