The tribute to voice actor Rick May in Team Fortress 2 has been made permanent

(Image credit: Valve)

Rick May's work as a voice actor included roles in Star Fox 64, Freddi Fish 5, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, and Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, but it's his performance as the Soldier in Team Fortress 2 that made his gruff tones dear to our hearts. When May died earlier this year after contracting COVID-19 while recovering from a stroke, Valve placed a statue commemorating him in each of the game's maps for the duration of the month.

A new update for Team Fortress 2 was recently released, and beneath notes about the addition of a Summer 2020 Cosmetic Case and some patches are these words: "Updated cp_granary with a permanent Soldier statue". The statue, which is inscribed with the Soldier's line, "That was a hell of a campaign, son!" has been made a permanent fixture of the Granary map, which is fitting as that's the backdrop for the iconic Meet the Soldier video.

Let's all just watch Meet the Soldier one more time.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.