Valve's recent Team Fortress 2 update took a specific shot at a section of the community known as idlers. Idlers play the game to not play it: they join servers and just stand there, hoping to grab an item via the game's item drop system. After years of this, Valve have decided you must click on the item to have it deposited in your backpack, meaning that people who have to be at their PC to benefit*. That's fair enough; Valve really don't want people not playing their game for profit. But I am worried that it'll mean that Idle servers become a thing of the past, because they can be amazing maps to visit and even play on.

An idle map needs only these things: a spawn point for each team, and a room in the middle with a game element. These maps are designed to kill players over and over again. Some say it's to make sure player stats aren't skewed with ultra-long lives, others claim it's to stop servers from kicking players. Beyond that, anything goes. Balance and lines of sight are no concern. Instead the designers fill the space with ingenious traps and strange assault courses designed to make achievement farming easier.

One of my guilty pleasures is to server hop through all non-standard maps and peek into what people have made. I just alphabetise the server browser and pick the maps that don't come with the recognisable TF2 suffixes. The fickle nature of TF2 hosting means these servers aren't always running, but if you're scouring the server browser for an interesting experience, then here are a few to look out for.

Map: achievement_idle
"The perfect space to hone your Heavy boxing skills."
 


This is the granddaddy of idle servers, and the most basic setup. It consists of three rooms: two spawn rooms facing into a central, uncappable point. The spawn points are kill rooms, with the player's health dropping as soon as they land on the server, and the only place both teams can meet is the centre room, with the smallest loop of a corridor protecting the players from a line-of-sight death. It's basically like sharing a bedroom with a little brother. Everyone is crammed together, giving each other the stink-eye through the spawn room windows. Petty little fights will eventually break out, with each person flipping between multiple classes to attempt to get the upper hand. The perfect space to hone your Heavy boxing skills.

Map: achievement_idle_inferno
"The conveyor belt tips the players into a fiery pit."



On the Red team, it's business as usual: you spawn in a room and you die, or you can have a fun little battle in the central space. But if you only spawn on the Red side you'll miss out on the hat party on the other end of the map. The Blu team spawns on a conveyor belt in a forced conga line beneath a glowing sign that points you to "Free Hats". Never trust a glowing sign. As in life, they always end up in disappointment and murder. The conveyor belt tips the players into a fiery pit before launching their corpses into the air like a diseased cow.

Map: achievement_idle_awesomebox8
"To see the best this map has to offer, you'll have to take a leap of faith."



Awesomebox8 makes a few additions to the stock idle server. Instead of dying in situ, the players are funnelled off onto a conveyor belt. The rooms it drags you through allows other players to kill you, which can help with achievement farming. You can fight anywhere on the map, and there's a boxing ring on top for players to go melee mano-a-mano. To see the best this map has to offer, you'll have to take a leap of faith. Those willing to jump over a certain side will be rewarded with an invisible staircase that takes you to a party in the skybox. As seen above, the engi is the best class to use to get there.

Map: achievement_proud_to_idle
"there's a tennis court for Pyros to practice rocket reflecting."



This is a multipurpose map, designed for dying, achievement mining, and just having fun. The spawn room faces a room with several elevators. Each leads to different area. The achievement area will let you easily fill any gaps in your achievement list, the arena is where you can settle differences with violence, and there's a tennis court for Pyros to practice rocket reflecting. But the memorial hall - filled with portraits of TF2's legendary cast - hides the greatest secret. If you take a running leap at the Spy's portrait, you'll pass through it into a secret Spy room. That's not the only hidden area, either. The looped rope in the Fail room, part of the Memorial Hall, holds its own secrets. But you can find that out for yourself.

Map: achievement_all_v4
"The fighting hides a massive, server-destroying secret."



Achievement maps are the flashier brothers to idle servers. Here you're idling so others might pad their stats by killing you. At first look, achievement_all_v4 has everything you need to grind out achievements: short runs where you can cap points quickly, easy briefcases to capture, even self-building dispensers to sap. You'll join and see an unbalanced fight between teams, where some Blus have given up their existence to Red kill-counts, but the fighting hides a massive, server-destroying secret.

In the corner of each team's spawn area, beside the restock cabinets at the striped walls, is a secret, invisible button. First you need to attack the area around the corner. A pyro is the best choice for this, then you need to hit 'use' on the area. What follows defies belief. A scream fills the server, the ground shakes, then at the back wall of the level a cat rises. The feline fires bees and has laser beams from its eyes. It is unkillable, and everything it fights will die. It's difficult to find: the cat also kills the server, requiring a restart, so not many people are willing to host LAZER DEATH CAT, or if they do they might disable it. The above video shows it looks like when Valve's gimmicked rocket launcher comes up against a kitty death machine.

Map: achievement_turbov14
"There's an entirely new map, filled with games and the Pyro's house."



This map is huge, with separate rooms for different types of achievement farming. It has the feeling of a modern church, built to let attendees worship at the altar of achievements. Both Red and Blu teams spawn in the same area, so it can be tough to figure out the space without getting into impromptu fights, but there are teleports behind the spawn that'll take you away from the madness. The construction of this space is a marvel in itself, but there's a ridiculous added bonus to uncover. Head through the mail hall and the door labelled "achievement boxes". read the instructions on the wall about binding the "use" key, then head around the wall and through the double doors. Don't scream at the Pyro, and run and jump at the Spy portrait. Hit "Use" twice and you'll be through into a secret area. From here it's a few more easy steps to an entirely new map, filled with games and the Pyro's house. There's more, as you'll see in the video above.

*Four items were dropped in the writing of this article

"Cheaters never prosper" is one of those annoyingly meaningless phrases that's more like an exhalation of fetid air than an actual opinion. Haven't these people heard of SimCity's Shift+FUND? And cheaters have been prospering for years in TF2, where idling players have been gathering up weapons, items and hats without needing to play the game. That particular avenue of prosperity has just been blocked off, though, as Valve have finally put a system in place to reward only active players.

Announced on their blog last night, the new system pauses item drops for anyone not playing the game. Valve describe active as someone who:


Is connected to a VAC secured server.
Is responding to in-game drop notifications while not utilizing external programs to do so.
Is running only one instance of the game.
Is not in textmode.


As long as you meet these requirements, you'll still be earning items - subject to the regular cap rates. Valve say that idlers aren't in danger of VAC bans, having items removed or being penalised in any other way - just that their drops will be suspended until they resume active play.

For more specifics, visit the Team Fortress 2 blog.

Team Fortress 2 has been updated with the previously teased huge housekeeping patch. Along with the continued and unstoppable flood of new Workshop items, this update also tweaks and rebalances weapons, and brings a round of fixes to smooth over the glitches and exploits found in older maps. They've even made changes to Hydro - proving, perhaps, that the Territorial Control game mode is only partially beyond redemption.

It's not all about tidying up, though. We also get two new community Control Point maps: Process and Standin. In addition, 60 new items (read: mostly hats) have made the jump from Workshop to game, using Valve's new community verification tool. This speeds up the process by applying a series of conditions to a proposed item, and awarding a gold star to those that pass the tests. Valve hope that it will increase the rate at which they can introduce new items to the game. Because what's a hat simulator without a steady flow of new headwear?

Finally they've unleashed "Summer Cooler Keys", the Crate opening summer variant that is further proof - if it were needed - that the Steam Summer Sale is imminently incoming. Like, almost certainly later today.

You can find the full changelist on the TF2 update post. If you're anything like me, you'll be straight there and Ctrl+F'ing for your favourite weapon in the hope that it's been left unchanged.

The upcoming update to Team Fortress 2 appears to me mostly janitorial - sweeping up things that have, in the months and years since their introduction, started to look a bit dirty. Previously, Valve detailed the changes planned for exploit-filled maps like Badwater. Now, they're turning to the weapons, hoping to better balance the staggering arsenal that has been packed into the game.

"We'll be tweaking the stats on dozens of weapons in this next update," Valve reveal, before going on to discuss the thinking behind some of the changes that they're making. For starters, they point to the Soldier's banner variant, The Battalion's Backup, as a problem item - with only 15% of its owners ever equipping it.

"Previously, The Battalion's Backup rewarded players for taking additional damage, making it a frustratingly high-risk item," Valve continue. "We found that most Soldiers would die well before they were able to build a full charge. When the next update ships, The Battalion's Backup builds up its charge by dealing damage rather than receiving it and provides additional damage resistance while active."

Good news for Soldiers then. Spies, meanwhile, are going to have slightly less of an easy ride, thanks to changes being made to the Dead Ringer - and item with roughly an 80% equip rate. "In our next update, the Dead Ringer will work generally the same way it always has, letting Spies feign death to escape from damage that would have otherwise killed them. However, now any damage the Spy takes after his "death" will decrease the maximum length of time he can spend cloaked. This gives any players chasing the Spy more of an opportunity to catch up and deal a real finishing blow, while also requiring more skill from any Spy trying to make his way to actual safety."

Item sets are also getting an overhaul, with Valve claiming two major problems with the existing system. "For one, they limited player choice, making players feel like they would be underpowered if not wearing the complete set. For another, it was a balancing nightmare. An individual item that might be balanced as part of a set could feel underpowered (or overpowered) on its own."

Also, Valve note that set bonuses were often 'invisible', with no way for players to tell who had all three items needed for the extra buff. Personally, I'd argue that tying specific bonuses to hard-to-get, nominally "cosmetic" items was a bad move, and as close as the game has come into tipping into pay-to-win territory, but it's the result that matters: bonuses are being moved to specific items within the sets, with new non-balance destroying bonuses for those who've spent time collecting a full set.

As yet, there's no definite date for this unnamed update, beyond "soon".

The wonderful hat-trading, item-crafting Valve experiment that is Team Fortress 2 is about to get an all-important update that adds two new community maps while fixing some rather heinous exploits along the way.

Those who have fallen victim to spawn-campers and sentry-jumpers no longer need to live in terror as the Team Fortress 2 team says it has fixed the exploit in all maps, but noted Badwater as being the most notorious battleground for nefarious deeds.

“It didn't take long before clever players discovered how to use sentry jumping to build on roofs, Jumpers to move quickly behind enemy lines and spawn camp, and sneakily place buildings inside of their spawns,” the TF2 team said in a blog post. “While we love players coming up with new and inventive ways to win, let's face it: It's never fun to be gunned down from above and behind.”

The team also announced it’s adding two community-made Capture Point maps called “Process” and “Standin” due to their intuitive design. The team challenged other TF2 map makers to construct even better maps if they wished to be recognized as well.

Special Effect is a charity dedicated to helping people with disabilities enjoy games. As part of this year's fundraising drive, they've collaborated with a group of Team Fortress 2 item makers to create The SpecialEffect Charity Set 2013 - a three item collection of TF2 hats and miscellaneous items. The charity is now looking to the community for help getting the items approved and onto the MannCo store.

The arcade-themed item pack includes joystick belt accessory The Belly Buttons, decal supporting The Quarter Cabinet, and The Virtual Viewfinder headset. If approved, 99% of the profits will go directly to SpecialEffect.

"It's a fantastic gesture," says the charity's CEO, Mick Donegan. "Gamers get what we're trying to do, and to get that support from artists within the community is a real endorsement of our work."

To help SpecialEffect raise the £750,000 they need this year to bring specialised control equipment into the homes and hospitals of players with disabilities, all you need to do is head over to the item set page and rate the pack up.

For more on SpecialEffect, check out our recent feature on the charity, and to learn why Steam's Workshop is such a clever idea for a fundraiser, see our profile on its item makers.

In case you hadn’t heard, the business of creating content for games you didn’t make is booming. People are quitting their regular jobs because building Team Fortress 2 robot skins—along with the hats for said robots—is more profitable. The whole thing seems to be working, and now Valve wants to ensure everyone gets their fair share.

“Creating high quality content for games is rarely a solo endeavor,” Valve said in a statement. "Along the way, item creators often make use of specialized tools and receive help, guidance, and feedback from various communities and individuals. We've heard from a number of item creators that are looking for a formal way of recognizing and rewarding the toolmakers and service providers that have helped them.”

Anyone who's bought from the Humble Bundle will understand how the new tool works. Creators get a pre-approved list of companies and individuals to divvy up a part of their earnings between to show support. All the money comes from Valve’s take, meaning item creators won’t have to cut into their own profits.

As of now, creators can only make money from the TF2 and DOTA 2 workshops, but who's to say that won't change? If community development makes millions of dollars for Valve, it’s not hard to see third parties following suit.

Just as promised, Steam Trading Cards is now live. The virtual cards can be earned by playing participating games on Steam, trading with other users, or buying on the Steam Marketplace. Complete a set to create a badge, earn rewards and XP, and level up. The user with the highest Steam level at the end of the year gets to high five Gabe Newell while announcing Half-Life 3. In space.

In other true facts, I'm already hearing from users playing the Steam marketplace to profit off the cards' initial popularity. One user I spoke to has been buying low and selling high to pad his Steam wallet, even creating scarcity by buying up low-value cards in quantity. I'll keep an eye on marketplace prices as more users start trading the collectibles.

I was hoping to find a good deal on a 1952 Mickey Mantle card, but unfortunately, baseball isn't a participating game. You can see which of the games you own are participating here.

Earlier in the week, it was announced that the TF2 mercs would be riding motorbikes through the world of Joe Danger. Now, Bossa Studios reveal an update for Surgeon Simulator 2013 that puts the Heavy on the operating table. From bike crash to hospital bed: coincidence? Yeah, probably. Although the idea of a continuing storyline told exclusively through crossovers is appealing. And it's not as if we're short on zombie games for the follow-up.



"Inspired by Valve’s 'Meet The Medic' video, these characters will now take the roles of Nigel and Bob in the game," Bossa write, before announcing that a ridiculous one million Let's Play videos of SS2013 have been uploaded to YouTube. And that's before it featured the open chest of one of gaming's most lovable Russian contract killers.

The update will launch today at 6pm BST (ie, in less than an hour), and will be free to owners of the game.

Do me a favour: savour this news. Enjoy it. Because the Heavy from TF2 is being put into a comedy surgery simulator. Games are brilliant.