Valve is updating Team Fortress 2's Mann vs Machine mode, and it wants your help

Valve is planning a new Team Fortress 2 Mann vs. Machine update, more than a decade after the co-op game mode came to the team-based shooter. The Half-Life and Counter-Strike maker is also asking TF2's community to make and submit maps and missions, which suggests that plenty of player creations will expand MvM, all these years later.

Team Fortress 2's Mann vs. Machine mode has been a mainstay of the shooter for almost its entire lifespan. Debuting in 2012, you and up to five other players need to fend off waves of AI-controlled robots as they attempt to push a payload toward the Mann Co. facility. The bots drop cash, though, which you can spend between waves to upgrade weapons and abilities. It's classic wave-based team action, and has been popular in the TF2 community for a long time.

Now, however, it sounds like Valve has some big plans for MvM later this year, which could elevate TF2 even further and earn it a spot on our best multiplayer games list. In a new blog post, the team asks "the community to submit Mann vs. Machine maps and missions in time for that update," with a deadline currently set for Wednesday August 27. Then, Valve says the update could be dropped right around Halloween, putting it just before Friday October 31.

"Is this tale a simple flight of gripping, well-written fancy? (No.) Or a chilling glimpse into a future that could arrive as soon as, again, Wednesday August 27, with a second part arriving right before Halloween?" Valve muses.

While the scope and scale of this Mann vs. Machine update remains to be seen, it does highlight just how long it's been since we had TF2's last major update. Looking back, we had Jungle Inferno in late 2017, with very little after that. With Valve still hard at work on Deadlock, however, I don't imagine the team will divert loads of resources back to TF2 at this point.

If you want to take a trip back in time, we've got all the best old games on PC today. Otherwise, make sure you check out the best FPS games instead.

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