Today Valve announced it will no longer be accepting Bitcoin as currency on the Steam store.

This follows a series of rapid Bitcoin growth. After recently tipping the $US10,000US mark in late November, Bitcoin lost approximately 20% of its value, but promptly fought back. Roughly one week later Bitcoin is sitting at $US13,000.

In truth, 2016 was not "The Year of VR." It was the year of the start of VR. Multiple major tech companies released impressive VR systems that were clearly the first of their kind; flawed and fascinating, destined to be improved upon and replaced. The age of immersive technology is upon us, but its future remains uncertain.

Travelling can be fun but it can also be incredibly expensive. Why not do it through virtual reality (VR)? Valve is releasing its Destination Workshop Tool, a VR content creation software that allows designers to create and share both real and imaginary worlds with the public.

Bitcoin is an interesting, if complicated way to store and spend money. If you have a stash laying around, Valve will now take it off your hands in exchange for sweet deals on games.

We've talked before about how Valve is obliged to provide refunds for non-functioning games purchased on Steam under Australian consumer law, but actually getting the company to cough up has proved difficult for buyers. That might become a little easier with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) taking Valve to court over its stance.

SteamOS has been available for a while in a less-than-complete state, for those who want to try it out and provide feedback to the developers. But just recently, Valve has unlocked the two most in-demand features: dual-booting, and streaming. The latter can be used as your own in-house cloud gaming setup.

Last month, Valve made a rather generous offer to genuine developers of the Linux-derived Debian operating system: drop us a line and we'll give you the entire library of Steam games free. Unsurprisingly, such a juicy offer has had its share of scam attempts, though you can rest assured that the offer is being well policed.