Since the move to free-to-play, Team Fortress 2 has been moving from strength to strength — and they’ve now announced that over $10 million has been paid out to various item creators, map makers, and community contributors from around the world.

The staggering figure includes $250,000 paid out to the 60 creators of the items and maps in the entirely community-made Robotic Boogaloo Update from late last month.

Valve have announced that they’ve now improved the item submission tool, and any items submitted through it will be automatically checked against a set of standard to help ensure your item will meet their demands. Hit up the TF2 blog for more info.

It’s always good news when a bug or issue is corrected, but this one, it must be said, laves us a little heavy-hearted. If you’re a Team Fortress 2 aficionado (and if you’re not, well! This may well be the best place to find someone to bring you into the fold) you may have noticed some particularly stylish and fancy hats doing the rounds lately, possibly because they filled up your entire screen with errant particle effects.

In the latest patch notes, there’s a whole section on these extra unusual unusual effects:

Unusual effects:
• Attachment point and offset for particle effects on unusual hats can now be adjusted from the character loadout screen
• Fixed a bug that would cause unusual effects to float in the air over dead players
• Fixed a bug that would cause unusual effects to show incorrectly sometimes when spectating other players

Awww. Oh well. The working versions are still pretty sweet.

Source: TF2 blog via PC Gamer

Team Fortress 2: Robotic Booglaoo is the first major Team Fortress 2 update crafted entirely by community members – and ladies and gentlemen, it is a doozy. Admire the trailer below; check out this amazing gallery of artwork; read both pages of back story; and marvel in the fact that it even comes with a comic. A full list of all the contributors is available if you’d like to send some mad props.

Busy on Easter Monday evening? You are now! The first of our new regularly scheduled Team Fortress 2 Community Games Nights is set for Monday April 1 at 8:30 PM AEDT.

Much like our previous nights, head along to these servers…

games.on.net #001 – Community Games Night! (203.26.94.58:27015)
games.on.net #002 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.36:27015)
games.on.net #003 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.70:27015)

..to get in on all the action. Regular TF2‘er and forum-goer Cupcake has also put up a schedule all the way up until December, so head on over to the forum and check it out.

Valve’s flagship war-themed hat simulator Team Fortress 2 has been revealed to be gearing up for Oculus Rift support, with a VR patch expected shortly.

“This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in,” revealed Valve programmer Joe Ludwig to Endgadget.

Mac and Linux players will miss out however, until the Oculus SDK for those platforms is supplied to the company. “We don’t have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet,” said Ludwig, “but once we get those, we’ll get it ported over to those other platforms.” A patch for PC players is expected “sometime in the next couple of weeks” that will bring Oculus support.

Meanwhile, Oculus Rift’s site has revealed that the goggles will not ship with a VR-enabled copy of DOOM 3 as promised due to it not being finished by id Software in time. More details here.

Source: Endgadget

Crytek are moving heavily into the free-to-play market, and, naturally, one of their biggest competitors in that space is Team Fortress 2, which itself recently made the switch to F2P. Crytek’s CEO Cevat Yerli has revealed that he has concerns about the game requiring the purchase of items to compete.

“I kind of think it’s a 70% free to play title,” he said to PCGamesN. “It’s on the way to be there, it’s a good model and it works for them, but there is still pay to win there and I don’t like that.”

“There’s some great experiment there, with user-generated content, but you buy items. You have to buy items.”

Yerli also explained how he believes a free-to-play game should be entirely free, not have any spaces locked off. “A free to play game doesn’t allow you to sell items,” he said. “This is the issue I have with that. We would allow communities to create items for virtual currency, but you can’t really go with commercial items because that’s pay to win. So that’s why I’m saying I’m disapproving of the concept of Team Fortress 2, because that is effectively not quite free to play.”

“The only thing that’s free-to-play there is they I can just go into the game and play it. But there’s a piece of game I can’t access without spending money.”

Source: PCGamesN

After the rousing success of our first Community Games Night, our regulars have got together and organised for another one! And we are of course only too happy to bring it to your attention.

So! Tonight, Monday the 18th, starting at 8:30 PM AEDT, you can enjoy hot, hot Team Fortress 2 action on the following servers:

games.on.net #001 – Community Games Night! (203.26.94.58:27015)
games.on.net #002 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.36:27015)
games.on.net #003 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.70:27015)

Remember, all-talk will be turned on and staff and admins will be popping in to share the fun. Come and join us for some guaranteed good times!

Our very first community games night is happening, tonight!

From 8:30 PM Sydney/Melbourne Time we’ll be all piling onto three dedicated 24-slot servers and shooting each other in the face with all sorts of outrageous Team Fortress 2 weaponry. The servers you need are:

games.on.net #001 – Community Games Night! (203.26.94.58:27015)
games.on.net #002 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.36:27015)
games.on.net #003 – Community Games Night! (203.34.186.70:27015)

Remember, all-talk will be turned on and staff and admins will be popping in to share the fun. Come and join us for some guaranteed good times!

As we outlined in our roadmap, 2013 will see the kick-off of regular Community Game Nights — and our first one is coming up on Monday, February 4.

To start off this fine new tradition we’ll be running with an old favourite: Team Fortress 2. Special servers will be set aside for the occasion, with the festivities taking off from 8:30 PM EST that night. Pencil it in your diaries! Then, grab a pen, and write over the pencil because you will be there.

We’ll have all-talk turned on and admins and staff members of all kinds jumping in, so put some time aside and watch this space for more details on what server to join. And get TF2 up to date, if you haven’t already! You monster.

Valve has announced that nine Team Fortress 2 hats are to be withdrawn from sale, crate drops and crafting. According to Mann Co, a freak incident involving mayonnaise and raccoons means that current stocks of the Batter’s Helmet, Soldier’s Stash, Pyro’s Beanie, Demoman’s ‘Fro, Football Helmet, Mining Light, Prussian Pickelhaube, Trophy Belt and Fancy Fedora are gone … they’re gone forever. You have just two weeks to get hold of these historical items by any means.

What makes all this particularly interesting is that Team Fortress 2 is kind of a flagship for experimental free-to-play economies; Valve has its own on-staff economist to study the weird and wonderful things the shooter produces. What happens when a virtual item becomes rare? Should be fun to watch.

Source: TF2 Blog via PCGamesN

Or should I say, come Smissmas: the official, Mann. Co-approved TF2-Christmas. But nevertheless, it’s coming, and it’s been unveiled today: The Mecha-Update will bring a new robotic Engineer to Mann vs. Machine mode.

“These Grinch-like Smissmas cakewalk destroyers can skip huge areas of the path with their teleporting ability,” writes the update site, “and also teleport other robots forward instantly with their ‘telling other robots about the teleporter’ ability.” So that’s something to worry about, especially since there’s going to be a new, bigger MvM map by the name of ‘Big Rock’ to worry about fighting them on.

Three new weapons are also being deployed: a new shotgun for the Engineer called ‘The Rescue Ranger’, a new grenade launcher for the Demoman called ‘The Loose Cannon’ and a new medigun for the Medic called ‘The Vaccinator’. Naughty and Nice Crates will also return, but only until January 3rd.

In the meantime, why not read this delightful new comic?

“As part of our ongoing efforts to gradually phase out all Earth money in favor of Team Fortress hats, we’re kicking off the TF2-only beta of our new Steam Community Market,” reads the official Team Fortress 2 blog.

Check out the FAQ over here for more info.

Source: Team Fortress 2