Halloween event
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The Halloween event, also known as Scream Fortress, is an annual event for the month of October and several days into November, a time when enchantments, hauntings, and family curses fall upon the world-wide facilities of Mann Co.. First introduced in the The Terrifying Team Fortress Haunted Hallowe'en Special of 2009, Halloween events now feature activation of Halloween-themed start screens, spooky sound cues, Halloween cosmetics, haunted Halloween maps, soul-harvesting contract campaigns, Ghosts, and monsters, with Scream Fortress Patches adding new Halloween content.
Halloween event
On the first day of October, the game activates several features, including Halloween start screens, Halloween cosmetics, a selection of past Halloween maps on the Casual Mode menu, and soul collection on all maps. Later, a content patch is added with activation of Halloween Contracts and Soul Gargoyles. After the patch, annual Halloween Cosmetic and War Paint Cases drop while players are given a several week-long campaign to level up their Gargoyles and complete contracts to earn Halloween Packages.
Development of the Halloween event
The first Holiday-restricted Halloween events each opened with a Major Update content patch a shortly before October 30 and concluded 10 or so days later with removal of Halloween cosmetic effects.
Most of the individual Halloween Updates introduced new features to the Halloween event celebration, whether new maps, monsters, or mechanics, like magic spells or the Soul Gargoyle. Valve treated the first seven Halloween events as "major updates", each with an update page on the official Team Fortress website and a Comic of some form. From the beginning, Halloween events have been linked with continuations of the Team Fortress 2 Storyline, with the release of Zephaniah Mann's last will and testament and family portrait and the coupling of the Halloween comics with closely released main Storyline comics, notably the murders of Blutarch and Redmond and the crossovers of Merasmus. However, from the 8th annual event onward, no update pages or comics were published. The first six events released seven haunted maps (five developed by Valve), but the next four events released 12 Community maps and one Valve map.
From 2019 onwards, Valve has activated Halloween mode on the first of October, with the update arriving later that month. This allows players to play on the old Halloween maps before the next Scream Fortress update is out.
List of Halloween events
