Almost a month ago, Valve's Steam Service launched an open beta trading feature which allowed players to trade Gifts/in-game items among other Steam members. Well that service has officially gone live, and you are now free to trade your TF2 hats to all your Steam friends! That was a quick beta test! Steam members can now trade items from Spiral Knights, and Team Fortress 2 as well as gifts purchased (but unopened). Although these are the only games supported for item trading, Valve has said that "Portal 2 should be reasonably soon and we hope to have several third-party games in the next few months. Read More...

It's time to pick a side ladies and gents.  Are you a Soldier? or a Demoman? The Team Fortress 2 blog is starting to release information about the new update for 2, count 'em 2 classes.  The Soldier and the Demoman have always had a rough around the edges releationship, but this time the gloves are off, and it's every team for himself.Scheduled to be released December 17th, the TF2 team usually gives us the scoop on the update about a week early so players can spend the next week salivating over what new content is coming.  Keep an eye out on the WarHub page for all sorts of updates including Achievements, obscure items, and 3 new weapons for each class. Read More...

Alright Team Fortress 2 fans, it’s Halloween and the TF2 crew has put together a new update to bring in the holiday fear. “The Terrifying Team Fortress Haunted Hallowe’en Special” went live today and will continue on until November 2nd. This holiday update is a goody bag of tricks and treats, from Exploding pumpkins, a ghastly gimbus (wtf?) and "Mildly Disturbing Halloween Hats". If that’s not enough for you, there is a new community map as well as 5 achievements (listed below) to unlock over the next couple of days. Read More...

Today to my surprise, while chatting amongst fellow TF2 players in IRC, a sudden cry of "NOOOOOOOO!" began to fill the channel. Valve, the developer of Team Fortress 2, had gone in and flagged about 4.5% of accounts for using idling programs. I, being one of these hat hoarders, was also affected and have become quite saddened at the loss of my 2 hats. For those not familiar with the TF2 Drop system, Team Fortress 2 has items such as weapons, hats, and other misc unlockables available to earn at random when you play a server. As such, idling programs became widely popular amongst it's players, me included. Read More...

With the next batch of achievements and weapon unlocks announced and mentioned difficulty in deciding on an alternate weapon for the sniper rifle, it looks as if our good friends at Valve have managed to come up with an idea and now the Sniper Update is upon us.  Called the "Huntsman" it is a bow-and-arrow for a slightly more in-your-face approach to playing this class. A sniper worth his weight with this weapon could lead a charge into the enemy base.  Provided with invulnerability, the skilled bowman could pin everyone to the walls waltzing into the intelligence room as his enemies wait to be freed or killed. Read More...

Yesterday, Valve began the unveiling process on their new Team Fortress 2 update adding new achievement weapons.  This time to the Scout class.  Quick and wiry, the scout is listed as an offensive class, but as anyone who has put time in the trenches will tell you, the scout can also be a formidable defense class.  With the new site in place, Valve plans to release a bit of new information each day.  For day 1, they released information on the new weapon to replace the bat, called The Sandman. Read More...

In an interview with CS-Nation, Robin Walker was talking about TF2 about the new Pyro unlocks. CS-Nation: (From: various) What is the next class set to receive new unlocks and achievements? Walker: The Pyro is the focus on the next pack. We're making some significant changes to the base Pyro class & weaponry, in addition to the three unlockables and thirty-five achievements. We've never been terribly happy with the Pyro, in particular with her shallower skill curve than other combat classes. We really want highly skilled Pyros to be visibly more effective than the average Pyro, and the new features are designed to address that. Read More...

Over at the official TF2 blog, Jakob Jungles said: One of the things we're looking at for the next update is the creation of a new type of environment for our levels to be built in. We're pretty happy with the way our environments have turned out so far, but as we create more and more maps with these achievement packs, we want our level designers to have more to work with in terms of giving their settings a unique look. The challenging part of this type of design process is in finding types of terrain and structures that provide an understandable, interesting set of visuals and at the same time staying within the constraints of what we want to do with gameplay. In addition to this, we want to be able to stay within the strengths of the engine that TF is built around. Read More...

Today, Valve released a whole bunch of updates for Team Fortress 2. Of the updates come 2 (not so new) maps. Valve has been keeping a close eye on it's servers and it seems that it picked it's 2 favorite user-created maps and stuffed them into today's TF2 Update. CP_Fastlane and CTF_Turbine are now available to you - so you can join these servers without having to wait to download them.On another note, Valve's second installment of the TF2 Achievement updates has also been released today. The Pryo's achievment pack and 3 new unlockable weapons are yours for the taking. Read More...

What person hasn't thought about breaking a world record at least once in their lifetime? I remember as a kid - the Guinness books were the ones most often checked out at our schools library, so when the chance arose to finally be in the book itself, I was more excited than a fat kid in a cake factory (no offense to any of you fat kids ;p ). Every year thousands of people gather at the Dallas based anime convention, A-KON in a weekend that can only be described as PEACE, LOVE and POCKY. This year's convention though seemly the same, had one major difference - Guinness Book of World Records was there to witness our world-record breaking skills at work! Read More...

With the upgrades to Medic and the introduction to the new achievement system in TF2 - The Medic has been the first class to receive the honor of earning achievements and upgrades. However, have the developers given the medic too much power? If you've been playing some TF2 lately, odds are you've noticed an increase in the amount of medics playing, players uber-charged and people just not dying. Although the new upgrades have helped to turn the game play up a notch - I've began to notice that like with many games, players have found a loop hole in the system and it seems practically impossibly to kill a freaking medic!  Double Uber - when two medic uber-charge themselves - is by far one of the most frustrating things I've come to witness. Read More...