TF Team

For general feedback about the game.

Steam Support

Visit the support site for any issues you may be having with the game or Steam.

The Australian Christmas Update... UPDATE!

December 21, 2011 - TF2 Team

With all the hustle and busty fustle of Australian Christmas, you probably thought we forgot the most important part of it: The gift-giving. Well, we didn't forget. We were hoping you would. But you didn't--you guys are sharp! So get your Gift-Gettin' Pants on, because you are about to get gifts, and we'd prefer you were wearing pants for it.

GIFTED! All the community items previously only available in the Nice Crates are now craftable, droppable, and available in all the ways you're used to getting them!

ALSO THIS GIFT! A free Secret Saxton for every premium account!

DUCK! GIFT COMIN' ATCHA! To acknowledge all you generous souls who've been handing out Secret Saxtons and piles of gifts since the formation of the TF economy, everybody is receiving a Spirit of Giving badge. It's a plate-sized x-ray illustrating to your peers exactly how big your heart is, and consequently, what a good person you are. You—and more importantly, everybody else—will actually be able to see your heart grow over time depending how many gifts you're giving. We strapped an actual decommissioned Soviet-era x-ray machine to several team members' chests, and trust us, the science checks out: The people in our experiment with the biggest hearts were in fact the nicest guys on staff. How do we know? You should have seen how many people showed up at their funerals.

STOCKING STUFFER! In an effort to get the gift-giving juices flowing, we've made every map as Smissmassy as possible by wrapping lights around every rope!

BUT THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL... was inside you all along. It's blood! Turns out you can sell it! See you at the plasma center! Merry Smissmas, everybody!

The Australian Christmas Update
is HERE!

December 15, 2011 - TF2 Team

Board up your chimneys! Bury your milk and cookies in the yard! Load your shotguns and stuff all of your turkeys! Part 2 of the update has been announced and the update is now live. In case you missed out on Part 1 of the announcement, check it out now.

"Wait, which holiday?" you may be wondering. "Australian Christmas? Or Smissmas?" Both! Read this comic to find out what happens when holidays collide! Two special days enter the squared circle! ONLY ONE LEAVES!

In the spirit of Australian Christmas/Smissmas/Your Holiday Here, we'd like to give a few shout-outs to all the hardworking boys and girls who made this update possible. First, a big thanks to all our community holiday item creators. Thanks also to the Dr. Grordbort guys for their cool retro-futuristic Engie and Pyro weapons. If you think they look nice in-game, wait'll you see their real-life equivalents, on sale right now at drgrordborts.com!

Happy Australian Christmas Eve

December 14, 2011 - TF2 Team

As strongly implied in yesterday's educational Australian Christmas comic, Dr. Grordbort has once again landed a steam-powered rocket directly into the gravelly fields of the TF2niverse. Only this time the rocket's a little roomier, and has arrived bearing gifts for two classes, the Engineer and the Pyro.

Click here for Part One of our Australian Christmas Update Announcement, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Announcement Part Two and, more importantly, the update itself.

Just because the update’s coming tomorrow doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be playing RIGHT NOW, because guess what: Double drop rates start tonight! They’re only around until next Wednesday, so get in there and take advantage of all the double dropping!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Australian Christmas

December 13, 2011 - TF2 Team

What is the true meaning of Australian Christmas? Some say it is a hamfisted attempt by the Australian government to turn a notorious felon into a beloved folk hero. Others say it's a calculated ploy by the novelty munitions industry to sell guns that shoot mistletoe.

And then there are those who look past all that, and maintain that it is a time to reconnect with friends and loved ones, and to be thankful for the blessings in our lives.

And then there are those who are still licking their emotional wounds from all the reconnecting with friends and loved ones they did at Thanksgiving, and realize that the true true meaning of Australian Christmas is zero human contact, eating candy, and getting as many presents as possible.

And those people are correct—that is the true meaning of Australian Christmas. We looked it up.

But don't take our word for it. Ask the Engineer.

Mann Co. Spotlight Items

December 1, 2011 - TF2 Team

Today, we're introducing a new item from the Steam Workshop, voted on by the community and buyable by everyone. The “Itsy Bitsy Spyer” is a miniature Spy voodoo doll that clips onto the Engineer's belt. It's featured in our Mann Co. Spotlight box at the immediate right of this post!

And for you traders out there, there's a link right underneath the Spotlight item that'll let you buy keys without going into the game. Plus, we’ve removed the three-day trading cooldown for anyone whose first Steam purchase was 30 days ago or more.

All of which brings us to the last new feature we're introducing today: "Buy Now" links that you can create for any item and embed anywhere. Visit the FAQ for more details!

We want holiday-themed community items!

November 14, 2011 - TF2 Team

Update: The deadline for holiday-themed item submissions is this Friday Dec. 2 at 4:53pm PST. Any items submitted to the Workshop after this time will not be eligible to be included in this year’s holiday update.



It's that special time of mid-November, where nothing is special yet, but you can feel the tingle of impending specialness right around the corner. All the signs are there. When you kill a man, you can actually see his last breath hanging in the chill mid-November pre-specialness air. Turkeys have retreated to their bunkers in a vain attempt to weather the upcoming onslaught of holidays devoted to gleeful turkey slaughter. And are those sleighbells we hear? Because our legal department assures us they aren't. That's right, TFers. It's beginning to look a lot like an upcoming holiday our legal department won't let us mention, but that rhymes with "Smissmas".

Everywhere, that is, except in our item submission queue, where there doesn't seem to be any Smissmas joy at all. No Smissmas trees. No smazzletoe. Not even a smamukkah bush, which is a different holiday we can't mention but would also have been acceptable.

So it's up to you, item crafters! You've got until December 1st to have your hearts grow three sizes, be visited by spirits in the night, and get in the Smissmas spirit by submitting holiday-themed items to the Steam Workshop. What holiday? Your guess is as good as ours!

Merry Bazzlebarp, everybody!

Vote Now! Help Me Beat Up a Doctor!

November 7, 2011 - Saxton Hale

First order of business: Some DAMNED WEBSITE is asking any know-nothing mope with a keyboard and an opinion the preposterously self-evident question of whether I can BEAT UP A DOCTOR IN A FIGHT. Let's put aside that unlike with Mann Co., when a customer isn't wholly satisfied with a doctor's services, the doctor won't even CHALLENGE THAT CUSTOMER TO A FIGHT. In fact, he CAN'T challenge that customer to a fight, since doctors take a cringing oath of cowardice to "do no harm". Let's also put aside the fact that this contest doesn't even specify what SORT of fight this doctor and I would would be engaged in. (Let me answer that: A VERY SHORT ONE.)

Let's ignore all that and stick to the facts: I have PERSONALLY MANSLAUGHTERED 1,593 physicians in various forms of unarmed and/or unwilling combat, and let me tell you, that statistic carries a lot of weight at the doctor's office. Let's just say a "Beaten to Death in the Head by Fists" can turn into a "Natural Causes" on a coroner's report PRETTY FAST when you're cracking the right knuckles at the right people.

Still, if some online poll insists on propagating lies that I can be bested in fisticuffs by any Scottish-Japanese doctor who wants to throw on a ski mask, then I must turn to YOU, the fine customers of Mann Co.'s top-notch line of occasionally combustible products, to PUT THAT LIE TO REST. Click here, and RIGHT an INTERNET WRONG with your FINGER-FIST.

In other news, one of you FINALLY REMEMBERED that the U.S. postal service is a THING THAT EXISTS and answered the conundrum I posed during the Manniversary update about making an ostrich disappear:



Thank you, PVO, for your (relatively) prompt reply. Far too late to be useful, of course, as the police knocked in the door to my office weeks ago and I was forced to think on the spot (I ate the ostrich). But you get a hearty Mann Co. RELAXED-FIST CLAPPING SOUND for your inventive solution to my problem.

I have manslaughtered 1,593 physicians,

Saxton Hale

Enter... MONOCULUS!... AGAIN!

November 2, 2011 - TF2 Team

Monoculus is tough for a floating eyeball with no big arms to slap you around with. But apparently he's no match for the TF2 community's passion and ability to kill floating eyeballs.

To up the ante, and to challenge those of you who can best Monoculus with one eye tied behind your back, now every time he is defeated, he becomes tougher when he respawns. Go get him! And remember, if he defeats you, it's considered proper etiquette to push away from your computer, ball up your fist, shake it at the ceiling, and shout "MONOCULUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS!" as loudly as you can. Don't worry about the police showing up. Well, worry inasmuch as they probably will show up. But once you explain the rules of etiquette to them, they'll likely understand.

Gift Abuse: The Gift That Keeps on Abusing

November 2, 2011 - The Administrator

I was enjoying my only hour off of the year, in the park feeding pigeons, when Miss Pauling called and notified me there was an issue in need of prompt resolution: gift abuse. Apparently some game servers are abusing the system and making the gift system unfair.

Nothing stokes my ire like a cheater. Deception, duplicity, murder -- these are merely tools in a toolbox one can use to ensure a job done well. But cheating? I cannot even wrap my head around the point of it. Wouldn't you know you had cheated? How on Earth could you maintain crisp certainty of your superiority to all others? And if you're unable to do that, what's the point of anything?

At any rate, I have already taken action against several servers and will continue to monitor the situation and revoke privileges -- with prompt relish, I assure you -- from abusive server operators. I will also be monitoring the in-game Abuse Reporting Tool, which you can and should use at any time to report abusive players and servers by pressing F7. Don't think of it as snitching. Think of it as making the world a better place. One where you can more fairly estimate how much better you are than your contemporaries.

Well, I'm off to enjoy the last ten minutes of my annual hour-long vacation. When I left the pigeons I had already managed to split them into warring factions and planted seeds of doubt about the capabilities of their pigeon leaders, so I'm interested to see how things play out once I take away all of their bread.

Scream Fortress Very Scary Halloween Special

October 27, 2011 - TF2 Team

Welcome—IF YOU DARE—to the Third Annual Scream Fortress Very Scary Halloween Special!



Let us be frank with you: Last year's special was pretty darn terrifying, even by our impossibly high standard of scary. To cite just one example: Dracula was taken to the hospital after witnessing just the loading screen of last year's update. That's not Terry Dracula your greengrocer, either. This is the Dracula we’re talking about. And if it scared Dracula, who eats ghosts and craps Frankensteins, we shudder to imagine what it must have done to you.

As an apology, we’re debating taking all of the scares out of this year's Halloween Special. For instance, one playtester thought the Pyro was a little scary, so we’ll probably remove him as a class. Someone else swore he remembered reading something about somebody getting hurt by a gun once. And that sounded scary. So probably no more guns, either. Then Dracula called from the hospital. "Hey guys," he said, "hats are pretty scary." Well, now, that must have been the morphine talking. So we’re adding more hats just to be safe.

Long story short, we guarantee you that nothing's going to scare you this year. There will be no ENORMOUS HAUNTED EYEBALL to terrorize you around an island filled with tons of SECRET LOOT, and a GIANT SKULL! There will be approximately zero percent chance of you getting your trembling hands on a spooky costume FOR EVERY CLASS! And we certainly wouldn't DRAMATIZE THE BACKSTORY of this hypothetical scary update with a FEAR-CHOKED TERROR-COMIC!

No, dear reader, we wouldn't do any of these things. Why? Because we're MUMMIES! Mummies can't make updates, we live in pyramids! What are you, insane? For the answer to that question, keep reading:

YES! YOU ARE!* TWIST ENDING!

* You went insane back in the second paragraph! YOU actually wrote this blog post! The only thing that isn't a figment of your imagination is THIS UPDATE! TWIST FOOTNOTE!

Note: The random gift drops and loot are only enabled on game servers with registered accounts. The easiest way to make sure you are playing on a registered server is to use the "Start Playing" button in the main menu of the game.

Enter… MONOCULUS!

October 27, 2011 - TF2 Team

There are some questions in the TF universe--questions like "Is Pyro a boy or a girl?" or "Who will be the tenth class?"--that get asked so often that they become, in a sense, unanswerable.

Then there are the questions nobody has thought to ask. Questions like, "Every time you explain something supernatural in TF2 you say the Soldier angered a magician. Who is the magician?" Questions like, "If the TF mercs went out trick or treating, what costumes would they wear?"



These are the questions we ask, because unlike those other questions, these ones we have an answer to. Answers like, "His name is Merasmus the Magician, and he's in a Halloween comic!" Answers like, "The TF mercs would wear awesome costumes that you can pick up by collecting scattered gifts in the Halloween update--which will be live very soon!"

Update on the Halloween Update

October 21, 2011 - TF2 Team

Halloween is almost upon us, and for those of you who don't have an irrational fear of Presidents' Day, it's the scariest time of the year. This morning, we were reviewing this year's Third Annual Scream Fortress Halloween Update, and we realized that it is probably too scary. Scratch that - it's definitely too scary. This much concentrated terror would be like throwing you into the deep end of a pool... With no lifeguard on duty! [sound of lightning hitting a bat] But then, oh thank God, here comes a lifeguard. Sayyyy, he looks familiar. OH MY GOD it's Dracula! No wait, it's even worse! It's legendary Hollywood triple threat, Ethan Hawke! Acting! Directing! Writing! But not swimming! Everyone knows he can't swim! What monster would hire Ethan Hawke to be a lifeguard? Does this cursed rec center not have ANY lifeguard hiring oversight committee? IT DOES NOT! AWOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The point is, if we don't let all of TF's new players dip their trembling pinky toes into the shallow end of the blood pool before we unleash next week's scare-credible Third Annual Scream Fortress Halloween Update, they would drown in their body's own terror juices. So, for the next few days, revisit stately Mann Manor. Listen closely! What's that you hear? Is it the clip clop of haunted hoofs? Nope. It's the terrifying, completely foot-generated clomping of the Horseless Headless Horseman! He's come to steal your soul! And, if you have one, your horse! Brace yourselves to see the new update next week. Of course, we won't be seeing anything... Because WE JUST ATE OUR OWN EYEBALLS! TWIST BLOG POST ENDING!

Surprise Manniversary
Update and Sale

October 13, 2011 - TF2 Team

A couple days ago we mentioned a "major project" we were working on that we promised to keep you updated on in the weeks and months ahead. Well, here's an update: It's done! Suck it, Valve Time.

That's right, folks. The Steam Workshop is live! What is it? An improved submission hub for community-created content that makes it easy for you to upload entries, check on their status and get feedback from us at Valve. Also, the TF community will be able to look at, comment on, and rate all item submissions in a single place.

But that's not all. The in-game Mann Co. Store turned a year old today. In just 365 days, item-creators have made more than $2,000,000 in profit from their creations. In celebration, we're releasing the massive Manniversary Update and Sale! What's included in it? Holy crap, try to think of something that’s not included in it. Check out all the new features, items and improvements.

Almost everything is on sale between now and Monday, October 17th, so limber up your buying finger, and don't forget that any store purchase automatically upgrades a Free account to a Premium.

Happy Manniversary, everybody!

Making of a Skull Hat

October 11, 2011 - Bay Raitt

If you played the "Halloween Manor" event last year, you may recognize this spine-chilling skull hat. What you probably don't recognize is the terrifying secret process I used to create it. Well, brace yourselves for a Halloween-themed learning nightmare, because this step-by-silent-Dracula-step guide is about to reveal all the gory details of hat making.



I thought this already existing noisemaker image would make a good starting point for a Halloween skull hat.



I converted the image into a 3D shape so I could sculpt on it. But after getting it to this rough point, I realized it was too close to the Spy's existing paper masks, so I decided to restart and try it as a helmet instead.



I bent the shape onto a sphere and sculpted quickly using a pressure sensitive pen. We like to try a lot of ideas, so it’s good to work fast and loose, since most of these ideas end up not working out.



Even though the sculpt is a bit messy at this point, it’s good to take it all the way to the game to make sure there isn’t some unforeseen problem.



Using a topology tool, I drew a new polygon mesh* over the top of the sculpt.

*Keeping the polycount low is critical for maintaining a decent framerate once the object is in-game. A high resolution sculpt can be as expensive to render as the entire rest of the game! We try to keep hats under 1,000 polygons, and weapons under 6,500.



Next, I laid the polygon mesh out flat like a bear skin rug so I could texture it. In this case, the textures were created using flat colors with a rendered ambient occlusion pass layered on top.



I compared the low polygon mesh against the sculpt to create a normal map.



I skinned the mesh to the hat joint, and then placed it on each of the different characters to see how it fit.



At this point, I decided it'd look cooler with some horns. I made a few variations and passed them around the team to figure out which one was everyone's favorite.



This was the winner.



I then tested the hat on each of the characters using the in-game itemtest feature.



Everything looked good to go, so I created an icon and put it in the store! Players can now wear the Spine Chilling Skull in-game. If this was a community-made item, the money from item sales would get split between Valve and the item maker!



The TF2 team has just started working on an improved item submission process that will make it easier for community creators to test, share and track the status of their creations. The new system will allow the entire TF community to participate by browsing, rating and giving feedback on all submitted items. It's a major project, but we promise to keep you updated on our progress.

Steam Trading: Out of Beta and available to everyone!

September 6, 2011 - TF2 Team

It seems like just yesterday that we announced the Steam Trading Beta on the Team Fortress blog. That's when we looked it up and discovered we actually announced that four weeks ago, and over one million items and game gifts have been traded by beta testers since then. And that's pretty inspiring. Also, frankly, terrifying. Because when we say it felt like yesterday when we announced that, we mean we literally have no memory of anything from that blog post up until the entire TF2 team woke up in a tub filled with ice cubes this morning. We can't pinpoint specifically which organs we're missing, so we figure our best bet is just to play out the day and see if anything jumps out as different (no heartbeat, inability to go to the bathroom, missing circulatory system, etc.).

At any rate, as of today Steam Trading is officially out of beta, in the Steamworks SDK, and available to everyone. Two new games will now have tradable in-game items: Spiral Knights, the cooperative adventure from Three Rings and Sega, and our own Portal 2. And remember, this is just the beginning. We can't wait to see what our fellow gamers and developers are going to come up with to move Steam Trading forward.

To celebrate, items are on sale in the Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Spiral Knights in-game stores.

If you've gotten this far into this blog post and still have no idea what we're talking about, don't sweat it: There's an entire Steam Trading FAQ online to answer any questions you might have.

If, however, you've gotten this far into this blog post and have no idea what we're talking about because you woke up in an ice-filled tub this morning, and are wondering whether that queasy feeling you're having means you "have an upset stomach" or "are liverless", please get in touch with us, because we'd like to compare notes.