After much fanfare regarding leaked videos, blog drama and some fine trolling by Valve, the Spy vs. Sniper two for one deal just landed.  This means you get not one, but TWO class updates for the same great price - absolutely free.  Well, unless you consider the mental anguish caused by everyone playing those classes 24/7 for the next month a form of payment.  Tears are only an acceptable currency for EA games however, not Valve.

In short, the update adds the not-so-new gamemode Payload Race, which many of you will recall had community made maps unofficially nearly a year ago.  Pipeline is the new Valve map for this mode, which those of stout memory will also recall was present in one of the Scout update sneak peeks.  Two new arena maps are included (by the way, arena should work on the server now) as well as an official release of Hoodoo, the fantastic payload map by Youme of TF2maps.net.  I beta tested Hoodoo many times, so congrats to Youme for having his map promoted to official status!

By now everyone knows the unlocks, so I'll give a quick rundown of the key patch features instead:

• Standard sniper rifle now shoots through friendly players (I assume unless FF is on)
• Changes to spy first person view so you're more aware of being bumped, running out of cloak and other partial-visibility situations.
• Numerous tweaks to spy disguises (health bar display, nametag, spy disguised as spy tweaks)
• Spies show their disguised class' unlocks, and can use enemy teleporters
• Flamethrower's air burst now extinguishes fire on friendly targets (!)
• Added a new taunt for the Kritzkrieg, which also heals for 10 points
• Numerous oddball bug fixes, visit Steampowered for the full changelog.

As always with the class updates, Valve has added over 50 new voice lines to each character (70 in the spy's case!).  Expect to see lots of Youtube remixes in no time.