beigemore wrote on Jun 24, 2011, 04:03:

Dev wrote on Jun 23, 2011, 22:42:
I wish they'd give something to existing customers though, to show appreciation for paying it. Probably would take only 10 mins for valve to whip up a customer hat and give it to everyone who had the game prior to today. Or maybe a $10 credit at the TF2 store, that would encourage people to spend more there.

You get a hat called "The Proof of Purchase" that all classes can wear.

From a lot of the comments I'm reading, it really sounds like a lot of people talking shit about the game don't even play it. Anyhow, I've played it off and on quite a bit since it was released and have casually gotten every weapon in the game multiple times. None of the weapons/items are necessary to be good at the game. People saying "best stats win" are full of crap. All of the default weapons are very good. Switching over to any customer weapons requires that you lose some benefit that the default weapons provide. You can use whatever you want at anytime and still be a great asset to the team (minus the engineer using mini-sentries while playing defense).

The game is fun because there's no best-in-slot bs that you have to mess with. You use whichever items you enjoy the most. Maybe if you play in a league then it does make a slight difference, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the pugging that most players are going to be participating in.