Happy Halloween everyone! For those of you who started playing after Counterpact was released in Early Access, welcome to Counterpact and thank you for playing! I hope you've been enjoying the game so far. I hope all Counterpact players also enjoy this update, as the first (of hopefully many) Halloween update is upon us. This update includes the following changes: New Variety Gashapon items: Party Topper (Common Holiday Outfit)

• The Spooky Ghost! (Common Holiday Pet)
• Lil' Jill (Common Holiday Pet)
• Eternally Screaming Skull (Rare Holiday Pet)
• Ghost (Common Holiday Emote)
• Pumpkin (Common Holiday Emote)
• Boo! (Common Holiday Emote)
• Giant Pumpkin (Common Holiday Chair)
• Enchanted Broomstick* (Rare Holiday Chair)
  • * Despite being classified as rare, players will have increased chances to pull this item this year. This increased chance is equivalent to that of an uncommon outfit.

• The first player to score a KO after a round starts will receive the candy.
• The player holding the candy receives passive (but slow) health regeneration, a small speed boost, and a small amount of armor!
• If an enemy KO's you while you're holding the candy, they'll steal it from you!
  • If you are KO'd by an uncredited source while holding the candy, it will be taken from you, and it will be given to the next player to score a KO.
• If you are holding the candy when the round ends, you will receive an Exclusive item! If you already have it, the item's appearance will be upgraded!

• Steam users can no longer set their display name in-game. Instead, their display name on Steam will automatically be used.
• In-game activity is now displayed through Steam's rich presence.
• Players can now register accounts linked to their Steam account.
  • Note you will not be able to merge Steam logins and normal Counterpact accounts, so please log into your normal Counterpact account if you already have one.
  • Currently, there is not a way to change your account credentials. When these options are added, you will also be able to convert your Counterpact account into a Steam-linked account and vice versa.

• Back Alley Invitation has received the following nerfs:
  • Maximum attack speed has been reduced.
  • Maximum lifesteal has been reduced.
  • Starting from 100%, Sapped Bonus now increases more slowly as it gets closer to 200%.

• Fixed the in-game menu appearing instead of the character select menu when entering the Gilded Spire.
• Fixed an issue with game server socket refreshing.
• Fixed certain Decorated animations on weapons not scaling properly when previewing them in the arsenal menu.
• Added some measures to reinforce game server stability.

• Launched another official game server located in Singapore. This server is named "Counterpact Official - Southeast Asia".
• An "Alert" emote has been added to the default emote menu.
• Refined items now display two sparkles instead of one. These sparkles are also slightly more transparent now, to set them apart from Gilded Spire reward sparkles more.
• The maximum length of account passwords has been increased to 32 characters.
• Back Alley Invitation's attack sound now increases in pitch as the Sapped Bonus gets higher.
• The movement speed of moving chairs has been increased.
• Game server hosts now have an option to disable metagames correlating to events.
• By default, video settings will automatically be reduced if the game is running at slower speeds. An option has been added to disable this feature.
• The GUI Smoothing option no longer applies to the in-game chat or the arsenal previews.
• The direct map download feature has been removed; game server hosts must now provide download URLs for each map.
  • This was done for optimization purposes, as the map file's raw data had to be kept in memory in order to facilitate direct map downloading.
• Keyboard keys for attacking and using abilities have been added.
• If there is more than a one-player difference in team sizes, the next player from the larger team will automatically be moved to the smaller team upon being KO'd.