Just a quick heads up: our exhibition match with pros and pubbers is going to begin shortly. If we're being honest, we're 10% excited, 90% terrified. You should also be terrified, because our usual MO is to take notes of everything that happens during a match, then make changes to the game in bitter, small-minded retaliation. If Dave Riller can't kill someone because they're hiding behind a wall? Guess what? That wall's toast in tomorrow's patch. And if I get killed by too many Scouts, then there'll be no more Scouts, in any game, ever. Double jumps will be a fond memory in your grandad's head. Trust us on this. We have connections at Nintendo. Mario will develop a sudden desire to wear lead weighted boots.

Head over to the ETF2L page to see how you can watch the fun.

Since our recent TF2maps.net Art Pass Contest, our level designers have gone back to their default state at the TF2 offices, which is to say, doing nothing, taking naps, eating lunch, and complaining. This has become a bit of a poison pill for the rest of the TF2 team, all of whom possess strong opinions about working (against it), naps (pro), lunches (very pro) and complaining (big fans).

The fine folks over at ETF2L have launched their Highlander Community Challenge, and we're excited to be a part of it. We'll be giving out in-game medals to everyone who participates, so if you've got some friends who should stop wasting their gaming time and get to the work earning virtual goods (for you), now's the time.

On August 31st WiNGSPANTT and 7 other Golden Wrench owners will commit a nigh unutterable act of brazen item-aggression so egregious that we shudder to think of the implications should the Administrator herself catch wind of it.

On that day 8 Golden Wrenches will be destroyed.

Say you have two things: a perfectly good hand, and a brilliant inventor for a grandfather. One day you stumble across a blueprint for an amazing-as-hell robot hand meant to replace an arm-stump. Wait, you have three things: the hand, the grandfather, and a saw.

Quick: Name someone whose body of work is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit; whose strength and moral guidance informs your every decision; and who starred in one of the Police Academy movies.

Everyone loves remote control toys. But the problem with most of them is, unless you manage to remote control one directly down someone's throat, they're pretty useless as weapons. But what if we were to tell you that we fixed that obvious design flaw?

Those of you who spent the weekend Tokyo drift-racing your way to a rap battle—or whatever it is people do when they go outside on the weekend—probably feel pretty good about yourselves right now. At the end of the day, though, what do you have to show for it? Vague memories of changing lanes. Twenty-five of the people who wisely chose to stay home and craft items, on the other hand, now have shiny new ultra-rare golden wrenches that they can keep. For a weekend? No. For a lifetime. Eat it, drift-racers. Eat all of it.

Since our announcement of Team Fortress 2 on the Mac, we've received literally thousands of emails from over seven people, curious as to how the Apple comic shown in the update fits into the ongoing TF saga. Did Saxton Hale really buy the Apple company? Can Heavy's gun actually shoot email bullets now? Who was that mysterious figure? And why were Valve's lawyers so insistent that he remain mysterious?

Do you hear that? That ominous, otherworldly silence? That's what we in the game biz call the calm before a storm. And keep listening... do you hear that distant rumble? We call that thunder. It happens during a storm whenever it's not quiet.

So you've been taking advantage of Training Mode and Offline Practice Mode all week, and you think you're pretty hot stuff. What better way to find out how wrong you are than to watch some pros in action at The Steam Powered User Forums' "Battle of Both Worlds" match this week? Also known as the "Pros vs Pubbers" event, the match features a team of competitive players versus a team of highly skilled public-server players. It's a perfect opportunity to see a whole bunch of truly great TF2 players have some truly great fun. Check it out.

We'd originally planned to tease out today's update over the course of 19 deviously brain-twisting blog posts, each containing a mercurially complex riddle hinting at the nature of the update. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have cracked the subtle rhyming codex embedded in our first blog post, which was actually supposed to be the most unsolvable of the 19.

So anyway. Team Fortress 2's available on the Mac now.

Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with "grapple." Things that rhyme with "Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac." Not today. But tomorrow. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned...

After slaving away for over a year, the fine folks at Polycount have unveiled their new community site for video game artwork. Given that a year is roughly the time it takes for us to post a blog update, you can imagine our immediate and deeply-held suspicion that they probably used magic. Possibly black magic. I won't bore you with the details, but long story short, we immediately raced to their office, armed with holy water and fire, to confront them. Several police officers informed us that we were mistaken, and then made us apologize to the wizards, and then made us stop calling them wizards.

We're going to ship an update with another small set of Pyro changes this week. Like our previous update, our goal is to increase the degree to which skill can make a difference between two Pyro players. We received a bunch of useful feedback after the last update, and we think we've managed to address most of it, without removing the skill-based additions. As always, play with it for a bit, and then let us know what you think.