Valve will stop selling nine Team Fortress 2 hats in two weeks' time

"Kiss these items goodbye!" exclaims the title of a new post on the Team Fortress 2 blog , spotted by PCGamesN . A note fron Saxton Hale declares that The Batter's Helmet, The Soldier's Stash, The Pyro's Beanie The Demoman's Fro, The Football Helmet, Mining Light, Prussian Pickelhaube, Trophy Belt and Fancy Fedora will soon be consigned to a giant bin, and never sold again.

Valve say that "these items will no longer be sold in the store, randomly dropped, unboxed as unusuals, or acquired through crafting." Existing instances of these items will still be tradeable, so expect their value to soar. Sales will probably shoot up as players try and get their hands on the soon-to-be rare goods while they're still about.

I have an image in my mind. It's Valve's economist, Yanis Varoufakis, on a swivel chair in a meeting spinning round and round shouting "think of the data! THINK OF THE DATA!" as lines shoot endlessly upwards on a series of glowing graphs on the wall behind him. Hopefully we'll hear how this particular experiment with TF2's hat economy goes down on Varoufakis' blog at some point in the future.

We'll have to wait and see if any of these nine items gain the legendary status of Bill's Hat, long used as a standard unit of currency in the mercantile underworld that is the Team Fortress 2 hat market. More items may be culled in future, but "advance notice will be given if any other items will be retired."