Certain uncomfortable international treaties have expired allowing us to bring you a WEEKEND PAINT SALE that's sure to enrage the Bavarian anti-paint lobby. It's going on now inside Team Fortress 2. During this New Year's weekend you can get most hat paints for half off, black and white paint is available on the store for a limited time, and name tags and description tags are also on sale!

Certain uncomfortable international treaties have expired allowing us to bring you a WEEKEND PAINT SALE that's sure to enrage the Bavarian anti-paint lobby. It's going on now inside Team Fortress 2. During this New Year's weekend you can get most hat paints for half off, black and white paint is available on the store for a limited time, and name tags and description tags are also on sale!

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/australianchristmas"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/oldnick.png" height="302" width="420" border="0"></a>

You demanded a <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/australianchristmas">Holiday update</a>, and by gad, you're going to get it and like it, pal. We've cooked up a fine feast of new weapons, garnished it with more headgear than you have heads, and left it simmering overnight in a new game mode. What are you waiting for?! Get over to the Update Page and chow down!

To celebrate we're running a big sale in the Mann Co. Store THIS WEEKEND ONLY!

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/weekend_sale.jpg" height="341" width="420" border="0"></a><br /><br />

You demanded a Holiday update, and by gad, you're going to get it and like it, pal. We've cooked up a fine feast of new weapons, garnished it with more headgear than you have heads, and left it simmering overnight in a new game mode. What are you waiting for?! Get over to the Update Page and chow down!

To celebrate we're running a big sale in the Mann Co. Store THIS WEEKEND ONLY!

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Go to the <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4773&p=1">TF2 blog</a> to see something awesome.

Go to the TF2 blog to see something awesome.

Hard Eight, Do you compete? Mutation Madness, The Road Ahead<br />
<strong>Hard Eight!!</strong>
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?
<br />
<strong>Do You Compete?</strong>
We asked if you competed in Left 4 Dead 1 or 2 Tournaments. That both platforms tied with Play competitive games but not in tourneys and where am I? is a little scary. Here are the numbers by platform:<br />
Xbox 360
30% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
30% Where am I?
15% No, But I do compete in other games
13% Played in tourneys
12% Don’t play competitive modes<br />
PC<
26% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
26% Where am I?
19% Don’t play competitive modes
17% Played in tourneys
12% No, But I do compete in other games<br />
With 13-17% of you responding you do play in Tourneys – which ones? Where? Because that response rate dwarfs the numbers I see in online Tourneys. Do you have a tournament you are running or do you know about one? Let us know! We have been known to kick in prizes and who doesn't want to <a href='http://store.valvesoftware.com/product.php?i=S0201'>win one of these</a>?<br />
<strong>Mutation Madness!</strong>
The next Mutation will be a community created Mutation. We have been talking with Raymond Nondorf about his <a href='http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1529433'>Mutation mod that he posted in the forums</a>. We are going to be pulling the next Mutation from his mod and then after that the question becomes – can you create a better Mutation? Raymond, not content with just releasing his own Mutations, has also created a tutorial for others to create their own. <a href='http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1622064'>You can check it out here</a>. Nice work Raymond!<br />
As we continue to update bi-weekly, we will be incorporating some of these community Mutations. To make a Mutation, you will need to build and test your mutation on the PC but we will release them on both PC and Xbox 360. So user created content is beginning to see itself on the Xbox 360!
<br />
<strong>The Walking Dead</strong>
This season's final episode of The Walking Dead is this Sunday. Have you been watching it? Use the in-game poll to let us know.<br />

<strong>The Road Ahead</strong>
First up, Realism Versus. While the really short respawn interval was interesting, it removed our ability to increase difficulty in other ways. Today's update includes one of those other ways, the uncrownable Witch. Not only is she deadly in Realism but now she is also uncrownable. Good luck with that. <br />

We will have more gameplay changes and bug fixes coming and not just in Realism Versus and Versus.<br />

What else can you expect? We have some longer term projects that we are working on that have been taking our time. The biggest project is working custom content back into the core game on our official dedicated servers. There are complications to how that works and how we insure against cheating, so you will not see the results instantly but we are working on it.<br />

Past that, we should have some news for you early next year (it really isn't that far away) on any new content we might have in the works.<br />

Hard Eight, Do you compete? Mutation Madness, The Road Ahead

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?


Do You Compete?
We asked if you competed in Left 4 Dead 1 or 2 Tournaments. That both platforms tied with Play competitive games but not in tourneys and where am I? is a little scary. Here are the numbers by platform:

Xbox 360
30% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
30% Where am I?
15% No, But I do compete in other games
13% Played in tourneys
12% Don’t play competitive modes

PC<
26% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
26% Where am I?
19% Don’t play competitive modes
17% Played in tourneys
12% No, But I do compete in other games

With 13-17% of you responding you do play in Tourneys – which ones? Where? Because that response rate dwarfs the numbers I see in online Tourneys. Do you have a tournament you are running or do you know about one? Let us know! We have been known to kick in prizes and who doesn't want to win one of these?

Mutation Madness!
The next Mutation will be a community created Mutation. We have been talking with Raymond Nondorf about his Mutation mod that he posted in the forums. We are going to be pulling the next Mutation from his mod and then after that the question becomes – can you create a better Mutation? Raymond, not content with just releasing his own Mutations, has also created a tutorial for others to create their own. You can check it out here. Nice work Raymond!

As we continue to update bi-weekly, we will be incorporating some of these community Mutations. To make a Mutation, you will need to build and test your mutation on the PC but we will release them on both PC and Xbox 360. So user created content is beginning to see itself on the Xbox 360!


The Walking Dead
This season's final episode of The Walking Dead is this Sunday. Have you been watching it? Use the in-game poll to let us know.


The Road Ahead
First up, Realism Versus. While the really short respawn interval was interesting, it removed our ability to increase difficulty in other ways. Today's update includes one of those other ways, the uncrownable Witch. Not only is she deadly in Realism but now she is also uncrownable. Good luck with that.


We will have more gameplay changes and bug fixes coming and not just in Realism Versus and Versus.


What else can you expect? We have some longer term projects that we are working on that have been taking our time. The biggest project is working custom content back into the core game on our official dedicated servers. There are complications to how that works and how we insure against cheating, so you will not see the results instantly but we are working on it.


Past that, we should have some news for you early next year (it really isn't that far away) on any new content we might have in the works.

As you've probably seen by now, we like to change things in Team Fortress 2. A lot. And while we're perfect most of the time, we occasionally get something wrong. One reason for this is we just don't get enough data from internal play testing, and another is that we spend too much time watching Tom Bui serenades on Youtube (Hint: Search for "Tom Bui" on Youtube) (Another Hint: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmWv6gyRjCs">Click here</a>). So to help us change TF2 even more frequently, we're pleased to announce the Team Fortress 2 (public) Beta.

<a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1038"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/beta.png" width="420" height="180" border="0"></a>

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4721&p=1">Read the blog post</a> for all the info.

As you've probably seen by now, we like to change things in Team Fortress 2. A lot. And while we're perfect most of the time, we occasionally get something wrong. One reason for this is we just don't get enough data from internal play testing, and another is that we spend too much time watching Tom Bui serenades on Youtube (Hint: Search for "Tom Bui" on Youtube) (Another Hint: Click here). So to help us change TF2 even more frequently, we're pleased to announce the Team Fortress 2 (public) Beta.



Read the blog post for all the info.