Announcing the Winners of the Valve Design Contest!

We’re excited to announce the winners of our Valve Design Contest!

After starting our landmark partnership with Valve, we wanted to find and discover the best Valve-inspired products created by the community. The results blew us away! You made 400 designs available for sale using the Valve IP partnership, and we worked with Valve to choose some of our favorites.

The grand prize winner stands to win a coveted Team Fortress® 2 Grey Medic statue and $500 in Shapeways printing credit (watch the unboxing video of it arriving at the office here). The four additional runners up will take home other Team Fortress® 2 statues, plus $100 in Shapeways printing credit. Both the grand prize winner and all runners up will also receive the Team Fortress® 2 soundtrack on both CD and LP.

And now, drum roll please:

1st Prize: TF:2 Team Ring

This ring by longtime Shapeways member Universe Becoming celebrates the camaraderie of a team. It’s based on the first-person shooter Team Fortress® 2. The circles contain the logos of the nine emblems that represent the nine different classes in the game. Universe Becoming went above and beyond by taking a beautiful photo to show off the gorgeous polished silver finish.

1st Runner Up: Companion Cube Polyhedral 7-Dice Set

Our first runner up prize goes to this set of Portal® Companion Cube-Inspired polyhedral dice by Tiny Tokens. This set is perfect for tabletop gamers looking to enrich their RPG game with a little science. Our favorite weighted inanimate object may have started as a cube, but Tiny Tokens did a brilliant job translating it into the other platonic shapes. Check out Tiny Tokens’ full collection of Companion Cube products in his shop.

2nd Runner Up: Counter-Strike: GO ® Pocket Dust II: A Site

Third prize goes to an awesome representation of one of the most famous maps in gaming. Counter-Strike: GO ® Pocket Dust II: A Site by Mechvoid Arsenal brings the detail and character of this classic Counter-Strike® site to a miniature scale.

3rd Runner Up: Portal® ID Card Holder

The third Runner Up prize goes to MyGadgetLife for this fun Portal® ID Card Holder. Beautifully constructed and instantly recognizable. But, as designer Steven Gray notes, “Aperture security pass not included.”

4th Runner Up: Psychobob Arts’ Team Fortress ® 2 Sentry Turrets

Team Fortress ® 2 Sentry Turret (Level 3) by Psychobob Arts

The fourth and final Runner Up prize goes to Psychobob Arts for their totally awesome set of Team Fortress ® 2 sentry turrets. What truly makes these special is the way the sentry can be upgraded physically to its different levels, and the lovely paint job Psychobob Arts did for each one. This model is a fantastic example of translating objects that originally existed only in a virtual world in the physical one.

Thank you everyone for participating in the contest and helping make this partnership launch such a success. We love all the inspiring work we’ve seen entered in the Valve Design Contest and we can’t wait to see what you’ll continue to create!