For those of you not in the loop, Smissmas is the most wonderful time of year. Its a time when friends and foes can finally lay down their grotesque weapons of destruction, and instead equip much more festive versions to blow each other to smithereens with! Because in TF2, if it doesn't include shiny new cosmetics, its not worth doing!

As such, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that there are a whole bunch of new festive weapons and skins, as well as three new taunts to annoy your enemies with. And if these sort of shiny new hats are what you seek, you'll also be glad to hear that the in-game store is currently holding a massive sale on a variety of items and paint kits.

But perhaps most importantly, the Smissmas update has added a couple of improvements to the Casual matches. At the end of each Casual match players will now be automatically formed into a new match with the same players and teams, so if you find a cool bunch of people to play with, you no longer need to worry about being separated from them. And to top it all off, you'll even get to vote on which map the new match will take place on. A couple of updates like this and we might just get all of the old features back!

And to further help with imbalanced matches the servers will now ask for volunteers to switch sides. Naturally, you aren't expected to do this out of the goodness of your heart - there is a hefty exp bonus for those that decide to swap over and shoot their friends during this most festive of times!

If you're interested in all of the details on the Smissmas update, head over to the Team Fortress 2 website.