A New WAR! Update?

Shortly after the release of this year’s Scream Fortress, a Facepunch user named testinglol (who has leaked and predicted several previous updates) found code in the game files suggesting there would be an update that would pit the Spy and Engineer against one another in the style of the WAR! Update that happened all the way back in 2009.

Being a Spy main, this interested me supremely. You can find a full list of the features here, or watch Valve News Network’s video here.

But for those of you who didn’t head off to soak in those links, here’s a concise list of the details.

• Hats for each “team”; a helmet for Engineer and a balaclava for Spy.
• A new weapon, “The War Pistol”.
• A purchasable “War Journal”.
• New weapons for Spy and Engineer.
• A “quest” system.
• Competitive matchmaking.
• The update is similar to the Two Cities update in that it will be released very soon after Halloween.

There’s a decent lot of code to support this, including some Spy-related (read: anti-Spy) weapon attributes…

“Attrib_RevealCloakedVictimOnHit” “On Hit Spy: Reveal cloaked Spy”
“Attrib_RevealDisguisedVictimOnHit” “On Hit Spy: Reveal disguised Spy”
“Attrib_JarateBackstabber” “When backstabbed: Jarate attacker”
“Attrib_StunWaistHighAirborne” “On Hit: If enemy’s belt is at or above eye level,nstun them for %s1 seconds”
“Attrib_CritVsDisguised” “100% critical hit vs disguised players

Code related to the comp matchmaking:

“competitive_victory”
{
}

“competitive_skillrating_update”
{
“index” “short” // entindex of the player
“rating” “short” // skillrating
“delta” “short” // skillrating adjustment

Code left over from the Love and War update:

Tranquilizer (m_flSpyTranqBuffDuration)
Throwing knife
Conc grenade
Teleport grenade
models/weapons/c_models/c_balloon_default.mdl
mult_dmg_with_reduced_health
mult_postfiredelay_with_reduced_health
mod_flamethrower_spinup_time

There’s a lot more in this pastebin, a lot of which is preceded by “SpyVsEngiWar”.

Testinglol warns that none of this is 100% confirmed and anything could get removed at any time. It’s also been confirmed this has nothing to do with the End of the Line update.

Be sure to monitor this stuff; I’m sure more details will emerge over the coming days. In the meantime, pick your side and get your weapons ready.