For general feedback about the game.
Steam SupportVisit the support site for any issues you may be having with the game or Steam.
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). I've outlined some of these below.
The Camper Van
This seemed like the likeliest form of transportation for a Sniper. Can you spot the pun? It's incredibly, unbelievably subtle.
The Payphone
Because sometimes it's nice to hear the sound of a loved one's voice, telling you they think you're a hired killer.
Beware of Headshots Sign
Sniper was on the payphone with City Hall for weeks after they put these up. How's a man supposed to get his job done?
The #1 Sniper Mug
It pays to advertise.
The Old Geezer
Once we'd added the camper van to the Meet the Sniper short, we thought it'd be funny to have something up on the dashboard. A bobblehead seemed like the obvious choice—anything with as big and targetable a noggin as that would be irresistible to Sniper.
Originally, we'd toyed with the idea of the bobblehead being a mascot from one of the many product signs dotting the landscape of the TF2 universe. Someone suggested the "Old Geezer" from Old Geezer beer, and a bobblehead model was born.
The word "apricot" is sniper terminology for the medulla oblongata, a "sweet spot" snipers aim for where the brain and brain stem meet. Hence the Old Geezer holding apricot brandy. During playtests, though, the apricot reference was discovered to be just a touch too obscure; more importantly, nobody had any idea who the old guy was. (Santa?)
We recast the model as the Civilian, an escort class from Team Fortress Classic and a far more recognizable figure to TF veterans. People no longer mistook the model for Santa. They were now convinced it was a bobblehead of Adolf Hitler. So we fixed the moustache and removed the red armbands. (Above.)
The apricot reference, meanwhile, became an air freshener. (Because once we latch onto a clever factoid, we really just don't let go.)
These models will all show up once you refresh the SDK content. Have fun!
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.
First off, a quick update on where we are with the character model and animation sources. After we got over our excitement of releasing them, we ran into a couple of problems:
As a result, it's taken a bit more work than we'd originally intended. And to make sure that the work is being done right, we decided it'd be best to get one model out, if only so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done. So today we're updating the Source SDK to include all the model and animation source for the Heavy. Take a look at it, and be sure to send us your thoughts.
Secondly, some community updates:
Finally, we've had a lot of requests to release the official set of "Ubercharged" avatars that Dhabih did for our internal TF2 clan. You can buff up your community profile by getting them from the Official TF2 Community page or grab the zip of them here.
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.
Meanwhile, everyone who took the moral high road will soon be finding a new hat in their inventory. We've also significantly increased the chance of finding any of the existing hats.
We realize there is a high level of demand for items, and we're still working on systems to allow you to find them in new ways (via Trading, and crafting duplicates into desired items). However, we need to draw the line at running external applications.
