<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/the_mines.jpg"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/the_mines.jpg" width="420" height="236" border="0"></a>

If there's one thing we know more about than hats, it's probably romance. Remember that romantic scene in Say Anything where John Cusack holds up a boom box in the rain? Well, we hold stuff up in the rain all the time. Golf clubs. Our wallets. An umbrella. Whatever's handy, really. And do the girls go for it? Hard to tell - it rains pretty hard in Seattle, so the limited visibility combined with wind shear makes it tough to see the appreciation on the ladies' faces.

Anyway, today's Valentine's Day, and that means if you're dating or married, you're going to drop somewhere in the area of $600 tonight on flowers, dinner, babysitters, hot air balloon rides, a hospital bill for rain-related holding injuries (Seattle only). It adds up fast, and you might be asking yourself at the end of the night, "Was it all worth it?" The answer, emphatically, is no. Happy Valentine's Day, stupid.

But wait! What if we told you that you could waste as much as 1/6 less money this Valentine's Day? What if we added that you could do it without even leaving your house? Then what if we sweetened the deal further by saying sorry for calling you stupid earlier?

Introducing the "Something Special For Someone Special". It's ring-shaped, it's gift-wrapped, it's basically useless, and it's really expensive ($100!). In short, it's the most accurate simulation of an actual Valentine's Day gift ever made available to the public.

Here's how it works:

First, it's not tradable, only giftable. When it shows up in your special someone's backpack, they can click on it to open a menu that will let them accept your proposal. Once the proposal's been accepted, a message will be broadcast to the entire TF community that will include your name, your special someone's name, and whatever you decided to call the ring. Then presto, the gift turns into two matching diamond bands you can wear in the rain while you smooch up a storm, you crazy kids.

If there's one thing we know more about than hats, it's probably romance. Remember that romantic scene in Say Anything where John Cusack holds up a boom box in the rain? Well, we hold stuff up in the rain all the time. Golf clubs. Our wallets. An umbrella. Whatever's handy, really. And do the girls go for it? Hard to tell - it rains pretty hard in Seattle, so the limited visibility combined with wind shear makes it tough to see the appreciation on the ladies' faces.

Anyway, today's Valentine's Day, and that means if you're dating or married, you're going to drop somewhere in the area of $600 tonight on flowers, dinner, babysitters, hot air balloon rides, a hospital bill for rain-related holding injuries (Seattle only). It adds up fast, and you might be asking yourself at the end of the night, "Was it all worth it?" The answer, emphatically, is no. Happy Valentine's Day, stupid.

But wait! What if we told you that you could waste as much as 1/6 less money this Valentine's Day? What if we added that you could do it without even leaving your house? Then what if we sweetened the deal further by saying sorry for calling you stupid earlier?

Introducing the "Something Special For Someone Special". It's ring-shaped, it's gift-wrapped, it's basically useless, and it's really expensive ($100!). In short, it's the most accurate simulation of an actual Valentine's Day gift ever made available to the public.

Here's how it works:

First, it's not tradable, only giftable. When it shows up in your special someone's backpack, they can click on it to open a menu that will let them accept your proposal. Once the proposal's been accepted, a message will be broadcast to the entire TF community that will include your name, your special someone's name, and whatever you decided to call the ring. Then presto, the gift turns into two matching diamond bands you can wear in the rain while you smooch up a storm, you crazy kids.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=7317"><img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/tf2/blog/7317/boombox_sized.jpg" width="400" height="261" border="0"></a>

<i>My radio's bad from the Boulevard.
I'm a hip-hop gangster and my name is Todd.
Terrorising my neighbours with the heavy bass.
I keep the suckas in fear by the look on my face.</i>
-LL Cool J, 1985

Most people only know LL Cool J as a rapper, actor, fashion designer, record producer, and author. Now, though, you can add "spooky-ass Nostradamus" to that list, because we've just released a misc slot item for the Scout called "The Boston Boom Bringer" that pretty much exactly matches the lyrics LL penned <i>almost thirty years ago.</i> Is it a radio? Yes! Is it "bad"? Yes! When you taunt while it's equipped, will it play music to terrorize your neighbors and scare suckas? Yes! Are you a hip-hop gangster named Todd? That's gonna vary from person to person, obviously, but it's not totally out of the question! The point is, there's probably an LL Cool J song that predicts your death. The secondary point is everything we just said about the sweet new boom box item.

We went through LL Cool J’s back catalog looking for other prescient rap songs that described musical items available for the other eight classes, but apparently one of the Ls stands for “lazy”, because it doesn’t look like he wrote any. So just in case anyone out there wants to succeed where LL Cool J failed, we've added a special "Sound Device" category to both the in-game item submission UI and in the Workshop so that you can tag your sound-themed submissions. Make something good enough and it may join the ranks of <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Aladdin%27s_Private_Reserve">Aladdin’s Private Reserve</a>, <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Conquistador">The Conquistador</a>, and the <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Lucky_Shot">Lucky Shot</a>, all great community-made items we’ve shipped this year that were mentioned by name on rap oracle LL Cool J's 1987 album "Bigger and Deffer".

My radio's bad from the Boulevard.
I'm a hip-hop gangster and my name is Todd.
Terrorising my neighbours with the heavy bass.
I keep the suckas in fear by the look on my face.
-LL Cool J, 1985

Most people only know LL Cool J as a rapper, actor, fashion designer, record producer, and author. Now, though, you can add "spooky-ass Nostradamus" to that list, because we've just released a misc slot item for the Scout called "The Boston Boom Bringer" that pretty much exactly matches the lyrics LL penned almost thirty years ago. Is it a radio? Yes! Is it "bad"? Yes! When you taunt while it's equipped, will it play music to terrorize your neighbors and scare suckas? Yes! Are you a hip-hop gangster named Todd? That's gonna vary from person to person, obviously, but it's not totally out of the question! The point is, there's probably an LL Cool J song that predicts your death. The secondary point is everything we just said about the sweet new boom box item.

We went through LL Cool J’s back catalog looking for other prescient rap songs that described musical items available for the other eight classes, but apparently one of the Ls stands for “lazy”, because it doesn’t look like he wrote any. So just in case anyone out there wants to succeed where LL Cool J failed, we've added a special "Sound Device" category to both the in-game item submission UI and in the Workshop so that you can tag your sound-themed submissions. Make something good enough and it may join the ranks of Aladdin’s Private Reserve, The Conquistador, and the Lucky Shot, all great community-made items we’ve shipped this year that were mentioned by name on rap oracle LL Cool J's 1987 album "Bigger and Deffer".

<b>Hard Eight!!</b>
Double the specials, quadruple the fun!

Face eight Special Infected at one time, this is double the standard number! And if that wasn’t trouble enough, we also increase the spawning frequency so it is raining Specials.

Why aren’t you going to give it a try? Scared?

<b>More Cold Stream</b>
Today we are releasing some bug and exploit fixes on the PC for Blood Harvest.

We have to thank everyone for their feedback and help catching these issues and making the campaigns better but we want to give a special thanks to Tabbernaut from the Steam forums for providing a concise lists of issues.

We still have a few minor fixes and performance improvements for the Cold Stream Campaign. We are going to be releasing those changes in a few weeks as the final build for the DLC.

On the 360 side we have been making some additional performance improvements. The finale section of Cold Stream in particular was a sticky area to pull off. Not only do we have to worry about view distances but the way the common infected move and navigate areas.

One of the results of our extensive performance tuning of the Cold Stream campaign is that we will be writing up and sharing some information with modders on improving the performance of their campaigns.

So enjoy Hard Eight and in a few weeks we will have another content update as we prepare Cold Stream to go into the Xbox 360 certification process.

Hard Eight!!
Double the specials, quadruple the fun!

Face eight Special Infected at one time, this is double the standard number! And if that wasn’t trouble enough, we also increase the spawning frequency so it is raining Specials.

Why aren’t you going to give it a try? Scared?

More Cold Stream
Today we are releasing some bug and exploit fixes on the PC for Blood Harvest.

We have to thank everyone for their feedback and help catching these issues and making the campaigns better but we want to give a special thanks to Tabbernaut from the Steam forums for providing a concise lists of issues.

We still have a few minor fixes and performance improvements for the Cold Stream Campaign. We are going to be releasing those changes in a few weeks as the final build for the DLC.

On the 360 side we have been making some additional performance improvements. The finale section of Cold Stream in particular was a sticky area to pull off. Not only do we have to worry about view distances but the way the common infected move and navigate areas.

One of the results of our extensive performance tuning of the Cold Stream campaign is that we will be writing up and sharing some information with modders on improving the performance of their campaigns.

So enjoy Hard Eight and in a few weeks we will have another content update as we prepare Cold Stream to go into the Xbox 360 certification process.

If you thought the end of the world was the only thing to look forward to in 2012, guess again. There's a ton of TF2 stuff on the horizon, running for their lives just slightly ahead of the Mayan blood tornadoes.

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/2012_a.jpg" width="420" height="73" border="0">

<b>A Secret TF2 Project!</b>
The TF2 team is working on something brand new for 2012. We can't tell you what it is, because they won't tell us, but what they WILL say is that it isn't a hat, it isn't a map, and go away. From this we can only conclude that the TF2 team is working on some ungodly hat-map hybrid that you can wear on your head while you run around in it. You heard it here first. Also last, because they just told us it's not that either. But it's<br />really cool.

<a href="http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/2012_b.jpg" width="420" height="73" border="0"></a>

<b>A Steam Workshop Blog!</b>
You might think we went a little overboard putting an exclamation mark on that title, but hear us out: we bought a gross of exclamatory punctuation on eBay, and we've got to get rid of these things before someone finds out how much we spent on them. ($7,000!!!!!!) Anyway, the blog is live! <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/">Check it out here</a> for the latest workshop news and announcements! There've been nearly 4000 user-generated items submitted so far, and we're going to keep shipping them throughout the year(!), so head over to the Workshop and vote on what you'd like to see."

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/2012_c.jpg" width="420" height="73" border="0">

<b>The Last "Meet the Team" Short</b>
That title probably deserved an exclamation mark, but we over-estimated how many we had and now we're out. This year, the lovable, indecipherable <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/classes.php?class=pyro">Pyro</a> finally gets some time in the spotlight. <i>There will be blood</i>. And not like in the movie <i>There Will Be Blood</i>, either, where there was only blood at the end, and not even very much of it. Ours has lots of blood pretty much all the way through. If the butterscotch mint-sucking old mummies who pick the Academy Awards thought <i>Look Out, There Might Be a Little Blood</i> was great, wait’ll they see how many gallons we managed to cram into our movie. They’re going to have to melt down Fort Knox to make all the Oscars we’re going to win.

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/2012_d.jpg" width="420" height="73" border="0">

<b>The Second Annual Saxxy Awards</b>
Just in case the Oscar mummies don’t recognize the subtle dramatic undertones of the uninterrupted blood explosion that is Meet the Pyro, we can always stack the deck at the Saxxys, our own awards show. This year, expect the Saxxys to be much bigger and better, due to the imminent unveiling of another secret. Is it that we’re giving Meet the Pyro five Oscars? That’s not the secret, but let’s just say we’d like to thank the Academy. More specifically, we’d like to thank the Academy’s lawyers for not reading this blog post.

If you thought the end of the world was the only thing to look forward to in 2012, guess again. There's a ton of TF2 stuff on the horizon, running for their lives just slightly ahead of the Mayan blood tornadoes.



A Secret TF2 Project!
The TF2 team is working on something brand new for 2012. We can't tell you what it is, because they won't tell us, but what they WILL say is that it isn't a hat, it isn't a map, and go away. From this we can only conclude that the TF2 team is working on some ungodly hat-map hybrid that you can wear on your head while you run around in it. You heard it here first. Also last, because they just told us it's not that either. But it's
really cool.



A Steam Workshop Blog!
You might think we went a little overboard putting an exclamation mark on that title, but hear us out: we bought a gross of exclamatory punctuation on eBay, and we've got to get rid of these things before someone finds out how much we spent on them. ($7,000!!!!!!) Anyway, the blog is live! Check it out here for the latest workshop news and announcements! There've been nearly 4000 user-generated items submitted so far, and we're going to keep shipping them throughout the year(!), so head over to the Workshop and vote on what you'd like to see."



The Last "Meet the Team" Short
That title probably deserved an exclamation mark, but we over-estimated how many we had and now we're out. This year, the lovable, indecipherable Pyro finally gets some time in the spotlight. There will be blood. And not like in the movie There Will Be Blood, either, where there was only blood at the end, and not even very much of it. Ours has lots of blood pretty much all the way through. If the butterscotch mint-sucking old mummies who pick the Academy Awards thought Look Out, There Might Be a Little Blood was great, wait’ll they see how many gallons we managed to cram into our movie. They’re going to have to melt down Fort Knox to make all the Oscars we’re going to win.



The Second Annual Saxxy Awards
Just in case the Oscar mummies don’t recognize the subtle dramatic undertones of the uninterrupted blood explosion that is Meet the Pyro, we can always stack the deck at the Saxxys, our own awards show. This year, expect the Saxxys to be much bigger and better, due to the imminent unveiling of another secret. Is it that we’re giving Meet the Pyro five Oscars? That’s not the secret, but let’s just say we’d like to thank the Academy. More specifically, we’d like to thank the Academy’s lawyers for not reading this blog post.

<b>Gib Fest</b>
Blast the infected to shreds with M60s.

Swords can slice up some fun. Chainsaws can tear apart the infected. But you need to get close for both and well… chainsaws are really loud! Time to go with the ultimate gun, you and three friends armed with M60s and unlimited ammo. This is going to get messy.

<b>Cold Stream</b>
As we recently posted on our blog, we are busy working on the full Cold Stream DLC which will include Cold Stream, Blood Harvest, Crash Course, Dead Air, Death Toll, and No Mercy. We will be updating Campaigns on Steam with bug fixes as we get ready to ship the DLC.

Check the release notes as the list of fixes is extensive. The Xbox 360 will get Campaigns with the bug fixes at a future date.

Gib Fest
Blast the infected to shreds with M60s.

Swords can slice up some fun. Chainsaws can tear apart the infected. But you need to get close for both and well… chainsaws are really loud! Time to go with the ultimate gun, you and three friends armed with M60s and unlimited ammo. This is going to get messy.

Cold Stream
As we recently posted on our blog, we are busy working on the full Cold Stream DLC which will include Cold Stream, Blood Harvest, Crash Course, Dead Air, Death Toll, and No Mercy. We will be updating Campaigns on Steam with bug fixes as we get ready to ship the DLC.

Check the release notes as the list of fixes is extensive. The Xbox 360 will get Campaigns with the bug fixes at a future date.