steam-community posts

Just a reminder for all of the folks who might want to use Steam later this evening. Valve has announced that the PC game download service will have several of its features shut down beginning at 6 pm Pacific Ttme (9 pm Eastern time) for Valve to go in and do some server maintenance. The downtime should last until 9 pm Pacific time (Midnight Eastern time).

You won't be able to download or purchase games via Steam during the down time period. There will also be no access to the Steam community features and games that use the Steamworks matchmaking features won't be playable.

Earlier this week the Team Fortress 2 web site posted up an update. On the surface it seems to be fairly minor as it announces that new TF2 avatars are now available for Steam community members. But some folks are speculating that the blog is a sneaky way for Valve to tease people about the next character class update for the multiplayer shooter.

Steam forum members have discussed the fact that the Soldier wrote up the update to the blog, which they say is a clue that the Soldier class is the next in line to get the unlockable items treatment (the Engineer and Demoman are also awaiting their own updates). There's also a reference to "defending a hill" which some have taken to mean a "King of the Hill" style of gameplay mode might be added alongside the Soldier update.

Valve has certainly done something similar in the past as an April Fool's Joke concerning the Sniper on the blog site turned out to be a clue to the Sniper class update that was released weeks later.

[Via Kotaku]