Group Fortress 2that shooter with wacky character intro movies so good I’ve to observe every of them at the least as soon as each six months, acquired its 2025 summer season replace late final week. There are a number of recent community-made maps, gadgets, and taunts, along with a good few bug fixes from Valve themselves.
Cool to see, although one vocal group of gamers are eager to see the builders delve again in and make some modifications to matchmaking, having penned an open letter to the Steamy firm outlining hopes for the revised system that melds the very previous previous one with the marginally much less previous one the sport’s had since 2016’s Meet Your Match replace.
To start with, the summer season replace. You possibly can learn the full notes right herehowever the highlights as follows. There are 10 new neighborhood maps, dubbed (clears throat) Citadel, Aquarius, Fulgur, Cargo, Conifer, Boardwalk, Blowout, Mannhole, Demolition, and Stress. You possibly can add 23 new community-made gadgets and 14 uncommon results to that, with the latter being cut up seven-seven between hats and taunts.
Closing out the additions are 4 new taunts: The Remaining Rating, Bear Hug, Texan Trickshot, and Flying Colors. I can guess precisely what two of these’ll appear like if executed by a Heavy, the others are a bit extra mysterious. Among the many bug fixes are tweaks to outdated in-game suggestions, the Heavy’s mannequin being up to date so as to add a fittingly-named “bullets bodygroup for cosmetics”, and “the Texas Half-Pants not totally utilizing rimlight”. That final one’s in all probability pretty boring in apply, nevertheless it made me snigger.
So, that is the replace – good and beefy for a sport that is slowly inching nearer to its twentieth birthday (sorry if that is made you’re feeling previous).
Now, onto the letter. A bunch of TF2 gamers dubbed BringBackQuickplay and YouTuber Megascatterbomb have penned an open letter they are saying they’re planning to ship off to Valve, calling for the reintroduction of a number of options from TF2’s pre-2016 quickplay matchmaking system. The central purpose is a transfer away from skill-based matchmaking, again to a system that places community-run servers on the forefront and permits crew switching at will. As of writing, regardless of the letter being cited as from all the Group Fortress 2 neighborhood, these behind it say its suggestions are based mostly on a survey that acquired about 3.5k responses.
This additionally is not the primary time in current historical past that Group Fortress 2 gamers have determined to crack open a phrase processor and write to Gabe Newell like he is their MP. Earlier this 12 months, a gaggle that appears to have included at the least among the identical of us put collectively one other letter to Valve (in the very same font) about giving gamers who’ve not upgraded to a premium account again the flexibility to make use of comms instruments like textual content and voice chat. That change debuted in 2020 as a part of Valve’s efforts to fight botsone thing Group Fortress gamers got here collectively beneath the #SaveTF2 moniker to name for motion on.
Principally, the sport with the spy that goes boink hasn’t been brief on marketing campaign teams over the previous half decade. We’ll need to see if this newest letter goes anyplace, or simply stays a factor that is garnered some thumbs up from some Group Fortressers who frequent Reddit.
