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Tag: Team Fortress 2

  • New Update Hitting Team Fortress 2 Was Made Entirely By Fans

    Valve loves its fans, and fans love Valve right back. This relationship has led to some amazing things, with the latest being Team Fortress 2: Robotic Boogaloo.

    Team Fortress 2: Robotic Boogaloo is a new update hitting the popular free-to-play shooter with content that was made entirely by fans for fans.

    Here’s the official word from Valve:

    This update is 100% created by the TF2 community. And when we say everything, we mean everything—the in-game content, the update hub website, the animated short, the comic, even the splash images in the Steam store. Even better, everything you created avoided the classic trap of using other companies’ intellectual property. (Those of you working on a Darth Vader Pyro mask, we’ve got some bad news for you.) Plus, in a first for the Team Fortress economy, all the creators of the Robotic Boogaloo Update have decided to share the revenue earned from the sale of RoboCrate Keys. That means that everyone involved will be profiting from this update, not just the people making hats.

    Those concerned about Valve stepping back from Team Fortress 2 development need not worry. Valve says that its own content will co-exist with fan-developed content from here on out.

  • Team Fortress 2 Invades Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed On The PC

    By most accounts, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is one of the better kart racers in recent memory. It’s hard to see how the developers, Sumo Digital, could make the game any better, but make it better they did.

    Sega announced today that the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformer has a few nice bonuses for those who were waiting for this specific release. Valve has partnered with Sega to include characters from Team Fortress 2 in the racer. Not every character were invited to the races, however, as it’s just the Heavy, Pyro and Spy who pilot different transformations of the same vehicle.

    Alongside the characters from Team Fortress 2, the PC version of the title will include two other characters from Sega’s critically acclaimed PC franchises. The first is the Tactician from the publisher’s extremely popular Football Manager series. The second is the Shogun from Creative Assembly’s Total War series.

    PC players have had to wait almost two months to get Sega’s latest kart racer since its original release, but these new characters make the wait worth it. If that isn’t good enough, however, the PC version of the game will only cost $29.99 when it launches on January 31.

  • Gamers Can Now Sell And Buy In-Game Items On Steam

    Blizzard sparked a bit of controversy earlier this year when it implemented a real money auction house within Diablo III. Now Valve is starting to enter the same murky waters by offering a real money “community market” on Steam.

    Valve announced today that gamers can start selling and buying in-game items on the Steam Community Market. The new service is an evolution of the trading service that began in Team Fortress 2 and eventually moved to other games. Now instead of just simply trading items, users can sell in-game items on Steam.

    Fittingly, the first game to support the Community Market is Team Fortress 2. The free-to-play game already had an in-game store that was rather profitable for some creators, but now it’s moving onto Steam proper so other games can take advantage of it.

    “With over a half million trades made every week, the trading system has been very successful,” said Tony Paloma of Valve. “Extending game economies beyond trades and giving players a way to turn gameplay into funds for new items and games is a key component for moving that success forward.”

    Unlike the Diablo III auction house, however, players can’t turn money earned through the selling of in-game items into real money. The money will be stashed into your Steam Wallet reservers so you can purchase other in-game items or full games. It’s unknown if Valve will work out a deal that will allow users to transfer Steam Wallet funds to banking services like PayPal.

    You can find out more about the Steam Community Market by checking out this exhaustive FAQ.

  • Steam For Linux Is Now In Closed Beta

    Valve’s Steam platform began life on Windows, and only just moved to Macs in 2010. Now the Washington-based developer is ready to move Steam onto the wild west of operating systems – Linux.

    Valve announced that the Steam for Linux closed beta went live today. The company said that over 60,000 Linux users signed up in the first week alone, and the first round of beta users has been already pulled from the initial applicants.

    The one game available to all beta testers from the start will be Team Fortress 2 as its free-to-play. There are two dozen other games available, and users who already own those titles on PC or Mac will also have them available on Linux. Users will also be able to take advantage of Steam’s Big Picture mode which changes Steam into a TV friendly interface.

    “This is a huge milestone in the development of PC gaming,” according to Gabe Newell, Valve President and co-founder. “Steam users have been asking us to support gaming on Linux. We’re happy to bring rich forms of entertainment and our community of users to this open, customer-friendly platform.”

    Frank Crockett, a member of the Steam for Linux team, notes that Steam will first only be available on the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. He notes that an “overwhelming majority of beta applicants” are running Ubuntu, but other popular distributions are not out of the question. He says that Valve will prioritize development of other distributions based on user feedback.

    As for future rounds of the closed beta, Valve says that future participants will be chosen among survey respondents. This will continue until the folks at Valve see “a solid level of stability and performance across a variety of systems.” Once that’s achieved, Steam for Linux will enter into open beta for all.

    Steam for Linux development started in earnest a few months ago. Newell has been outspoken on his disdain for Windows 8. He feels that Microsoft is creating a closed platform akin to Apple. Linux represents an open platform that fits better with his philosophy.

  • Meet the Pyro Video Was Worth the Wait

    Much like Bethesda, Valve is one of the only video game companies that consistently releases excellent content and doesn’t rush game releases. Fans of Team Fortress 2 have been waiting for the Meet the Pyro video for a long time. If you aren’t familiar with the “Meet the” series, each video introduces a separate class from Team Fortress 2, usually with an interview. The videos give humorous insight into the demented personalities that Valve has imagined for each class. As an example, take a look at the first video in the series, Meet the Heavy, which was uploaded all the way back in 2007:

    With the release of Meet the Medic last year, Valve had created vignettes for each class except the Pyro. Since the character wears a mask and mumbles incoherently, it would be difficult to portray it at an interview. So, Valve did the next best thing by showing other classes’ reactions to the mention of the Pyro, before finally showcasing just what kind of world the Pyro sees from behind that gas mask:

    I have to admit, while Valve may keep its fans waiting for years, it always over-delivers on quality. Where the world sees a flamethrower, axe, and flare gun, the Pyro sees himself pleasing flying babies with rainbows, candy, and bubbles. Valve is now selling an inflatable version of that unicorn that comes with an in-game item code. With all of the new merchandise and Team Fortress 2 class videos out of the way, let’s all hope Valve might finally have the time to finish making one of its blockbuster gaming IPs into a trilogy.

  • Team Fortress 2 Propaganda Posters Want You!

    Team Fortress 2 is a fascinating first person shooter game that debuted on the PC and Xbox 360 as a part of the Orange box in 2007. The free to play game has an almost obsessive fan base but it has been dwindling. SO how do you go about getting people to keep playing or start playing your game? Propaganda posters? That was Valve’s idea when they launched a Team Fortress 2 Propaganda contest.

    A guy named Jeff Axer from the United States entered one of his posters and ended up winning. He created 6 posters in all, with a different class on each poster.

    Check out each poster with a little bit about the paintings from Jeff Axer as well:

    Soldier

    “This was my submission to the Valve TF2 Propaganda contest, which got lucky and took first place. I also made it as a spray for TF2 so it would end up useful regardless and cover the soldier class. For those who do not play TF2 the general idea here was that the poster would convey the soldier class vs the demoman class. The demoman, during one of his taunts, will show his crotch from under his crotch guard and it shows a smiley face picture (which the soldier holds here). It’s just another way of saying kick him in the nuts. Nothing complex.”

    Medic

    “This one features the meeeeeedddiiiiiiicccccc! DOCTOR! It would make more sense as far as most players go to have him with the blutsauger or ubersaw, but it makes for a nicer image to have the good ol’ bonesaw that you see so rarely now.”

    Demoman

    “This one features the black Scottish cyclops, of which he is the last. He’s drunk, you don’t have an excuse!”

    Pyro

    “MMMPHHFF MPPHF HUDDA HUDDA HUDDA”

    Heavy

    “What’s that, sandvich? ‘Kill them all’? GOOD IDEA!!”

    Spy

    “This one happens to be of a gentleman, one perhaps who never really was on your side.”