Our latest challenge is a no-brainer. One would think its subject, Half-Life 3 is a no-brainer too, but Valve's still making us wait on that. This week, some hippies Canadians got a little tired of the foot-dragging and staged a protest outside Valve HQ, giving us four very exploitable images. We may have to expand the finalist field to 40 for this one.
Go to town. This one really should need no instruction, nor does it require any rules. Given the subject, the images and the fact Gabe Newell is involved, I implicitly trust your judgment and your ability to bring the funny here. All of the images are in that gallery above. Remember to click on the magnifying glass in the lower right-hand corner to embiggen them for your 'shopping purposes.
Now the clerk shall make the third reading of the bill "The Sense of the Senate Regarding Participating in 'Shop Contests."
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.
As an added inducement, I want to let you know I do star commenters who send in worthy/funny submissions - whether or not they're chosen for the final 20. This may not happen immediately. I usually start rounding up a gallery by the middle of the week. This is my subjective call, but I do want to recognize as many contributors as possible, and show gratitude for making this such a popular feature on weekends.
Now, Gentlemen, start your 'shopping!
You can contact Owen Good, the author of this post, at owen@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.