- Fixed a crash when leaving hero showcase view.
- Fixed the interaction of Rubick's Spell Steal with Aghanim's Scepter, Vengeful Spirit's Swap and Arc Warden's Tempest Double.

Activision and Treyarch are pleased to announce that today marks the beginning of the Mod Tools Open Beta on PC!

Concluding our Alpha phase means that we’ve passed step one – there’s still work to be done, and with the start of the Open Beta we’re excited to begin the next phase of development...

Opening access to modding and mapping tools to a wider audience will allow us to more effectively address bugs, add polish, and move closer to a complete suite of PC features. While these tools are most certainly for the community, they wouldn’t be possible without the community itself, which is why we’re grateful for your patience and participation.

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

Matchmaking

• Players can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match
  • At the end of a Casual match, players will have 30 seconds to opt-in to a rematch
    
  • If at least 6 players from BLU and 6 players from RED have chosen to rematch, then a rematch will begin
    
  • A rematch will use the same teams, map and server
• Players can now re-queue into Casual Matchmaking during the end of a match
  • Players who decline a rematch or simply don't vote in the rematch voting period will automatically be re-queued
• Updated the way XP is earned in Casual matches
  • Players will now be awarded more XP based on their team's performance at the end of a match
    
  • XP is no longer lost for leaving a Casual match early
    
  • A breakdown of XP sources is now shown when your XP bar fills up
• Casual matches now more strongly prefer to distribute players to teams based on experience, in order to better avoid creating one-sided matches
  
• Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match would become excessive
  • The current minimum allowable match size in such situations is twelve players
    
  • The matchmaker will still attempt to place late-joiners into these matches as they become available
• Competitive matches no longer terminate when any player abandons the match
  • Bots will now fill in for players who have abandoned, or temporarily disconnected from, Competitive matches
    
  • Matches that finish at an advantage or disadvantage (e.g. 6v5 or 5v6, not counting any bots) will now result in larger or smaller skill rating adjustments for disadvantaged wins or disadvantaged losses, respectively
    
  • Competitive matches that lose more than one player per team will keep the current behavior of ending the match
    
  • Players who abandon Competitive matches still receive a large skill rating penalty and Competitive matchmaking cooldown, regardless of whether a bot was allowed to take their place
• Greatly improved the reliability of client ping estimates when placing users into matchmaking servers
  • The game client now periodically checks in with the matchmaking server network to estimate ping to each region, and feeds the information back to the matchmaking system
    
  • This should greatly reduce cases of players being placed in regions to which they have poor ping, even when said regions are geographically nearby
• The scoreboard now shows the connection status for missing and connecting players
  

General

• Added tournament medals for ozfortress Season 16 and Season 17
  
• Fixed an exploit related to the Eureka Effect and carrying buildings
  
• Fixed Live Streams menu not displaying the list of streams
  
• Fixed the flamethrower not drawing the Halloween Spell: Spectral Flame effect during Halloween and Full Moon events
  
• Updated the localization files
  

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

• Internal changes to the way the client talks to the Valve gameserver network in preparation for future changes to the matchmaking ping system
  

- Fixed a few remaining low-end performance issues.
- Fixed performance degrading over multiple games in the same session.
- Fixed flying heroes being able to leave the intended play area by using directional move orders.
- Fixed a recently introduced crash on exit from some custom games.

- Reworked tree selection hitboxes.
- Phantom Assassin's Stifling Dagger no longer counts against Phantom Strike.
- Added Wings Gaming to the Shopkeeper's Aegis of Champions.

Post Game screen changes:
- Post Game screen now shows after Local Bot Matches.
- Added a column for Permanent Buffs. This currently tracks Pudge’s Flesh Heap, Legion Commander’s Duel Damage, Silencer’s Intelligence Stolen, Consumed Moon Shard and Consumed Aghanim’s Scepter.
- Fixed changing heroes with the comparison slider mid-way not showing the correct values.
- Comparison slider now changes KDA and Hero Level.
- Fixed level up graph for Arc Warden.
- Fixed hero level graph for time before the horn.
- Improved hero model loading.
- Fixed “leave match” button not showing up.
- Open the hero comparison mode by default in 1v1 mode.
- Improved display of team logos.

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

• Fixed a case where crouching was used to see outside of the playable area. This could be exploited to place buildings at invalid locations.
  
• Fixed regression that prevented valid building placements
  

* Improved low end performance when rendering glow effects

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

• Fixed a regression in Mann vs. Machine where stunned bots could not pick-up the bomb
  
• Fixed being able to damage enemies through gates with the Cow Mangler 5000
  
• Fixed an exploit related to placing buildings outside of the playable space
  
• Updated the localization files
  

- Fixed a performance problem with some particles, including Tinker's March of the Machines, which would gradually degrade frame rate.
- Fixed a bug where creep and neutrals would spawn slightly later than expected in longer matches.