Half-Knife

There’s trolling, counter-trolling, and counter-counter-trolling. And then there’s “STFU about Half-Life 3 or I will cut you,” as Valve boss Gabe Newell seemed to say in this display of his knife collection. But what does it all mean?

https://lastchance.cc/this-isnt-a-confirmation-of-half-life-3-either-5876055%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

That’s where you guys come in with this week’s ‘Shop Contest challenge. Gabe is a regular ’round these parts, and we thank him for providing yet another opportunity. Not only are he and his dual-wield daggers ripe for the more-funny, that screen in the background provides a secondary exploitable. On a shops-itself scale, I’d judge this to be about a 7.5, just because Gabe’s pose isn’t easily manipulated into another background. But you’re creative folk and, hey, a major gaming personality bearing deadly weapons has got to be good for something.

Source Image: Gabe Newell and his knife collection not confirming Half-Life 3

You know the rules: The 20 best will get rounded up and published at the end of next Saturday. Meantime, I and the rest of the starred commentariat will approve and promote as many as we can so folks can see them and pass judgment.

This is your no-frills step-by-step procedure to participation in the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest.

1. Create your ‘Shop.

2. Upload it to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. It’s stupid simple. No account is necessary.

3. This is very important: You must use the URL of the image itself. In imgur, this is the second URL it gives you after you upload the image. It’s under “Direct Link (email & IM)”

4. At the beginning of the comments roll, click “Start a New Thread”

5. To the right of your name, select “Image.”

6. Paste the imgur URL in the image URL field. It’s the field that says “Image URL.”

7. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn’t, paste the image URL as a comment.

8. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. It will not upload to comments if it is over that size. What’s more, we’re getting reports that if your ‘Shop is more than 1000px tall (vertical), it won’t upload. If you’re getting the broken-image icon, try resizing to a smaller dimension.

Get it? Got it? Good, that’s great. Gentlemen, start your ‘shopping!