Here's the official privacy announcement as well for those of you curious - https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1667896941884942467

I feel like they could just introduce an option to hide what you're currently playing, rather than to hide every single game you own, along with the playtime in them. Like, I kind of get what they're going for here, but this is taking it to an extreme that nobody asked for.

Steam changed default privacy settings for your game inventory and playtime history. By default, only people that are on your friends list will be able to see what games you own, and how many hours you have in them. If you want to change this, you need to change your privacy settings. This stupid privacy change is also why Steam Spy (the site that tracks game time and account value) was shut down.

Figured I'd post this here, as it's kinda a big change. Plus, rip steamspy.
https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/983879694658437120

Basically this - http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=39042

Summary: ultiduo, highlander, and sixes are all open for registration, with ultiduo having a $300 prize pool in North America, and sixes having a pool of $150. We've also officially expanded to Europe, starting with Ultiduo Season 5. So European players can now (finally) register and play in a local bracket, rather than being forced to play against North American players, on North American servers.

TFCL has partnered with cpu.tf, and will be using the cpu.tf network of servers to power all future seasons of TFCL, starting later this year. We've also brought the cpu.tf developer onboard as the new lead dev for TFCL.

I've also gone ahead and cleaned up the OP. Added pretty pictures, cause pretty pictures are awesome.

My team got more wins tonight than RatNut, and we didn't even play our match

We were a man down. Played a CS team. Won 5-0.

Team was super chill. I honestly expected them to be toxic, but nope. They just played and had fun with it. That was probably one of the best matches I've had in several seasons. Demoknights. FANs. DH. Heavies. It was so stupid, it was actually super fun. GG to them, and GG to everyone else just getting into TF2. Should be a great and fun season!

You won't be able to redeem the code, since you used one within the last 6 months. Your only option is to pay for a full premium subscription. (unless someone can correct me on that?)

An old school game, but still great.
Give Chip's Challenge a try. You can buy it on Steam, or find it basically free anywhere online. Thing's everywhere if you look for it.

Potentially odd question, but do you have Origin open by chance? I find having that program open really harms TF2 performance for some reason.

Figured I'd comment on this, being the leader(?) of the team he was on last season.

He's a good meta player, and does his job relatively well. He isn't IM level for sure, but could definitely get on a mid open team. There are two concerns though, with the first being his ability to throw at times. If you're doing very poorly (as we were last season) he might throw or tilt in some way. For example, he went friendly hoovy while defending metalworks last in an official last season. He was also very restrictive in his playstyle, and would only ever play the meta. If we asked him to offclass, he'd refuse. One example was on product where we wanted to run two scouts and one sniper. One scout (me) went sniper, and we wanted the roamer to go scout. He refused to do that, even though he acknowledged that the strategy was fair. Later on in the season he was off classing more, but it's still worth mentioning. He's most comfortable on roamer.

He's matured a lot since then though, and is definitely worth trying out. Perhaps a solid mid open team, or even high open if you need a straight meta roamer. He can definitely do what needs to be done, has great positioning and moderate gamesense.

Help plan a funeral... :(

Currently free on Humble.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/the-bureau-xcom-declassified

Yeah, more is definitely needed. It should come out to around $1200 per team. I don't expect all 12 teams to attend every single lan, especially since only the plane ticket itself would be covered. The idea is to make it easier for them to attend, not guarantee that they will be able to. Players would still need to pay for their own expenses once they're actually here, with the biggest likely being hotel fees. Not everyone can afford that, even if the ticket itself was covered.

Also, this won't cover individual players, so John Smith can't join a team and get a free ticket to lan without his team actually showing up. On a similar note, a team must have 6 players able to attend, or else the entire thing will be void, and no one on their roster gets the travel benefits. It doesn't matter which six, so long as they're on the roster during lan signups. If the system is abused it could result in a ban from the league.

I should have worded the original announcement a tad better, so it didn't imply that literally every expense was paid for. There are policies and guidelines that apply to this, just like any other offer. Just because you're on an S Rank team doesn't mean you'll be able to attend the lan, just that your team has the chance to get free travel if they meet all qualifications, and can pay for any extra expenses.

Again, the intention is to make travel easier, not free.

We're going to be hosting three seasons per year, with the fall/winter season happening at the same time as the lan.
The goal is to cover pretty much all expenses with whatever's left over from A Rank. Assuming 24 teams sign up for A Rank, that's around a $1,000 profit to the league, with $1,000 being reserved for the A Rank pool, so a total of $2,000. The remaining $1,000 is then cycled around to cover whatever we need to cover, such as travel, or a bigger S Rank pool.

S Rank teams are also filtered so they're playing where they belong. It shouldn't be possible for a team to simply sign up for the ability to attend a lan on the cheap, as these teams should be somewhat well respected in their own right, and worked hard to get to the top. Only teams from ESEA Invite will be added to S Rank without any prior season experience in TFCL, as they've proven that they can play at that level, and are all pretty serious about the game.

So yeah, mostly this stuff is funded by a fund reserve paid for by A Rank participants. I also have an investor in case of emergencies where extra funding is needed.

Like what others have said, no; travel won't be covered if you live outside of North America. Of course exceptions might be made for some of the top EU teams if they wanted to attend, but I definitely won't be making a habit of it.