Team Fortress 2 News

Buffed

The TF2 team have recently posted on their blog that whilst all’s going swimmingly, a number of people have been temporarily pulled off the team ahead of November’s release of Left 4 Dead 2. Although the latter looks to be an interesting release, it has caused some upset being released so soon after the original, and with relatively little downloadable content having been pushed out in the meantime for the original L4D. An L4D2 Boycott group, demanding various efforts on the part of Valve to prevent a split in the community (and promising not to buy the game should their demands be ignored), gained quite a large following. Sufficient indeed that a couple of the group’s key figures were invited down to Valve HQ for a tour, and a proper outing of their views. Of course, once key figures in any dispute meet up for tea and biscuits, there’s bound to be disagreement in the ranks, and charges of the pair being bought out by Valve will no doubt drive a wedge into the group. You can read their (rather reasonably) worded manifesto here.

Of course, that might all be a moot point for the Australians, if the censors have their way. The latest draft of L4D2 submitted to the classification panel resulted in an ‘RC’—Refused Classification. Presumably a little tweaking on Valve’s part and things will all be hunky dory again. But the news does suggest plenty of blood and gore for those of us playing the game in the free freer world.

Meanwhile, for any further updates on TF2 we’ll just have to bide our time. But before shifting emphasis over to L4D2, Valve did at least give us a decent sized patch full of bug fixes and feature improvements to mull over. Sadly, no functionality for swapping backpack items yet, but in the meantime you can show off your own trawl with this handy little site. Or just use it to eye up future swaps—like the wonderful Mallet of Banishment sported by Gabe Newell.