Team Fortress 2 is finally back as Valve drops huge new update

Amid its successes in cracking down on the bot problem in Team Fortress 2, Valve has found the time to put together a surprisingly sizable summer update. With the inclusion of brand-new maps, a truckload of fresh cosmetics, changes to the map rotation, and countless bug fixes, the Team Fortress 2 redemption arc has begun.

Completely new to the FPS game are ten community maps – Embargo, Odyssey, Megaton, Cachoeira, Overgrown, Hadal, Applejack, Atom Smash, Canaveral, and Burghausen. If you keep up with the Team Fortress 2 community map-making scene, you’ve likely seen or played on some of these before. Burghausen is particularly noteworthy though, as it marks the second unique Medieval Mode map to arrive since DeGroot Keep joined the game with the mode’s addition in 2010 (yes, that’s fourteen years ago). LARPers rejoice!

The update has also made a fair few changes to the game’s existing map rotation. New to the casual rotation are Christmas – sorry, Smissmas – maps Haarp, Frosty, Snowtower, Rumford, and Hacksaw, which were previously only available during the most wonderful time of the year.

As expected with Team Fortress 2 updates, there is also a new Summer 2024 Cosmetic Case to open with keys, containing 23 fresh community-made cosmetic items including my personal favorite, the Vaudeville Visor, a Demoman hat based directly on MF DOOM’s iconic mask. Groovy.

Four new taunts and 38 new unusual effects are also sprinkled into this case. Outside of new content, the patch notes for this update list a few small edits to certain map layouts, as well as a positively massive amount of bug fixes.

The summer update arrives after a tumultuous time for TF2 following the ‘#FixTF2’ campaign that saw 350k players sign a petition demanding Valve improve the game. Complaints about the “botting crisis” and lack of confidence in TF2’s future resulted in an attempted microtransaction boycott.

For more like this, have a look through our guide to the best multiplayer games for a roundup of the top games to play with friends, or read through our guide to the best old games if you want to be critically hit by the unstoppable passage of time.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.