Robotic Boogaloo is the newest major content release for Valve's free-to-play Team Fortress 2. It features 57 new virtual items (many of them hats, of course), a tie-in comic and an animated short. But that's not the most interesting thing about the update.
Unlike previous releases, Robotic Boogaloo is completely driven by the Team Fortress 2 community. The collaboration of over 50 modders, it began life as an independent website for players to download robotic reskins of the game's character classes, but continued to grow until Valve got involved.
"When Valve decided to pick up the project, more artists joined, directions were set and a lot more work had to be done on the update presentation content," Jake Harold, one of the Team Fortress 2 community members involved in the update, tells Polygon. The modders developed new items and skins and even produced original 2D and 3D art, alongside the original narrative that acts as a through-line for the update.
In the end, only two of Robotic Boogaloo's items were developed in-house by Valve, a crate and a key. Everything else is the product of external contributors.
"This doesn't mark the end of Valve-produced TF2 updates," the company wrote in release announcement. "As far as we're concerned, there's plenty of room for both to happily co-exist. We're in uncharted territory here, and it's exciting to be exploring it with you."
