"This is the first public release of The Great Class Dash. The mod turns Team Fortress into a platformer similar to the flash game Canabalt. The first level starts out with you controlling only the scout. The only control in this stage is jumping, and its relatively easy to clear all the obstacles and reach the end of the level. Later levels introduce more classes though, and in the end, you will have to quickly switch between all nine to reach the finish. "

"Today's TF2 update includes a bunch of new items and weapons, all of which were made by members of the TF2 community and uploaded to the Contribute! site. The overall quality of submissions we're receiving is fantastic, by the way, so there'll be plenty of new additions to follow. The submitters of these items will find nifty unique versions sitting in their backpacks, so they can show everyone their work.

This is really exciting for us here at Valve. Starting from our core belief that entertainment products should be services, we've tried to increase the set of ways our community can impact our games, and the ways in which we can reward you for it. From the implementation of features requested by players and mapmakers, to unique community items given to valuable community contributors, to the purchasing and shipping of popular maps, to the ARG-style product announcement of Portal 2, we've tried to include our players in the ongoing challenge of improving our games and their communities."

"We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead."

""As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."

"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."

Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.""

" - Added 3 new hats that can be worn by any class
- Towering Pillar of Hats"
- Noble Amassment of Hats"
- Modest Pile of Hat"
- Added Propaganda contest winners' hats for First Place, First Runner-up, and Second Runner-up
- Added "Edit Loadout" button to the class menu
- Changed the main menu background to randomly use the Red, Blue, and Soldier/Demo background images
- Fixed Snipers being able to shoot enemies through gates"

"Today we're unveiling the TF2 Contribution site. This nifty site will allow anyone who's made a custom piece of TF2 content to submit it to us, with a view to it appearing in-game. Many of you have been building fantastic TF2 work for a while now, and we wanted a way for you to get it in front of all TF2 players, and for everyone to see that you were the one that built it."

"Unlock Tweaks
- Reduced the health penalty on The Sandman
- Force-A-Nature Knockback only applies to hits that deal more than 30 damage and are in close range
- Force-A-Nature Knockback also factors in the firer's angle of attack when determining the knockback direction and has less of an effect on grounded targets
- The Dead Ringer now reduces cloak to 40% when uncloaking early, and has a quieter de-cloak sound
- The Dead Ringer also has a 35% cap on the amount of cloak it can gain from an ammo pack

Community Requests
- Added "skip_next_map" server ConCommand to skip the next map in the map cycle
- Added "Play a hit sound whenever you injure an enemy" option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options menu
- Added server "tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads" convar. When set, shotgun & scattergun pellet spreads will use a non-random distribution
- Added a "show_htmlpage" command to allow server operators to display custom web pages to clients"

" Team Fortress 2

- Added an "equipped" tag to currently equipped items in the Backpack and Crafting screens
- Fixed the Heavy picking up his own thrown sandvich if it was thrown while running forward
- Fixed the player keeping their rage setting when the Buff Banner isn't equipped
- Fixed resupply cabinet not clearing the rage and the buff status effect
- Fixed the Buff Banner not working when +reload has been forced in console
- Fixed the Direct Hit mini-critting enemies submerged in water
- Fixed the Chargin' Targe's crit not working on servers with tf_weapon_criticals 0
- Capped the amount of overhealing from taking heads to the player's max buffed health
- Updated the Gunboats to absorb damage from any self-inflicted rocket blast that doesn't hurt another player
- Updated the Scottish Resistance to detonate bombs near the player's feet (in addition to what it normally detonates). This enables sticky jumping with this weapon

Crafting improvements

- Spy's camera beard can now be smelted into scrap metal
- Recipes can no longer produce items matching any of the items used in the crafting
- Added some new recipes

Achievement fixes

- Fixed the "Ride of the Valkartie" Soldier achievement being earned by Soldiers on the defending team
- Fixed the "Gorky Parked" Heavy achievement being incremented by committing suicide on a control point
- Fixed several Scout achievements that were broken by the new type of bat stun
- Fixed the "Ghastly Gibus Grab" achievement not awarding the hat correctly
- Updated the "Big Pharma" (Medic) and "Division of Labor" (Heavy) achievements to be 10 kills in a single life
- Updated the "Ubi concordia, ibi victoria" Medic achievement to only be 3 assists"

"Back when we launched the Propaganda contest, we originally figured it'd be a cakewalk to judge. You might not know this, as it's a well-kept industry secret, but normally with giveaway tie-in contests for video games, you get about 10 entries. Seven of these are virulently racist. The other two are pornography. The last one, regardless of its quality, wins by default.

However, the recession must be a lot worse than we thought, because apparently all of you are unemployed and have nothing better to do than spend real hours drawing incredibly time-consuming art for virtual prizes. No joke: as of contest's end last night, we have in excess of 11,000 entries—and almost every one of them deserves to be framed on the wall of one of Gabe Newell's castles.

In fact, while we've managed to wade through your mountain of entries carefully enough to select a first, second and third place winner below, we're nowhere near through categorizing our many favorites, and we've got plenty more prizes to give away. So just because you don't see your entry below, don't assume you haven't won anything. (Still, with 11,000 entries, don't bet against it, either.)"

"So: how is the War update different from our other class updates?

In many ways, it's not. Like any other class update, the War update will reveal three new weapons each for the Demoman and Soldier throughout the week, as well as some maps, achievements, and surprises, right up until the day of release, when everything we've been teasing goes live.

Where the War update differs from other class updates is that we've decided to mix things up a little with, as the Administrator would say, "a healthy competition." A secret, exclusive seventh weapon has also been developed by the TF2 team. In other words, either the Soldier or the Demo (but NOT both) is walking out of this update with one more weapon than the other. If you want your class to have it, you're going to have to fight for it. The more Demomen you kill as the Soldier class will help ensure the Soldier gets the weapon at the end of the week. The more Soldiers you kill as the Demo will help the Demo class get the exclusive seventh weapon. Check back daily to see how your class is doing at the War hubpage — this is also where you'll see links to all the leaked previews of the weapons, maps, and surprises releasing soon with this update.

What if some of you try to cheat to bump the numbers? We'll know. (Though we also know many of you won't be able to resist trying anyway.)

Alright, enough talk. Who'd you rather see get this exclusive new weapon? The Demoman? Or the Soldier? The War starts right now, so get out there and vote with your kills!"