• Fixed a dedicated server crash related to the new map sd_doomsday_event and server-wide curses
• Fixed Blue team hearing the win audio instead of the lose audio when Red gets the tickets to the Strongmann machine
• Fixed grenade projectiles doing more damage than expected
• Fixed players changing team to respawn outside of their cart while playing a minigame
• Fixed players being able to use the Eureka effect while in their bumper car
• Fixed a bug that let Engineers move faster while carrying a building
• Fixed the Spycicle not giving the Spy fire resistance
• Fixed The Manngaroo itemset including the wrong item
• Updated the equip_region for the Vaccinator and Quick-Fix
• Fixed a bug where players would not get a kill credit for turning another player in to a ghost
• Updated player ghosts to always use team color
• Updated the new TargetID system
  • Added Advance Option and ConVar to disable floating health icon (tf_hud_target_id_disable_floating_health)
  • Added Advance Option to control the alpha of TargetID nameplate
  • Fixed not showing for disguised enemy Spies
  • Fixed showing the health of cloaked Spies
  • Fixed not hiding the panel when players are no longer visible
• Added ConVar tf_weapon_criticals_melee to control whether melee weapons have random crits. Works separately from tf_weapon_criticals.
• Fixed the knife not playing its backstab animation when crits are disabled
• Fixed round-end crits not working when tf_weapon_criticals is set to zero
• Updated sd_doomsday_event
  • Added spell pickups near the ticket case spawn
  • Reduced mega spell respawn time from 90 seconds to 45 seconds
  • Fixed curses occurring in bumper car minigames
  • Fixed players being able to boost their bumper cars early
  • Increased the damage that bumper cars receive from collisions
  • Players can no longer suicide when in a Bumper Car
  • Replaced large ammo kits near the Strongmann machine with spells
  • Reduced ammo kit size on the bridge from full to medium
  • Updated HHH to use a giant Necro Smasher when attacking players
  • Platform game:
    • Fixed Merasmus giving instructions in the platform game when it gets to the final platform
    • Center tent pole now vanishes when the final platform is reached
  • Soccer game:
    • Added HHH, spawns 45 seconds into the match
  • Duck game:
    • Increased max score to 200

• Help Merasmus with his carnival!
• Comic and additional information available on the website (http://www.teamfortress.com/screamfortress6)
• Scream Fortress VI runs until November 12, 2014
• Added new Halloween map Carnival of Carnage
  • Merasmus will spread misfortune with server wide curses
  • Added a Strongmann Test-Your-Strength machine which is in no way an eldritch portal to Bumper Car Madness!
• Added bumper car minigames. Win by completely ghostifying the other team or by completing the objective
• Alt-fire to speed boost your bumper car
• Cast spells while driving
• The collision force a bumper car receives increases as the car takes damage
• Force is displayed in the bumper car HUD as a percentage
• Ghosts can come back to life by touching a friendly bumper car
• 50 new Halloween-themed community cosmetics
• 6 new achievements

• A Halloween Gift Cauldron is granted to all players who play during the event
• Added Halloween crates to the Mann Co. Store. These crates do not require a key to open
• All Unusual hats and taunts that are unboxed during the event will receive Halloween-themed Unusual effects
• Previous Scream Fortress content is available in the Mann Co. Store

• Reduced the number of Fireball spells granted to 2
• Updated the tf_spells_enabled ConVar
  • Removed the Teleport spell from the general spell list when spells are enabled outside of Helltower
  • Added rare spells to the general spell list, except Skeletons and Monoculus
• Turning a player into a ghost now grants the attacker a kill credit
• Players can now fly around as a ghost by holding the jump key
• TargetID system
  • Now creates a floating health indicator over the target
  • Reduced size of nameplate
  • Added tf_hud_target_id_alpha ConVar to control the transparency
• Fixed player voice transmissions not transmitting the last second of recording
• Fixed a dedicated server crash when the autoexec.cfg contains a bind command
  • Fixed Unicode font performance and rendering issues for Mac clients
  • Fixed an exploit that allowed players to remove the ghost condition

• Added a field to the Tools->Options->3DView tab that multiplies the length of the rendered light_spot cone preview

Step right up, mortals, to Merasmus the wizard's Carnival of Carnage... now LIVE in Team Fortress 2!

Very soon, fear-fans, the Halloween update other game companies aren't BRAVE enough to give you is coming! And those other companies are right to be hesitant! Last year's Scream Fortress update hit Valve with a tidal wave of wrongful death lawsuits! That's right: Everyone who played last year's update DIED mysteriously! The only clue was that everyone's hair had turned snow-white!

They died of FEAR, reader! Or possibly premature hair-graying! We're not doctors. No, OUR jobs are to be your ringmasters at this year's Scream Fortress Update! Check out the teaser Update Page to get a taste of what's coming!

There's a long list of reasons why we look forward to the Team Fortress Halloween update every year. It's a chance for us to try some fun new things within the framework of a time-limited holiday. We're all really excited to see what you think of this year's event.

It's also an opportunity every year to revisit decisions we made it in previous years and see what we've learned and what we want to do differently. As one specific example, we've spent a bunch of time internally talking about the Halloween gift drops. We have a bunch of amazing content we're about to ship and we wanted to evaluate the gifting system to figure out if it was a good method for distributing some of that content.

When gift drops were introduced way back in 2011's Scream Fortress update, they were intended to be a small value-add a simple bonus for all players participating in the update. As time went on and Halloween updates came and went, however, some players spent more and more time focusing on gifts, often to the detriment of the players they were playing with. The Halloween experience for many players now consists of sitting idle in a custom server while a plugin teleports them from gift spawn point to gift spawn point.

Ordinarily we don't mind if players do things that we don't personally enjoy as long as their fun doesn't harm the quality of experience for other players. In this particular case, however, because the overwhelming majority of gifts claimed went to a tiny handful of accounts, we feel comfortable characterizing the current system as blatantly and transparently unfair: While some farming accounts claimed more than five hundred gifts just last year, the median numbers of gifts claimed was only five.

As before, we're continuing to iterate on gifts for this year's event. In line with our original goals of giving all participating players some free Halloween content without affecting the core experience, this year we'll be giving every player one guaranteed gift bundle just for logging in during the event. This bundle will contain a random sample of some of this year's content, including some that would otherwise only have come from crates. To keep some of the fun of getting multiple gifts through the event, all players can earn a secondary bundle by completing some of the event achievements. Put together, these two bundles will grant more items per player than the median five gifts from last year.

Because historically the total number of gifts has been unbounded, and the distribution incredibly skewed, we have been greatly limited when it came to what sort of content we could distribute. As we're now more tightly controlling the distribution, we can grant a wider variety of more interesting content and we look forward to seeing you all get your hands on some of it in just a few days.

A very recognizable, very handsome face has made a surprise appearance in SpeedRunners! Check it out!

• Updated Halloween Spells to be tradable
• Fixed not being able to apply Halloween Spells to cosmetic items
• Enabled the crafting recipe for the Pile Of Curses
• Fixed players auto-switching to the Spellbook
• Fixed the Spell HUD overlapping with the Killstreak HUD
• Fixed the Wheel of Fate HUD overlapping with the Killstreak HUD

It's been a whole year since you guys played a Team Fortress Halloween map. If we threw you into the 900-mile-an-hour hellride we've got planned this year without warming you up first, you'd essentially be going from an idle state of terrorlessness to a shrieking nightmare of solid 100% terror almost instantly. It would be the equivalent of going from seeing zero skeletons to seeing a thousand skeletons at once. Are your eyes deceiving you? That's when you reach up to your eyes and realize... they are also skeletons! AWOOOOO!

A shock to the system like that wouldn't just kill you. It would make you crap your pants (not fatal), turn your hair white (still okay), and make your heart beat so fast it would blow up your ribcage (now you're dead).

Luckily, you can now play previous years' Halloween spectaculars to get your shock tolerance up in advance of the update. Simply boot up the game, hop into multiplayer and quickplay any of our past five Scream Fortress updates. If you've missed out on previous Team Fortress Halloweens, or are new to TF2 in general, this is a perfect time to catch up.

Also, remember to LOOK WHAT'S IN YOUR DRIVEWAY IT IS THE WOLFMAN'S CAR! See? That was so scary it almost put you in a coma. Get practicing.

• Scream Fortress Classic begins!
  • In preparation for Scream Fortress 2014 we've enabled all previous Halloween events
• Fixed The Larval Lid not using the correct Blue team material

This year's BETA LAN Party will be covered live on twitch.tv at 9:00 CET (4AM EST), October 25th!

Celebrating the foundation of the Lithuanian eSports Association, The BETA LAN Party gives Lithuanian and neighboring country TF2 gamers a chance to gather in one place, participate in various tournaments and meet new people. This year's TF2 event will be held at Kaunas University of Technology; all participants will receive in-game medals, and the top three winners will be awarded with ZOWIEGEAR gaming peripherals.