This update was just released, and /r/tf2 is just discovering what has happened. From what I gather, some cosmetic items in Team Fortress 2 are disallowed from being equipped with others due to clipping or other conflicts. With some glitch involving using +quickswitch (I don't know anything about how you would use this console command on an item or what it would accomplish), you were able to equip two conflicting cosmetic items. I assume this is similar to the old CSGO glitch where you would edit game files to list the bomb as a melee item, allowing you to use a custom name on the bomb that would persist after the files were fixed, but I'm just guessing. TF2's real money economy is one of the oldest in games and primarily based around "unusuals," which are cosmetic hats a character can wear. Unusuals differ from standard hats in that they come with an additional cosmetic effect, such as storm clouds around a character's head, swirling hearts, or something similar. The rarer and more desirable of these hats can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. I have no idea how large the TF2 economy is now, but it is much smaller than it once was, as TF2 has been dealing with a declining (real players) player base, rampant hacking problems on official servers, and a large bot problem. In comes an anon looking to have a little fun.
Mad lad posts this thread on /v/, showing an email he claims Valve sent him for thanking him for alerting them to a fake duplication glitch, causing them to remove a real glitch which allowed players to equip extra cosmetics or something. Someone sums it up as
so some hat prices were artificially inflated because they could be equipped in the wrong slot with a harmless bug, you told the dev it could clone items and they believed it without verifying and fixed it, and now people are screaming that their glitch slot hats are worthless?
yes
There's also this great screen cap of him letting people know he's dedicated to fricking over the cosmetic glitchers.
There's a couple /r/tf2 threads about it, and one seemingly quickly growing thread about the update as a whole, but I have no idea if or where a TF2 economy discussion subreddit or forum is, so I can't find too many hat traders seething. Also the /r/tf2trade subreddit hasn't seemed to notice yet or at least isn't discussing it.
A small thread has one good fear-mongering post:
There's also a funny little comment dabbing on the traders.
MFW the price of my virtual items goes down (this was my only income source)
Now onto the main thread!
Fixing a bug that was actually beneficial to the game instead of one that was causing major issues
Shoulda sold when the prices were inflated to all heck, seethe redditor.
Final selection, redditors discovering their favorite set of pixels can't be used in the exact combination that makes them soy out.
This is just occurring, so be on the look out for more coping, dilating, seething, and of course sneeding. If you want, maybe check out http://backpack.tf or some off reddit community to see if they have noticed.
Bonus steam community thread (there are going to be more posts there, so check out the TF2 board).
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How bout these nerds capture some flags or take over some command points? Maybe push a payload to its destination?
Heck I even liked the Territorial Control map even if no one else did
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