Valve have announced the new Team Fotress 2 beta: “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.”

It seems that with the game being patched so regularly, a beta phase of the game is going to need to run, concurrent with the latest version. More info on the official blog, and forum pages here.

EDIT: The first trailer’s out! Watch below.

Do you care about Poker Night At The Inventory, Telltale’s upcoming cheapo comedy poker game featuring Strong Bad, Tycho from Penny Arcade, Max from Sam & Max and TF2′s Heavy? Not so much? What about… now:

Valve has revealed the five equippable TF2 items you’ll be able to unlock playing Poker Night At The Inventory, plus the Poker Visor you get if you pre-order, making this the first time a non-Valve game has unlocked content for TF2 which affects the game proper. You can peruse these goods after the jump. (more…)

Grab your Jarate bottles, it’s about to get all Halloweeny. In the second, and thus now annual, All Hallows Eve update for Team Fortress 2, the game has added its first ever NPC boss monster. He’s the Horseless Headless Horsemann (indeed, a long lost member of the Mann family), and only appears in a new spooky map, Mann Manor. He’s randomly generated, and DOESN’T HAVE A HEAD… OR A HORSE. Cripes!

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Virtual millinery proves to pay off. Valve sent us this on the roaring hat-trade in Team Fortress 2, and the benefits for the community creators:

Five Steam community members participated in the initial round of content creation. Rob Laro, Shawn Spetch, Steven Skidmore, Spencer Kern, and Shaylyn Hamm created items for Team Fortress 2 which were then made available to other community members for purchase from the in-game Mann Co. Store. Today they received checks for the first two weeks of sales, with royalties ranging from $39,000 to $47,000 per person.

“It’s astounding that so many people want to purchase the items that came out of the community,” said Spencer Kern, TF2 community content creator. “The response exceeded my wildest expectations. There really is no doubt at this point that there’s a huge demand for community-created content in TF2 and, hopefully, more games will start to tap into this demand.”

Yep. Astounding is the word.

So with the biff and swish of an amusing comic, a reason to use the Steam Wallet is born: The Mann Co. Store. It’s going to allow players to trade TF2 inventory items in-game using their Steam Wallets. So hats and stuff can now be sold off or purchased for real cash. Here’s another thing: “Additionally, community contributors will receive a percentage of sales on items they’ve created!” Ooh, you say. Hmm, I mutter, my beard aflutter.

What does it mean? And why? Well it doesn’t look like it will change the game much, aside from people being able to get the kit they want for cash. It seems to be a way of generating a bit of extra cash with purely cosmetic items, essentially allowing the completely capitalist Valve Corporation to have a reason to keep developing TF2′s free updates, aside from being nice. FAQ here. Also PCG point out the prices. That’s a pricey knife.

Do you remember pro-animator James Benson’s dancing Team Fortress 2 characters? Of course you do. You commit everything RPS publishes to memory and, if your feeble mind fails, tattoo it onto your body. Anyway, you may remember they were all work in progress. James has finally finished the whole thing, which can be viewed below… (more…)

Deep in the bowels of Castle Shotgun, in one of the many lost rooms, forgotten testament to Jim’s Escher-like grasp of architecture, a light flickers into existence. It takes a few minutes to fill the scene, the first flutters of red doing little to illuminate, but slowly, as the seconds pass, it becomes stronger, until finally it stays constant. Machinery whirrs into life behind it, something grand, huge, and majestic, returning to operating efficiency.

The RPS TF2 server is back online. And it’s going to be busy. (more…)

This is somewhat inspired. You recall the Golden Wrenches circa the last Team Fortress 2 update? WiNGSPANNT despised his – number 31 – but had a bright idea of how to turn its annihilation into a force for good. In short, he’s using its destruction as an excuse to raise money for Child’s Play. To simplify the whole system, the twenty highest donators will be invited to join him on a server to observe this crushing to powder of a modern day Excalibur. Inspired by this Seven (Count ‘em!) other golden-wrench owners are going to follow suit, with the whole ceremony being recorded for posterity. Hurrah! Anyway, go forth and donate, or watch this video which explains what’s going on in further detail… (more…)

RPS’ ways are mysterious. How do you get us to post about something? You stick 40k figures in it. Or Transformers. Frankly, if you put Impactor in your game we’d probably end up skinning the site in your game’s honour. Anyway – 40k models for TF2. “Coming Soon” says the Youtube-page-notes. “I miss Impactor” cries our inner six-year olds, embarrassingly. Footage follows. (more…)

There’s a sixty second set up time before you start a map. Sixty seconds for the defending team to hustle, slapping down sentries at key locations, setting up sniper nests and anxiously sweating as they wait for that timer to trickle down to zero. It’s tense stuff, and it makes the coming chaos so much more powerful and brilliant. (more…)