
Over the weekend we hit a new landmark, with over ten million dollars paid out to over 400 contributors and partners. And close to $250,000 of that figure will be paid out to the sixty-plus people who created the Robotic Boogaloo update.
If you just read that last paragraph and are kicking yourself for not making that beard of bees sketch a reality, here's the good news: We've also done a bunch of work improving the item submission tool, so it's never been easier to submit. The tool now automatically tests new creations against a set of standards, meaning anything you create is now significantly more likely to be game-ready.
You can now also see how your items will render on TF2 characters within the tool, making the creation process itself even quicker. Plus, every item submitted through the tool will now be tagged with a gold star, showing everyone that it's been vetted. FYI, our next update is going to ship exclusively with "gold star" items, and there's going to be no limit on how many we'll include. (Check out the Workshop FAQ for more info.)
In short, there's never been an easier, faster or more rewarding time to submit to the Workshop. If you're not making that beard of bees dream a reality, let's face it, at this point it's probably a motivational problem on your end.

Andy Warhol once said, "In the future, anybody who wants fifteen minutes of fame has to fight me for it." Brave words from a man who was pummeled to death seconds later by Matt Damon. Luckily, with fame-bully Warhol out of the way, people can now be famous for as long as they want. We decided to start small with a 15-second commercial starring the TF2 mercs, which will appear this Sunday at midnight during the Venture Bros. premiere on Adult Swim.

When we first launched the Workshop back in 2011, we had no idea what the TF2 community was capable of. As the hats, beards, boots and hairdos started rolling in, we realized there was a huge well of creativity out there. But we didn’t appreciate just how deep those waters ran until the community-made updates started appearing. Now we've finally gotten to the point where we're able to shine a well-deserved spotlight on your efforts, starting with the Robotic Boogaloo Update, which includes 57 new items—the most community items we've ever shipped at once. Currently the items are only available in RoboCrates. RoboCrates will become rare drops after June 3rd.
This update is 100% created by the TF2 community. And when we say everything, we mean everything—the in-game content, the update hub website, the animated short, the comic, even the splash images in the Steam store. Even better, everything you created avoided the classic trap of using other companies’ intellectual property. (Those of you working on a Darth Vader Pyro mask, we've got some bad news for you.) Plus, in a first for the Team Fortress economy, all the creators of the Robotic Boogaloo Update have decided to share the revenue earned from the sale of RoboCrate Keys. That means that everyone involved will be profiting from this update, not just the people making hats.
This doesn't mark the end of Valve-produced TF2 updates, by the way. As far as we’re concerned, there's plenty of room for both to happily co-exist. We're in uncharted territory here, and it's exciting to be exploring it with you. Amazing work, everyone!