We all need to cheer the fuck up.

Right now, SPUF is just one giant cesspool of sadness, Sticky Launcher/Gunslinger complaints and general misery. Fun threads get drowned out by the shouting and the screaming and the crying and the whinging. Stupid posts rum rampant. Duplicates of the same threads with the same old crap in them run even more rampant. Close your eyes and randomly point at a thread on the main screen and chances are, assuming your finger landed on a thread and didn’t miss your monitor completely (or worse, you pointed too hard and broke your monitor) you’ll land on a complaint thread about something we’ve already complained about a hundred or so times. Particularly bad offenders include the Gunslinger, still, and critical hits. Still.

Part of the reason behind all of this is the lack of new, real, non-cosmetic content. The only weapon that has stuck around in people’s minds is the Tide Turner, and that’s because it completely overshadows the other two shields and makes Demoman a better pick class than the Spy and the Pyro combined. Every other weapon, incredibly the actually very unique and interesting Base Jumper, has faded away out of our minds. Replacing this content is a series of bug-fixes which, as always, have caused more bugs elsewhere.

This bug on bug action has caused even more fear, loathing and hatred. There’s always the joke that you fix one bug only to create more, but what’s happening as of late is confusing and in some cases simply upsetting players. The latest set of patches have all been bewildering and confusing. One such patch was changing the fact that you can’t easily swap teams to spectate any more. Spectating is the easiest way to catch a hacker but the default settings, as seen on the majority of servers, now boot you back onto the team you were on. Even good changes, like the one that allows you to vote for class restrictions, is flawed because the maximum is 4. You still end up with 4 Spies on your team, which is the norm anyway. Surely 2 or 3 would be better, right?

Apart from the annoyances of all these nonsensical changes, there’s always that cold, damp silence that hangs around. Silence from Valve, silence from moderators, silence between users. Valve hasn’t spoken to the people of the Steam User Forums in ages, let alone the members of SPUF (i.e. the TF2 section). Mods rarely post and when they do, it’s cryptic or pointless, generally only to close a thread and even then they don’t say anything. Any authority on SPUF is nigh invisible. You don’t see the current horde of trolls being banned or pink-named or anything, whether you report people or not.

So those are all valid reasons as to why everyone’s pissed off. I understand. I’m pissed off too. Lately, I have been a horrible snappy pile of angry hormones. I have been an utter hell-bitch. And I apologise. I haven’t been well.

None of us have.

We need to change. To be fair, we can’t undo all the weird crap that has happened in the past month or so. We can’t make Valve suddenly love us. But we can take a break, open a window, go outside for some fresh air. Go and play Team Fortress Classic or Fortress Forever. Go do something cool. Make something. Just take a break.

How about we be quiet and calm for a bit. Leave the Sticky Launcher discussions behind. Ignore threads that have been done to death. Wait patiently for the Scream Fortress update, in the hopes that it’ll be awesome. If it’s not, fine, scream and shout. Just try to keep calm.

Or how about something completely different? What about not posting on SPUF for a bit? Go on. It’ll make you feel better.