The 2024 Steam Summer Sale has come to an end, which means the next big seasonal event to hit Steam's lineup: the Team Fortress 2 2024 Summer Update.

Like last year's TF2 Summer Update, this update is packed with stuff made by the community, not Valve: 10 new community maps (Embargo, Odyssey, Megaton, Cachoeira, Overgrown, Hadal, Applejack, Atom Smash, Canaveral, Burghausen), 23 new “community contribution items” in Summer 2024 cosmetic cases, 4 new community creation taunts, 38 new community creation Unusual effects: 18 new hats and 20 new taunts.

Of course, Valve is also contributing to this effort. Of course, Valve is also contributing to this effort. Someone had to gather all this stuff and make sure it complied with all the necessary rules and regulations and didn't actually break the game in any meaningful way. It would also be the job of someone at Valve to actually push the updates live.

And this update is an impressive pile of bug fixes, updates, and “security and stability improvements.”

Valve did not elaborate on what exactly was done on this front, but “Save TF” fans requesting Valve fix the game This is only a few weeks after the “bot extermination banwave” that appears to have occurred at least as part of the campaign; Valve has also adopted an unforgiving approach to banning players: banning in TF2 cannot be appealed or removed, and Valve does not even tell you why you have been banned. not even tell them why they were banned.

The crackdown has also helped to spike the number of concurrent players of Team Fortress 2 and turn around the game's user review situation: in early June, TF2's “recent reviews” rating, based on a tally of reviews posted in the past 30 days, was “overwhelmingly negative”, It is now “mixed,” which, while not good, is still a marked improvement. The fan campaign that initiated the action urges supporters to “tread carefully” and is “very grateful” for Valve's actions, but warns that “persistent and ongoing maintenance” is needed to keep the game bot-free. There is reason to be concerned: Valve “saved Team Fortress 2” in 2022, but the bots are back.

Reaction to the summer update seems to be quite positive so far; on the TF2 subreddit, there still seems to be an expectation that the bots will eventually return to the game, but a great many people are still concerned that the ctf_2fort_invasion is a Misc Matchmaking They are happy to see it out of the category and into CTF. We'll see what happens.

The Team Fortress 2 summer 2024 event will run through September 15. The update will be automatically applied the next time the game is launched. The full patch notes are as follows.