A Team Fortress 2 player has caused some capital-D Drama among the venerable shooter's more dedicated users, through the simple method of destroying one of the game's rarest items mid-match. The cherry on top: this is the second time they've done it.
User Gregarious deleted a Golden Frying Pan, an item worth just under seven thousand dollars, in the middle of a match, which meant the game sent a notification to all online players about the action (first spotted by Polygon).
The Golden Frying Pan is one of the rarest items in TF2. It's the same as a normal frying pan, except for a unique "bong" sound effect when it hits players, and a death effect that turns any unfortunate victim into a golden statue. The chances of the item dropping are miniscule: The item was added to TF2 in 2013, and there are 435 in existence as of yesterday. Make that 434?
The value of the item is around $6,770 per backpack.tf, a website that tracks the game's economy, and one would imagine that such hijinks as this will help maintain such value.
There have been historical instances of rare TF2 items being deleted for charity and good causes, but in this case it just seems to be a good old-fashioned meltdown. Gregarious first deleted the item around a year ago, and the below YouTube video shows the notification popping up for other online players. It also features a perfectly timed "holy shit" reaction:
After this Gregarious apparently begged Steam support to reinstate the item, and it was un-destroyed by some sympathetic soul at Valve. This is where things get a little murky. TF2 community members offer various speculations as to why Gregarious deleted the item initially, and has done so again: everything from booze to mental illness to a Discord argument getting out of hand.
Who knows, but the one certainty this time is that Gregarious won't be getting another reprieve. Their inventory doesn't have the item. Valve's policy is not to restore items: "Items often exchange hands multiple times before a restoration request and this means they cannot be restored without duplicating them or removing them from another innocent user’s inventory. Duplicating items has a negative impact on everyone who trades or uses the Market by lowering the value of items."
There's plenty of speculation about Gregarious and their reasons for deleting the item, which can be found easily enough in the TF2 subreddit and other community forums. The player has put over 10,000 hours into TF2, though, and it's possible they're a little like Pyro: Some people just want to watch the world (or a really expensive frying pan) burn.
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