[UPDATE] A Glitch in Team Fortress 2 Renders Unusuals Unboxed from Certain Crates Untradable

[PlayStation 2]

UPDATE: Valve seems to have handled this... in a very strange manner. It seems like, rather than deleting the hats outright or leaving them be, any hats unboxed out of this debacle are not tradable, marketable, craftable and, bizarrely enough, gift-wrappable. Example right below:

 

UPDATE 2: The Team Fortress team themselves have fully responded to this situation by marking the first hat unboxed from the crates as tradable and any successive hats as permanently untradable.

During our investigation we discovered that a small number of accounts acquired these hats and a smaller portion of those accounts acquired an exceedingly large number of them. Based on this, we've decided that if you currently own one of these Unusual hats, the first one added to your account will be made tradable. Any other Unusual you have received due to the bug will remain permanently trade locked. If you decide that you would rather not have these trade-locked hats on your account, you may instead elect a full refund on any number of them.

Valve is also offering to restore any deleted hats and offering full refunds on the crate used, the keys used if they were purchased on SCM or the Mann Co. Store and any hats purchased off of SCM if it was unboxed from those crates in the short time.

 

Sources: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-07-26-team-fortress-2-hat-economy-crashes-due-to-crate-bug and https://www.pcgamer.com/team-fortress-2s-hat-market-has-crashed-and-rare-items-are-going-cheap/

 - a Circling TF Logo Handyman's Handle, one of many, many, many Unusual hats in the game

The venerable, if not rotting free-to-play Valve shooter Team Fortress 2 has hats! And not just hats, hats with effects called Unusuals! Unfortunately, a very bizarre bug involving certain unboxable Crates in the game meant that you were guaranteed one of these very rare Unusuals on any unbox.

 

Quote

The problem began following TF2's latest summer update, which introduced a number of new cosmetic items and, seemingly, the Unusual drop rate glitch. The bug seems to apply to certain lines in the Mann Co. Supply Munition Series, with prices for Unusuals from said crates dropping, and the price of the crates themselves soaring. I tested this out, and indeed found myself opening four Unusuals in a row. One hat I received, which cost £18.26 before the crash, is now being sold for £4.95. Equally, the crates I bought cost £0.03 a few days ago (with only one sold per day), but have been sold 3418 times today at around £2.04.

 

This glitch came with the Summer 2019 Cosmetic Case update that happened on July 25th, eventually leading to many people mass unboxing many Unusuals with a certain pool of effects. This eventually led to Valve attempting to patch this bug out and closing down the Steam Community Market for Team Fortress 2 for now. Listing or purchasing an item for TF2 on the SCM leads to this error:

 

The Team Fortress team's Twitter page issued this statement on the glitch:

This has seemingly also disabled any unboxing of any and all Crates for now as Valve continues to investigate and fix this issue.

 

Just a short warning to anyone who's currently playing Team Fortress 2 or gets offers for TF2 unusuals: stay safe. There's no telling as to whether or not what'll happen to these mass-unboxed Unusuals, nor is there any telling of any repercussions of that exploit. That's all I gotta say, and now it's your turn to tell me what you gotta say. If staff wants to move this, go ahead, but I feel this warrants a thread here.

[jiyeon]

2 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Damn, that is quite the error. I was on the Community Market earlier and wondered why crates #82 and #85 were so expensive & popular, additonally, the Mann Co. Crate Key shot up high.

 

Wonder what this'll mean for Unusuals and by extension, the general market in the future.

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, seoz said:

Damn, that is quite the error. I was on the Community Market earlier and wondered why crates #82 and #85 were so expensive & popular, additonally, the Mann Co. Crate Key shot up high.

 

Wonder what this'll mean for Unusuals and by extension, the general market in the future.

I'm suspecting that the third-generation effects will absolutely die (effects like Disco Beat Down, Kill-a-Watt, Dead Presidents, etc.), because it doesn't seem to affect any other effects.

[jiyeon]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I'm suspecting that the third-generation effects will absolutely die (effects like Disco Beat Down, Kill-a-Watt, Dead Presidents, etc.), because it doesn't seem to affect any other effects.

Interesting. I've never owned an unusual before, so maybe if these unusuals crash, I can get my hands on one. In theory, this will raise the prices on older effects, won't they?

[PlayStation 2]

2 minutes ago, seoz said:

Interesting. I've never owned an unusual before, so maybe if these unusuals crash, I can get my hands on one. In theory, this will raise the prices on older effects, won't they?

Probably not. What they'll do is probably create a larger price delta between what are considered lower-tier effects and higher-tier effects. It means that one of the mass-unboxed effects will likely be very cheap while most of the other ones will stay the same.

[79wjd]

11 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I'm suspecting that the third-generation effects will absolutely die (effects like Disco Beat Down, Kill-a-Watt, Dead Presidents, etc.), because it doesn't seem to affect any other effects.

I thought it also affected 1st gen.

[Mandrew]

2 minutes ago, 79wjd said:

I thought it also affected 1st gen.

It does

[PlayStation 2]

6 minutes ago, 79wjd said:

I thought it also affected 1st gen.

I'm not sure, I think it only affected all of the Supply Munitions and a little bit of the first-gen crates. I might be wrong, because information seems to be all over the place, but I can absolutely confirm third-gens are going to be affected.

Alright, I'm gonna walk back that statement largely because I have seen some first-gens popping up for really cheap. Namely a Scorching Flames Sober Stuntman.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Dan Castellaneta
Wanted to clarify something real quick.

[Mandrew]

3 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I'm not sure, I think it only affected all of the Supply Munitions and a little bit of the first-gen crates. I might be wrong, because information seems to be all over the place, but I can absolutely confirm third-gens are going to be affected.

1st Gens are affected, 3 burning team captains have been unboxed, one is on the market right now for a bit over $1K, some PE and GE stuff, as well as haunted ghosts, to name a few that I have seen. That being said, the crates to get 1st gens are much harder to come by now (crates #1-25), so there will be more of the 3rd gen effects out there

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, Mandrew said:

1st Gens are affected, 3 burning team captains have been unboxed, one is on the market right now for a bit over $1K, some PE and GE stuff, as well as haunted ghosts, to name a few that I have seen. That being said, the crates to get 1st gens are much harder to come by now (crates #1-25), so there will be more of the 3rd gen effects out there

Yeah, I updated that quote to show that I do think some of the first-gen crates are affected.

Munitions were as common as can be and as unwanted as such, so I'm not shocked that a boat-load of third-gens were unboxed.

[jiyeon]

2 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

UPDATE: Valve seems to have handled this... in a very strange manner. It seems like, rather than deleting the hats outright or leaving them be, any hats unboxed out of this debacle are not tradable, marketable, craftable and, bizarrely enough, gift-wrappable. Example right below:

It's a short-term solution, at least. Team Fortress 2's twitter has mentioned that these unusuals are marked as non-tradable/marketable "for the time being", so I'm interested to see what they do to finally put the nail in the coffin for this whole situation.

[rcmaehl]

TF2 News?! At this time in this year, about an update, about hats, localized entirely within this forum!?!

 

[Nowak]

All I have to say on the situation:
 

 

[bcredeur97]

21 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

TF2 News?! At this time in this year, about an update, about hats, localized entirely within this forum!?!

 

and on top of all that.. the first several comments here are all people actually talking about it

 

I haven't touched TF2 in years

[rcmaehl]

@Dan Castellaneta

 

I made this

Spoiler

 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, rcmaehl said:

@Dan Castellaneta

 

I made this

  Hide contents

 

oh god oh fuck

[Suika]

3 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

@Dan Castellaneta

 

I made this

  Hide contents

 

My friend sent me this earlier this morning lmfao

 

[jiyeon]

8 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

inb4 a new hat is given to those who didn't contribute to the unusual crash. and another one for those who did ._.

Ghastly Gibus part 2, but this time it's got burning flames.

[Herman Mcpootis]

14 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

UPDATE: Valve seems to have handled this... in a very strange manner. It seems like, rather than deleting the hats outright or leaving them be, any hats unboxed out of this debacle are not tradable, marketable, craftable and, bizarrely enough, gift-wrappable.

pretty sure valve made untradable items also unwrappable a few years back. I just hope i get to keep the 2 unusuals i uncrated, even if they're crapo-tier.

 

C'mon man, let us have something 

[PlayStation 2]

2 hours ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

pretty sure valve made untradable items also unwrappable a few years back. I just hope i get to keep the 2 unusuals i uncrated, even if they're crapo-tier.

 

C'mon man, let us have something 

Yeah, they did, but bizarrely enough, the description of those items that state what they aren't also shows that they're not gift-wrappable, even though they wouldn't be to begin with.

[- A -]

According from anomaly on youtube about this matter. The trading market was shook with how valve let this thing pass for 12 hours. Most players earned a profit of 7k$ with their exploited items. The market prices went down as the supply went crazy over the last 12 hours, so this is basically valve messing up. 

Valve took actions such as banning people who already sold their items for CSGO or DOTA 2 Items (which in turn, those TF2 items ain't usable for trading anymore which means no value) and is currently lazy to fix the problem before next week. (No overtime for the weekends as we can see) and so the question remains.

How the hell will Valve fix this mess that they've brought upon themselves.... (I seriously fell for the exploit, was going to buy those hats when this news went all over. haha.)

[jiyeon]

10 minutes ago, This is a DIsplay Name said:

According from anomaly on youtube about this matter. The trading market was shook with how valve let this thing pass for 12 hours. Most players earned a profit of 7k$ with their exploited items. The market prices went down as the supply went crazy over the last 12 hours, so this is basically valve messing up.

Just watched Anomaly's video, market's absolutely crazy at the moment. Had an itch that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 markets would've been affected but not to the extent it has gotten too. The Unusual Team Captain is just an insane crash.

Complete damage control - or lack thereof - over at Valve HQ.

 

13 minutes ago, This is a DIsplay Name said:

(I seriously fell for the exploit, was going to buy those hats when this news went all over. haha.)

Did you end up buying any yourself? I managed to witness the market crash and exploit but I never dived into itself due to the angel on my shoulder telling me this wouldn't end well if I got involved.

[1re]

Don't think I saw this posted but:

 

[- A -]

12 hours ago, seoz said:

Just watched Anomaly's video, market's absolutely crazy at the moment. Had an itch that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 markets would've been affected but not to the extent it has gotten too. The Unusual Team Captain is just an insane crash.

Complete damage control - or lack thereof - over at Valve HQ.

 

Did you end up buying any yourself? I managed to witness the market crash and exploit but I never dived into itself due to the angel on my shoulder telling me this wouldn't end well if I got involved. 

I was "about" to buy one. The prices were to good to be true at that time,  but I was too skeptical to buy one for myself. So I had to search the net for news. I saw a post on reddit where they noticed the glitch and I guess it blew up at that point...
 

[- A -]

6 hours ago, 1re said:

Don't think I saw this posted but:

 

This is where "No overtime for Valve" comes in. They literally don't want to solve this right away. Hahahaha.