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A small update sees shiny new medals for the Ready Steady Pan Tournament – season 2 added. The restrictions for the Tomb Raider promotional items are removed. Mann’s Mint and After Eight paints are available through the Mann Co. Store. Lets not forget the adjustments made to the TF2 beta in readiness for the now fabled SteamPipe update.

In ‘the future’s brighter’ news, there’s to be a new TF2 comic coming in a month or two, sadly not to be linked to a major update. Despite what you may have heard Valve’s secret meetings at GDC were simply an inelaborate troll.

A Pomona College senior writing an Economics & Psychology thesis is paying for people to play on his server then answer a 10min survey. Sounds brilliant but the reality is that the most you can expect to get it $2 for your time and chances are you don’t qualify anyway. You’ve got to be a pure free to play user with no experience of buying or trading and 10hours of TF2 on your account. That rules me out, and pretty much everyone I’ve ever met.

The Round Robin are looking for casters for their seventh season. Everyone is welcome to give it a try. It may be daunting to think of yourself in that role but if you’re willing to give it a try they’re more than happy to help you fulfil that dream.

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This week’s update was all about the Oculus Rift as Team Fortress 2 is the first game to officially offer support for it. The Oculus Rift a Visual peripheral still in development that is placed upon the head. It fills your full field of vision with a 3D view of the game you are playing. It looks like an extremely immersive piece of technology, which valve have picked up on and are trying to promote. To help with this cause valve have added an in game Oculus Rift Headset for your characters to wear. The only way to get this item however is to have been a donator to their kickstarter before it closed or to purchase the developers kit. Due to the price of the dev kit at the moment, don’t expect to see a lot of people running around with this hat on just yet. However we think this is a great direction for games to be heading in and are glad that valve and TF2 are at the front of these developments.

The update also features the usual bugs that only 2 people noticed and a change to the upgrade to premium item. Now it looks like a copy of the game.

We also have a bit of Public Service announcement for everybody. TF2outpost.com have a phishing mirror site at TF2outpost.net. Do not be fooled by how similar the site looks, it is in fact a way for phishers to steal your login details for steam. so be very careful when logging in. Remember, if in doubt, use steam guard.

Steam also updated and added a few features to the game hubs. Now you should be able to upload artwork you may have made for any game on steam. Team Fortress 2’s Artwork page has exploded in a flood of artwork from past and present.

We also have something that we believe to be a promo in the making. Head over to Thekeyparty.com and see who’s keys are currently in the bowl. Not making any sense? We believe that this is the hype machine for Poker night at the inventory 2. We also believe, looking at the recent promotional items from last weeks episode, that they correspond with some of the characters possibly in the game. Only time will tell if we are right.

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Yum yum. Strange Bacon Grease isn’t just the title of this week’s show, it’s also one of the items released into the game. With it your run-of-the-mill pan can be made into a strange pan to record the score of your panging pan kills. This, along with the Mann Co. Painting Set is one of the possible drops from  the three new crates just added, #50, #56 and #57.

If you purchased Valve’s soundtrack CD, Portal 2: Songs to Test By then it’s time to break the seal and look inside the case. That code will earn you an Ap-Sap. If you bought the songs over any of the e-stores, you’re SOL. The good news is that you can still buy it and retroactively claim the device which will talk to you in Wheatley’s psychotically depressed voice. Just what you’ve always wanted.

While the indie title Don’t Starve! is still in pre-release it’s possible to get your hands of a Ham Shank (teehee) and your head on a Wilson Weave. In related news several new hats and items have been added but not yet identified. Some say they are to become part of a promo pack for Poker Night and the Inventory 2. A game yet to be announced. Ruskeydoo may have some inside knowledge but he’s not saying. Actually he mysteriously disappears to make a nice cup of tea around about the time we started to talk about it. Funny that. Still, we have some news from our own BubbleBobbler that the Dapper Disguise will be facial distorted when the spy speaks his lines. Now I want to see it too.

Two more things on the updates, I think we’ve figured out what sb_filter_incompatible_versions does and the TF2 beta has been brought up to date so they can run further tests on the Steampipe update… whenever that will be.

If you’ve been following the hardware news you may be under the impression that Xi3’s new Piston box is a steam box. Apparently Valve don’t think it is. Xi3 unsurprisingly dispute this.

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Tomb Raider has given us much over the years, from discussions of exactly how many polygons it takes to fill out Lara Croft’s model to hours of gameplay action (mostly watching Lara’s butt as she maims rare and exotic animals). Now it’s in our TF2 with three items for our pleasure. Croft’s Crest, the Fortune Hunter and the Tomb Wrapper. Included in this update are recipes for the Sticky Jumper and Rocket Jumper.

A new convar makes it to the game, sb_filter_incompatible_versions. Not knowing what it does has never stopped us so we making something up, though we probably got it horribly wrong.

The TF2 Beta game gets an update too, allowing you to test your server configs for the upcoming pipeline release.

HVDprops squeeze out some real life Ambassador guns, put them on sale then pull them from the store. Are they too good to be true or have they just realised that you can’t pump out TF2 content without awakening the Kraken Valve Lawyers.

Are 25secs of your eyeball time really too much time to give up in exchange for a free server? Some guys at Reddit and SPUF think so. They’ve joined hands in creating a petition to have Valve block Pinion ads from appearing on servers.

Lastly the ETF2L Highlander Season 4 is live! Most teams have signed up but it’s not too late to get in on the action. Signups don’t close until Sunday 24th March.

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We’re joined by theharribokid, a senior admin for TF2Maps.net, to bring you the public voting of community made MvM maps. Jump on one of the servers, try them out and vote on your favorite. If their April Fools’ maps [koth_foolsgrid, pl_badwater_rainy and cp_degrootkeep_nomed] are anything to go by you’ll be in for a treat.

In other news the items introduced with Runner 2 and Brütal Legend are now giftable and tradeable but the Tux penguin is no longer acquirable. Oh, and there’s been a few other bug fixes which Ruskeydoo want’s to share with you.

Gabe is in the news again as he’s being honored with a BAFTA Fellowship in London this week. I wonder if he’ll try whacking someone with his award, see if they turn to bronze (with a wooden base).

The official TF2wiki hits 30,000 pages. We take a crack at explaining what that actually entails though, to be be fair, we’re probably less well informed than you. Lab Zero are having problems with their Skull Girls/TF2 hat promo item. They’ve been advised that it won’t be getting into the game after all. On the flip, Valve are supporting a new Polycount competition called “Escape“. No details on how exactly but hey, it’s Valve, I’m pretty sure the winners won’t be short changed.

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If you haven’t been deafened by the new taunt for Brutal legend this week then boy do we have a show for you! We’ve had more promos than you can shake a stick at, with a literal metric ton of items from Bioshock infinate, including my personal favorite a cricketers box for the pyro’s face. Also, I think some medals got fixed or something (don’t worry, if you’re not Ruskey you can just skip that bit).

Valve has forewarned us about the impending apocalypse [Dun Dun Duuuuuuunnn], we may have to re-download Team Fortress 2! They’ve been upgrading some of their steam games including TF2 and the rest of the orange box to be delivered via Steampipe. Steam’s new content distribution which seems like it could cause some trouble for quite a few people. But veering away from valve’s side of things, we’ve had a bit of a mix-up in the TF2 casting community with VanillaTF2 and Teamfortres.tv expanding into new territory and people shifting about all over the place. Keeping on the casting side of things, Bluee seems to have been working on a tool to make a casters life a whole lot easier: being able to see the players team coloured outlines through walls featured in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahaQkVQQ1RY]

Some news now on an incoming hat into TF2, Skullgirls: a 2D beat-em up game on the Playstation network and Xbox live which is making it’s way on to steam, but not before it has one hell of an indiegogo campaign with an exclusive TF2 hat as one of the rewards. closing up on the show we have some news on the community vs pro’s tournament of the horizon, there has been a call for any 6’s team to come and train up the community team before their big match.

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After months of closed Betas, Open Beta and Hype, Steam is now finally available on Linux, along with it TF2 is now available on 3 different platforms. Then to add some icing on this moment, Valve have added a new promotional item in TF2, for those of you who manage to log onto TF2 in linux before march the 1st. The Tux.  But will this become the new earbuds?

However that wasn’t the only item to creep into the game. If you pre-order BIT.TRIP Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (Yeah that is a really long name for a game) then you’ll receive genuine Buck Turner All-Stars. There are also a pile of Ruskeydoo made Medals for those who played in any league this season

In the world of Valve, we talk about how 15 people have all left Valve at the same time. Is it a mass culling, is it a mass upheaval, who knows….actually Gabe does and has assured us no projects are being cancelled. That is of course when he wasn’t sitting on stage talking storytelling with JJ Abrams.

To top the show off we talk about an item not yet in the game (although due to the length of time it took for me to edit the episode….it is now in the game) That’s right, its the Brutal legends promo items, featuring (as far as we can recall) the first taunt you can acquire via a promotion. Want it yourself, then click here and pre-order Brutal Legends before February 26th.

PS – Stick around after the “Credits”