BLU Scout Pants Fix

Submission 96

Part of a series on Team Fortress 2. [View Related Entries]

Overview

BLU Scout Pants Fix refers to a patch released for the multiplayer video game Team Fortress 2 in October 2024 which fixed a 17-year-old bug of BLU Scout not having the correctly colored texture for his pants. The patch was quickly reverted due to the fixed texture conflicting with many cosmetic items, with the Team Fortress 2 reacting to the changes with jokes and memes on social media.

Background

On October 24th, 2024, game developer and publisher Valve released an update for their multiplayer first-person shooter video gamer Team Fortress 2.^[1] As a part of the update, the texture for BLU Scout, a playable character, was updated, changing the color of his pants which remained incorrect for 17 years since the game was released in 2007 (comparison image^[2] shown below). The bug was well-lnown in the Team Fortress 2 community: for example, on February 6th, 2023, YouTuber^[8] shounic posted a video about it that received over 730,000 views in two years.

Developments

On October 25th, approximately 24 hours after the first patch, Valve^[3] released a follow-up patch that reverted the change with the comment "Reverted BLU Scout pants fix because it conflicts with too many existing cosmetics" (shown below).

Online Reactions

The patch and the following reversal of the change became a major subject of interest in the Team Fortress 2 community in late October 2024, with members of the fandom sharing memes, jokes and fan art.

On October 25th, 2024, X^[4] user @TF2SolarLight made a post about the change, posting a comparison image of old and new texture, which received over 860 reposts and 12,000 likes in three days. An hour later, X^[5] user @heavyfortres wrote, "THEY CHANGED A CHARACTER DESIGN 17 YEARS LATER WHAT", with the post (shown below) garnering over 2.2 million views, 7,100 reposts and 68,000 likes on the platform in three days.

Later on October 25th, 2024, X^[6] user @Cw1tchy posted a fan art GIF of Valve CEO Gabe Newell manually painting BLU Scout's pants with a brush that received over 1,800 reposts and 26,000 likes in three days (shown below).

On October 26th, following the reversal of the change, artist @TheF1amethr0wer posted a fan art of chained Scout with a humorous caption imagining Valve chaining BLU Scout in a vault. The artwork (shown below) gained over 2,900 reposts and 22,000 likes on X^[7] in two days.