Team Fortress 2

Those of you who pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2 (for PC on Steam or at participating retailers) now have exclusive access to the momentous event they said would never happen. For the first time in history, two separate Valve universes collide. That's right: it's a Left 4 Dead/Team Fortress crossover! This is not fan fiction! This is not a dream sequence! The characters from Team Fortress 2 will team-up with Bill's hat from Left 4 Dead 1!

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The good news is that yesterday's $2.50 sale saved the company. The bad news for our bean counters is that, as a "thank you" from all of us on the TF team, we're rolling back prices like it's Thursday. That's right — Team Fortress 2 is BACK ON SALE at its original, company-busting Thursday Super Sale of the Century price of just $2.49! But only until 1:00pm PDT! And this is the last time we're doing this! There will be no more sales!

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Remember yesterday when Team Fortress 2 was on sale for the ridiculous, mathematically-basically-zero price of $2.49? According to the bean counters, we're now broke. Man, what were we thinking? Anyway, in a desperate attempt to move some units, make up the shortfall, and save the company, TEAM FORTRESS 2 IS ON SALE FOR $2.50 UNTIL 7PM PDT!

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The Powers That Be have instructed me to pen another dispatch for you unfortunates. How many goddamn words do you people need? In my day you wrote just enough words to convey meaning: "Secure that damn hill." "I will have more sausages." "This man spoke trash and I strangled him." Today's writing is complicated and has to mean two things at the same time, or it won't win writing awards. Double intendreys. Metafores. If I meet the Billy Shakespeare who came up with that nancy-assed garbage, I will bury my war-foot so far up his ass it will be a foot and a half up his ass.

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At ease, you wastes of skin. The Powers That Be have commanded me to write another short missive—I'm told it will be broadcast on some manner of punch-card tube machine and read by the thin, stupid youth of today, who evidently ignored my past instructions to stop wasting their lives and do more push-ups.

When I inquired what this missive should contain, I was instructed only that it had something to do with an upcoming pagan moon worship festival, and that it should be "terrifying". Evidently, the youth of today enjoy being scared. Why? Because you don't know what real fear is. Get out a pen and write this in your poem books: I have personally killed 6,078 men in cold blood while looking them in the eye; jumped on 1,455 live grenades; and stuffed fourteen feet of my own intestine back into my stomach. If that doesn't scare you out of your frilly pink leotards, guess what: You are an idiot and you hate America. The next time you visit your grandfather, take out your ipoot headbuds, pull up your goddamn pants, and ask him what a war is. If you're not standing in a puddle of your own Jarate by the time he's finished talking, you should ask him to start over, because you weren't paying attention.

So listen up! An update will arrive later today. There will be ghosts! There will be exploding pumpkins! You will receive achievements and candy prizes! And by God you will be frightened by it or I will give you something to be frightened about!

Click this link to read more about The Terrifying Team Fortress Haunted Hallowe'en Special!

- The Soldier

With work on Left 4 Dead 2 calming down for us a bit, we were able to finish up something we promised you a while back—gathering up all the source files for the character models and getting them online. This'll hopefully let you guys get a lot more creative out there with your fan-made content. (We can't wait to see it.)

We've also gotten a lot of requests for models and props from the Meet the Team shorts. So we're happy to announce we've released the first set, from Meet the Sniper (note that these were made for the movies, and haven't been optimized for performance in maps, so keep that in mind).

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Patent Pending: #1308 - "GUARD DOG"

As with the first Left 4 Dead game, most of the TF2 team has moved over to help out Left 4 Dead 2 get through its final shipping steps. This time around, though, we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates. We've been a bit slow on updating here, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about, so we might as well jump right in.

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Over the next few days we'll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications. We're going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system. Due to us not having a policy in place prior to today, this time we're only removing the items earned through cheating the system. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items. If you're interested, only about 4.5% of the players in TF2's community will be affected by this cleansing process.

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We thought you might be interested in seeing some of the "behind the scenes" work that goes on in Team Fortress 2. The process usually starts with a team discussion: This helps us determine the goals of the map we're going to build. In this case, we wanted a game mode that had an intense, centralized experience with quick player turnaround. We liked some of the facets of Arena mode, but it was clear that many players don't like to wait for the next round to play.

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Go check it out, and keep your eyes peeled for goodies!

*Has probably already been done by someone in the TF2 community. Please don't sue us.

I would like to thank you for emailing us to point out that Viaduct is not the first TF2 map to feature snow. More importantly, I would like to thank you for stopping.

Immediately.

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