Team Fortress 2

You might think that big temporary price cuts on games via download services could hurt revenues when they go back up to their regular prices. However, Valve has some evidence that the reverse is actually true and that temporary price cuts on games could serve to actually improve revenues in the long run.

Gamasutra reports that during a speech at the Montreal International Game Summit, Valve's director of business development Jason Holtman stated that, "in a connected market, you can shift prices up and down, and people don't care." As evidence he cited the quick two hour sale they held last month for the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 via Steam, which got its price cut down to just $2.49. Sales went way up during those brief time periods, they also stayed at higher levels after it was over.

Furthermore, retail sales for games are unaffected with the digital download prices. Holtman states that there was a price cut on Steam for Left 4 Dead back in February and, "retail [sales] were unaffected."

In comic books, crossover events between two super hero universes are considered to be a huge deal. Remember when Superman met Spider-Man? When Batman met Predator? When Archie met The Punisher? Well two of Valve's game universes are about to have a (tiny) crossover of their own.

The deal is if you pre-order Valve's upcoming zombie shooter sequel Left 4 Dead 2, not only do you gain early access to the game's demo and pay 10 percent off its regular price but if you also happen to own Valve's multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 you get an extra in-game bonus. It's Bill's hat. Yep, now your TF2 characters will be able to wear the same hat design Bill has for Left 4 Dead 1. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. The Heavy mowing down the Tank in a game? We would love to see that.

Spooky! That's what Team Fortress 2 is all about lately. Being incredibly scary. Did you hear that? It was TF2 sneaking up on you to try and elicit a fright. No worries, he's off skulking off to go do something else. Probably hanging up fake ghosts or jury-rigging pumpkins to explode or something like that. You can't really tell with kids these days. Anyway, ever the creative type, he gave us a list of tasks to do. He also said that if we do them we will get some sweet stuff, like cool Halloween masks or an awesome stovepipe hat! Haunted by the ghost of Zepheniah Mann, of course. So... do you want to join me in a scavenger hunt?

With Left 4 Dead 2 now less than three weeks away from being released more info about Valve's zombie co-op shooter is heading out to the public. One bit comes from G4TV where they have more info about the game's new Realism mode (not active in the just released demo). The zombies only go down with head shots in the new mode, players have to get closer to items to pick them up and players stay dead unless some other player uses a defibrillator on them.

Meanwhile has some early info on the game's first downloadable content leaked out? Players who have seen some of the error messages in the demo have found mentions of a "Miracle Pack" and "Apocalyptic Pack." Hmmm..

[Via Joystiq]

Yeah, Yeah we know....Valve does some goofy things sometimes and this is just one example. They have decided to put their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 on sale for just $2.49. The catch? The sale lasts until 5 pm Eastern time which means you have less than an hour to take advantage.

If you happen to miss out on this price deal don't fret; you can still participate in the game's Haunted Halloween Special. From now until November 2, an upcoming update for the game will add five specific achievements (Candy Coroner - Kill a Spy disguised as your current class, Scared Stiff - Cause the deaths of 5 players by exploding nearby pumpkin bombs, Ghastly Gibus Grab - Collect 20 Halloween pumpkins from dead players to unlock a hat, Costume Contest - Dominate a player wearing the Ghastly Gibus to earn your own and Attack O'Lantern - Kill a player scared by the ghost haunting KOTH Harvest) that will unlock special Halloween themed hats for your characters. There's also a new holiday-themed community map called Harvest included in the update along with . . . wait for it . . . exploding pumpkins. Fun, huh?

Update: The Halloween themed content update is now available to download via Steam

A while back Valve's Gabe Newell stated they were thinking about creating some comic books based on their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2. In August Newell announced that artist Michael Avon Oeming, best know for his work on the Powers comic, would be assisting Valve in their comic book efforts.

Now it looks like Valve is giving folks a preview of what's to come. Apparently a lucky few gamrers who sent in a coupon that Valve printed during that whole "Sniper Vs Spy" dealie got back some postcards this week featuring covers of the classic "Saxton Hale" comic, the head of the mysterious Mann Co that's shown up in a few of Team Fortress 2's fictional notes. You can see the examples at the TF2maps.net message board post. The art is done in Avon Oeming's style and he even mentions the postcards (published by "TF Industries") in a message board. Now all we have to do is wait for the actual comics. If they are half as funny as the cover they should be worth it.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

As some developers continue to dodge the question on whether or not they will release or support third party mods for their games (*cough* Infinity Ward *cough*), Valve is actually fulfilling a promise they made last month. Namely they have now released all of the character model and animation sources for their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2.

But Valve is throwing out some extras as well. They have gone ahead and released some of the models and props they used for their various "Meet The" movies they made for the various Team Fortress 2 characters (the first ones come from the "Meet The Sniper" film). These models are not meant to be used in playable maps but they are still kind of cool for mod makers to have for use in maps and/or fan-made films.

While most of Valve is still working on finishing Left 4 Dead 2, there is definately something going on Valve's Team Fortress 2 team. A new update on the game's official web site has a very funny note from "Mann Co." that could be clue at to what is coming in the next update.

You can click on the image to the right to check out the full size version of the note which seems to suggest that a cannon equiped guard dog could be coming in the next free downloadable update to the multiplayer first person shooter. Hey, anything that has "Cannon-Appended" is OK with us. Or..it could be just a response to a cool fan created web page as our commentors have pointed out. Still, maybe Valve's response means they might consider it for the future.

As one might imagine, Valve's offices are a pretty busy place to be at the moment as they are trying to get Left 4 Dead 2 finished before the game is scheduled to ship to stores in November. However, there always seems to be enough time for a Team Fortress 2 blog update from Valve's TF2 lead Robin Walker.

In the latest such update, Walker states that most of TF2's team is trying to help the L4D2 team finish their game but "we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates." You may also remember that about a month ago Valve had planned to update their Source SDK to give mod makes access to all of TF2's player character models and animations. However Walker now states that the SDK does not have their current file format tools "which are integral to working with these sources" So now they plan to release just one model. the Heavy, to mod makers "so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done."

It seems that on release day for Red Faction Guerrilla, Valve has pulled a fast one on us. A Team Fortress 2 patch! It is by no means as large as the classic updates (of which the classless was the most recent) but it also does not skimp on adding and tweaking things to make your TF2 experience that much more rewarding.

Some of the new features include the ability for a Heavy with the Sandvich to drop it (which restores 50% health to someone who picks it up), the replacement of "no critical hits" on the Blutsauger with a constant health drain (-2 HP per second), and an increase of the medic's self regeneration ability from 1 HP per second to 3 HP per second. Perhaps the biggest and best change, though, is the expansion of the backpack, which can now hold a whopping 100 items! Check out the full list change after the jump.

We can't believe that some people do this but it's apparently true. Some Team Fortress 2 players use external idling applications in order to gain access to items in the multiplayer shooter that they otherwise wouldn't be able to grab. Today, Valve has decided to put their foot down on such actions beginning today.

The official Team Fortress 2 blog site has posted up word that they are " . . . going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system." If you are one of those folks, your items that you have obtained in the game via cheating have been removed. After today, "if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items."

Everyone else who hasn't been cheating will find an extra hat in their Team Fortress 2 inventory and Valve says, "We've also significantly increased the chance of finding any of the existing hats." Wow, it's like they were setting us up for another excuse to post about our Team Fortress 2 Hats Checklist. We certainly didn't plan it.

Those looking for a checklist for their hats collection in Team Fortress 2 should look no further. We here at Big Download have compiled a list of the hats, sorted by class, for you to check off as you receive. After all, you do want to be the best-dressed murder machine out on the maps, don't you? Each class has 3 hats, except for those which already wear hats (Sniper, Engineer, Scout), which have an extra "hat" which is their bare noggin. Check out the checklist after the jump, or you can download it as a PDF file.

Download Big Download's Team Fortress 2 Hat Checklist PDF

Valve recently released their "classless" update for Team Fortress 2 that includes their King of the Hill gameplay mode. But how do they go about making new maps for this mode. The latest update to the Team Fortress 2 blog site not only talks about map making for KOTH but actually shows you via two videos.

The Flash videos show off the process by which they made the KOTH level Viaduct. The blog post mentions that they began prototyping the new mode by modifying existing arena-style maps. However they state, " We quickly found out that fun arena maps weren't necessarily fun KOTH maps." They play tested on builds of maps all the time until they found the right formula that worked for the new mode. As you can see in the videos, the snow art theme was actually a late addition to the Viaduct map.

A while back Valve founder Gabe Newell said that the company was looking to create comic books based on Team Fortress 2. Now in a new video chat over at GameTrailers.com Newell reveals more about their plans to bring their multiplayer shooter game to four-color life.

Newell states they have gotten the talented Michael Avon Oeming to assist in their comic book effort. Oeming is best known as the artist for Powers, one of the best super hero comics that's not set in the Marvel or DC universes. Newell states that Oeming is assisting Valve in "how you do storytelling" for comics. Oeming's art style certainly fits the style that Valve used for creating the look of Team Fortress 2.

With probably the shortest turnover time for any publicized update, the new classless update is out for all of you Team Fortress 2 lovers to enjoy. Along with the new King of the Hill gametype and new maps and hats of the previous update pages, the update contains a rework of Sawmill into a CTF map as well as a host of new additions and fixes. Still no item trade, we're sorry to say. Our personal favorite of the additions not yet covered here has to be this:

• Added a color blind option to add a Jarate icon above enemies who are busy accepting a terrifying existence where they have no dignity.

Full patch notes after the cut.