Team Fortress 2’s big Summer Update is live with 14 new maps and 25 cosmetics, and you bet Valve made absolutely none of them

pcgamer.com:

The Team Fortress 2 summer update that Valve promised back in February has arrived, and as promised, it's a big one, with all new maps, cosmetics, taunts, and unusual effects. But don't thank Valve for it—thank the TF2 community members who actually made all this stuff.

The whole thing was a brilliant move by Valve: It gets all of the plaudits for yet another beefy update to a 16-year-old game, yet had to do none of the work to make it happen. Which is a bit of an exaggeration, I'm sure someone at Valve had to collate this stuff and make sure it didn't violate any policies or copyright laws, and there were probably some buttons to push and stuff to click on and all that. But the actual work of making it? Hey, that's somebody else's problem. It feels like something you'd read in a Mann Co. Catalog.

Anyway, regardless of where it all came from, the update is here, and it’s a big one. It's got 14 new community-made maps—Sharkbay, Rotunda, Phoenix, Cashworks, Venice, Reckoner, Sulfur, Hardwood, Pelican Peak, Selbyen, VSH Tiny Rock, VSH Distillery, VSH Skirmish, and VSH Nucleus—along with 25 new community-made cosmetic items available in the Summer 2023 Cosmetic Case. 

There's also a half-dozen new taunts available in the Mann Co. Store, and 20 new Unusual effects, eight for taunts and 12 for hats. Summer 2020 Unusual effects, rather than the Normal unusual effects (which is kind of an oxymoron, right?) will be granted on all cosmetic and taunt cases for the duration of the summer event.

Somehow, Valve has also found a number of other things to fix and improve in Team Fortress 2, and all credit where it's due, that's Valve's doing, not the community's. I guess this really is a group effort.

The Team Fortress 2 Summer 2023