We knew something strange was going on in Team Fortress 2. Well now the hat’s out of the crate: Robotic Boogaloo introduces 57 new robotic-themed hats into TF2, and every single one of them was crafted by the community.
Team Fortress 2 has been the silent beneficiary of two updates in as many days this week, which an awful lot for a game older than you or I, or them thar hills. The truth is that nobody knows quite how old TF2 is - we don’t have its birth certificate, and geological studies can only tell us so much. What we can tell you is how it’s changing.
We were left scratching our heads last week as to what Steam Trading Cards were. They’d been spotted in the Steam database but Valve weren’t talking about their newest initiative. Well, the curtain’s been drawn back to reveal that they’re a development of Steam achievements & badges which will reward your playing of games with a deeper profile page and money off coupons.
“So, I have a little confession to make. I have been running a steam market arbitrage bot for the last 4 months,” starts reddit user dmn002 in an Ask Me Anything, before detailing his story of how he built and deployed a bot onto the Steam Community Market that made him a fortune worth $10,000. Like every great Hollywood scam movie though, dmn002 gets caught by the authorities and condemned. Oops, sorry. Probably should have put a spoilers note before that.
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This week, Team Fortress 2 became one of the last games to switch over from Steam’s old content delivery system to SteamPipe. Once the switch-over’s complete, the game will boot more promptly and maps will load a little faster - but you probably won’t register the difference any more than you do the face of the man who brings your Amazon parcels to the door.
Before then, though, you’ll have to sit through a 20 to 30 minute “conversion process”. But what is SteamPipe? What’s it for, and what does it mean for your games?
There’s very little documentation available around SteamPipe: just a couple of wiki posts. But talking to developers and those close to Steam, we can get a clearer idea of what SteamPipe, is, and what it means for PC gamers going forward.
Earlier today we reported on news that users of the ESEA server client had found malware installed to their graphics cards. The hack was using the GPUs to generate Bitcoins for an ESEA computer. All told, from the time since the hack was installed into the client software and till it was discovered, the exploit created $3,713.55 of the internet currency.
ESEA have now issued a formal apology and explanation, claiming that “an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company’s resources” is responsible for activating beta code that the company never intended on using.
The ESEA server client, commonly used as an anti-cheating measure in games of Counter-Strike, StarCraft 2 and Team Fortress 2, has been discovered to carry malware that uses unsuspecting players’ graphics cards to mine Bitcoins.
Users of the client have reported that their GPUs have overheated and been disabled by the bitcoin mining process.
The Robotic Boogaloo has been one of those extraordinary community efforts that only ever happen in PC gaming - a Mann vs Machine-themed modding extravaganza which pulled together Steam Workshop submissions for the greater good of TF2. And that was enough. But now there’s just just the faintest scent of Valve-pulled strings behind the scenes - the barest suggestion that the Boogaloo might have become something more than it was, with the help of the TF2 dev team.
A regressive bug involving Source’s in-built VPhysics engine has lately meant that some items in Team Fortress 2 would travel farther than expected. Thanks to yesterday’s update, however, objects can now be trusted precisely as far as you can throw them.
Everyone has been tinkering with virtual reality as more Oculus Rift developer kits arrive on people's doorsteps everyday. Their testing ground: Team Fortress 2. Valve are hot on the case with fixes and patches, the latest primarily aimed at the VR mode. Also, the Linux version of Team Fortress 2 has has “Improved performance and stability”, which can only be a good thing.
Oculus Rift developer kits are starting to flood budding developers everywhere, producing promising results in some of our favourite games. The we already knew that you could play Team Fortress 2 with the Oculus Rift, but someone has taken it a step further by combining it with a “Virtuix Omni Treadmill”. It certainly looks like a lot of hard work, running around and fragging your enemies, but man does it look immersive.
The TF2 dev team say that last night’s patch showed the door to players made invisible by a bug, though I can’t imagine how they can be sure. I mean, as long as they stay quiet and keep to one of the many nooks and crannies that litter Gold Rush and Dustbowl, they can more or less stay as long as they like, can’t they?
Yow! It’s been scarcely two days since our Rob whizzed around Badwater with the Oculus Rift, and - oof! - now we’re supposed to accept that Team Fortress 2’s VR support is in-game, right - ouch! - now? That’s a right old jab to the new idea receptors, that is.
A recent update to the Steam client has provided budding artists (and seasoned artists) a place to show off their game-related wares. Each Steam game’s Community hub now features an artwork tab where anyone is free to upload pictures and videos of their related works, these are then free to be upvoted by that game’s community. It’s like having a potentially hundred thousand-strong committee running the placement of exhibit pieces at a virtual gallery.
Valve are making us all art critics and to get started they’ve submitted some of their own work for critique.
Later this month, Valve will update Team Fortress 2 to make it compatible with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset (giving Rift users a fancy new Oculus TF2 hat in the bargain), and TF2 will once again find itself in the familiar role of being a test bed for Valve’s foray into a new kind of gaming.
I had a chance to spend an afternoon at Valve playing TF2 with the Oculus, and learning what Valve have planned for the VR platform. Over the course of a half dozen bot matches, I discovered that the Oculus absolutely works as advertised, providing a natural 3D immersive experience. But that turns out to be the easy part.
You might have watched a grey, mercurial bar trickle along the bottom of your Steam client early this week, and not for the first time wondered what it was playing at. Well, that will have been TF2 patching in the latest promo items, a couple of new crafting recipes and a notable fix or two - especially notable for those who identify as penguin.
Crytek’s CEO Cervat Yerli’s been swung by free-to-play gaming, he’s pushing to have every future Crytek title run on the model - the first of which will be Warface, which Jeremy was very taken with last week. Though, Yerli’s not so keen on how Valve turned Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play game: “Team Fortress 2 is not a real free to play game, in a sense.
“I kind of think it's a 70% free to play title. 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.”
Valve are offering a selection of exclusive Team Fortress 2 items to gamers who pre-order Bioshock Infinite through Steam. They're featured as the second part of a three-tiered reward system and only unlocked when enough pre-orders are made. Still, since buyers are already 93% of the way to unlocking it, I think it's a safe bet that we'll be seeing these items soon.
SteamPipe is Valve’s shiny and relatively new content delivery system, the vehicle by which nigh on everything on Steam is downloaded and stored these days. Some poor middling-to-old Valve games - namely TF2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch - have been making do with rather more rickety means of transport for years, but Valve have been working to get them upgraded.
That unplaceable dripping noise that’s been bothering you all morning? Yeah. That’s the sound of your face melting. Unfortunately, PC gaming has been in the throes of one long, Marty Friedman-style shredsome solo since a pair of Brütal Legend promo items were unshackled from their Beelzebubian prison yesterday and allowed to tear through TF2 like dogs at a picnic.
