If you saw the phrase "Valve launches a significant Team Fortress 2 update" on your 2023 gaming bingo card, you'll automatically win a prize. In addition to the usual, smaller summer updates, Valve is promoting a "full-on update-sized update."
The game's development team has confirmed that item updates would not be the focus of this new content. Instead, the game will receive new weapons, maps, taunts, unusual effects, and war paints, although there is an asterisk hanging off the side.
According to Steam Charts, Valve is investing heavily in developing new content and enhancing the still active TF2 community, which has averaged over 90,000 players every month since June 2022.
The TF2 team will be working on some of the content for this summer update, but the blog post is essentially a call to arms for the Steam Workshop community for the game. Valve is allowing and relying on the community to create the content for this update, which is "not Summer-themed," according to the developers.
Is it possible to play Team Fortress 2 on Steam Deck?
"The previous few Team Fortress summer events have consisted of only information updates. But this year, we're planning to send a full update-sized update—with items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, war paints, and who knows what else?! Which means we need Steam Workshop content!
Valve does this with a lot of its properties and projects, with Dota 2 also bringing fan-created item sets and cosmetics into the game for special collections.
The "as-yet-unnamed, un-themed, but nonetheless very exciting summer-situated (but not summer-themed)" update will be accepting submissions until May 1 through TF2's Steam Workshop, which is still extremely active. Actual information about this update will be released closer to that submission deadline and once the content being bundled in is selected.