Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Solstice is coming, and Eid recently passed.

Do you send out holiday cards to your friends and family? If not, you're a terrible person. Don't worry though, Valve has you covered!

Just announced, you can pick up a set of Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, or Team Fortress 2 holiday greeting cards. And trust me, they're amazing.

You can get a 10 pack of cards of the game of your choice for $15.95. Each Left 4 Dead game has one pack, while Team Fortress 2 has two separate ones. There's a really good chance I'm going to buy a pack of each and send them to my non-gaming family -- the cards are that amazing. My brother is definitely getting the Jarate card, and the Sniper bulls-eye shirt will probably get photocopied and sent to all the people I regularly play TF2 with.

The cards are available at Valve's store. Which pack is your favorite?

Pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 for PC on Steam or through participating retailers and you'll be able to wear Bill's hat from Left 4 Dead in Team Fortress 2. The hat is available right now for all to wear, so long as you've pre-ordered the game.

According to the Team Fortress 2 blog, the hat came into the Team Fortress 2 universe via a science experiment:

And lest you think this is just some marketing gimmick, here's the intricate back-story justifying it: while conducting a science experiment on parallel dimensions, Bill's hat fell off a table into the Team Fortress universe.

Okay, so that's not true, but it's still neat. Also, you'll save 10% on Left 4 Dead 2 by pre-ordering the game so there's that too. 

[Thanks, Liam!]

Valve is getting into the spirit of Halloween this week as they have some special spooky themed Team Fortress 2 stuff to unleash upon the masses lasting until November 2. The update will bring in five new achievements that will unlock scary paper bag masks, a pumpkin bomb and corpses will transform into candy ... I guess. 

The Halloween update also sees a ghost by the name of Zepheniah Mann haunting players on the Harvest map. If a player crosses the ghost's path, they'll temporally be frozen with fear making them an easy target.

Have any of you unlocked the Halloween themed masks? If so, take a picture and show us in the comment!

Valve is selling Team Fortress 2 on Steam right now for just $2.49. The catch is that you only have until 2:00PM PDT today to pick the game up for such a low price. If you still haven't bought Team Fortress 2 by now, then there really is no excuse not getting it with a sale like this.

Unless you're a b*tch.

When you take into consideration how I skateboarded off of an exploding parking garage while being chased by a runaway UPS truck full of bears only to land in one of those portable swimming pool trucks, saying how this hide and seek mod for Team Fortress 2 was the highlight of my week means something.

First thing is first, credit goes to Shacknews for finding the crazy thing. What makes the mod so great is that you aren't just hiding your character on various maps -- instead, you are a prop, and you have to position yourself in a believable way so you don't get found.

By the way, you absolutely have to see this mod in action before you brush it off. To be more specific, check out the epic frog chase about halfway through the clip.

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A dog with cannons attached to its back? If someone hadn't told me such a thing wasn't really coming to Team Fortress 2 (at least not yet), I probably wouldn't have known otherwise. This mockup of Valve's class updates looks surprisingly real -- it's even got Steam achievements -- but a few things give it away.

All in all, it's definitely one of those "A for effort" scenarios. Personally, I found this MANN CO. letter to be quite a bit more entertaining than the user-created faux update page, but then again, one wouldn't work without the other. In my current sleep deprived state, I think the Guard Dog idea is just ridiculous enough to work.

I suggest Valve should go all out and bring the idea to Team Fortress 2 for one day of the month. If playable dogs in a first-person shooter for 24 hours doesn't end the world, nothing will.

[Thanks, Timdabrat and the twenty other people who sent this in]

Valve plans to deliver a blow to those using external applications to earn items in Team Fortress 2. According to a recent posting, the studio will begin stripping items earned with the help of idling applications, but in the future, Valve plans to remove every single item from the cheater’s inventory. It’s a zero tolerance policy that should send a clear message.

“Over the next few days we'll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications,” the posting reads. “We're going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system. Due to us not having a policy in place prior to today, this time we're only removing the items earned through cheating the system. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items.”

According to the post, only 4.5 percent of TF2 players cheat and will be effected by this move.

People not cheating the system -- like, 95 percent of the players -- are to receive a free item “soon” for playing the game legitimately. A simple, but awesome gesture for the community. Go, Valve!

Valve has been releasing information about the newest update for Team Fortress 2 in a trickle. On Tuesday, it was revealed that the latest batch of content would not be featuring a class update. Hence the name, "The Classless Update." Instead, we're getting hats! Oh, and a pretty nifty-sounding community map.

Then, Valve posted again on Wednesday with with the announcement of a King of the Hill gametype being added to the game and three maps to support the mode. In the mode, teams will compete to keep control of a point for a sum total of three minutes. If the point is captured by the opponent, your timer freezes until you regain control.

On the page with the update information, there are navigation arrows for traveling between the two days' info. But the second day has an inactive arrow pointing forward. Sounds like Valve isn't done yet. Hopefully there will be another announcement today!

As brought to our attention by Destructoid community blogger thefil, Team Fortress 2's next big class update ... isn't an actual class update. Instead, we are getting hats, glorious hats!

They are coming in all shapes and sizes, and there will be eighteen of them for you to cherish. There is even a new arena map on the way, "Offblast," which revolves around a missile silo lovingly packed into a mountain. But not just any mountain, oh no, we have reason to believe it's an evil mountain. Scream.

For a brief yet insightful overview of the fascinating history of hats, please head on over to Valve's TF2 blog where you will also be able to hear more about the latest content additions in the coming days. And for supplemental reading, check out some of these links.

Oh yes, it's time for another edition of Geek Chic where we look at gaming related fashion.

This Monster Hunter jacket is ridiculously hot. With that said though, I’ll never be caught wearing this thing. It reminds me of those horrible Wolf Moon shirts for some odd reason. Plus, I’m pretty sure something like this costs a lot. I’m not sure though as I can’t read Dengeki. Dengeki is also showing off some Monster Hunter themed mugs and little figurines. [Thanks, Eva!]

There’s more Geek Chic to be had! Hit the break to check out a few new shirts and some gaming themed shoes too. view full story + comments

Valve probably loves you, and yes, that even goes for you too, Wheelie. The company has just recently brought out the source files for a good portion of the official Team Fortress 2 maps, including: Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro.

The aim here is to help get beginning map makers used to the process by giving them a nice starting point, and to teach the more experienced guys a thing or two about Valve Design Theory 101. The .vmf source files can be found as an update to the Source SDK, if this sounds at all intriguing to you.

And because you can't talk about a game like Team Fortress 2 without hinting at something far off in the future, we're told additional models and maps will one day be added to the SDK as well.

The Spy from Team Fortress 2 wants to remind you all that every class is different.  Some classes are quick little bunnies. Some classes are grossly obese. Some classes are even sadistic ex-Nazis! Yes, every class is different and the best class is obviously the Spy. He is sleeping with your mother, by the way.

The Team Fortress 2 children's book was created by AntifishFTW based on this TF2chan thread by TenCentBastard that's spoofing this Strong Bad E-mail. Check it out after the break!  

[Via Reddit, Kotaku]

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Last weekend we filled you in on a bit of a change to the Team Fortress 2 unlock system. In the recent Spy/Sniper update it had changed to a more random drop system as opposed to the achievement based unlock system that was in place before hand. It sparked a little debate as to which was better, and the merits of both systems. Can't really say who won the argument, and Valve seems to agree so they've come out with an update that offers the best of both worlds.

The new system has achievement milestones for unlocking new items and weapons, but the random drop will still be in the game too. So the achievement unlocks are really just an extra way to get those lovely items you so covet. Valve also issued an update for the way items randomly dropped earlier in the week. So does the middle of the road settle everyone's quams?

So the big Spy/Sniper update for Team Fortress 2 landed the other day, and while the two classes new abilities are getting rave reviews another part of the update is stirring up a bit of controversy. It seems Valve decided to change the way weapons are earned. Before, if you recall from playing the game, special weapons were granted through achievements, some of which were especially challenging. Now, however, weapons are simply awarded randomly during the game like in an MMORPG.

Seems like a much easier way to balance the game, but a slap to the face for those who put in the hard work and dedication to earn weapons previously. It appears that Valve is trying to make the game more friendly to the casual crowd, but they could also just be doing this for the free weekend and then going back to the achievement method. Either way those of you who put all that hard effort into unlocking the Ubersaw are about to run into plenty of people who did none of the work and can brag just as much about having one.