Team Fortress 2 receives a massive update, but its content is all fan-made

After fans of the class-based team shooter jumped on board the hype train following the announcement of a "full-sized" update earlier this year, it has now been released, and unsurprisingly, Valve has made none of the content included.

The details:

• Back in February, fans braced themselves for the first major Team Fortress 2 (TF2) update in years after Valve announced in a blog post that a "full-on update-sized update" would be released in the summer. This was later changed to refer to the update as "holiday-sized," and while the majority of its expected contents remained unchanged, the company appeared to want to lower expectations. The post originally stated that the update would include "items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, war paints, and who knows what else" before being changed to "other community-contributed fixes.”
• Valve has now released the update, which includes 14 new maps, six taunts, 20 unusual effects, 25 cosmetic items, and some new cases in which players can find the aforementioned cosmetics. What's notable is that everything included was created by the community, with Valve selecting the best bits and assembling everything. The company did make some changes itself, releasing a slew of new fixes to improve security, squash bugs, and even touch up some maps to improve elements such as collision.
• It appears that players are unbothered about community content, with the game reaching an all-time high concurrent player count of 253,997 at the time of writing, and it does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. With TF2 now nearly 16 years old, it's likely that a significant portion of the current playerbase is returning after a break from the game, as updates, especially ones as large as this, are rare enough to be seen as something to celebrate. The studio itself stopped making content for the game itself in 2017, with every seasonal update since being made up of community content featured on the Steam Workshop.

More gaming news:

• Bulkhead, the developers of Battalion 1994, are now refunding fans who backed the game's original Kickstarter after failing to support it after its official release. The studio announced that anyone who backed either the PC or console versions can now fill out a survey to receive a full refund, which will be made via PayPal in the coming months.
• After 25 years, Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells is retiring, leaving fellow co-president Neil Druckmann to lead the studio. Wells joined the company as a designer during the development of Crash Bandicoot: Warped and worked on an assortment of projects, including the Jak and Daxter series and Crash Team Racing.