The official BULKHEAD patch notes, retold in full. The exact wording is in the Steam announcement.
Maintenance
Servers went down on Monday, 14 September for about an hour — 11:00 Kyiv time (08:00 UTC). The studio separately thanked players for a peak of 400,000 concurrent players.
The server browser and community server visibility
The studio admitted, in its own words, that community servers had been given too little attention, that the browser worked badly overall, and that community servers had not had the same care put into them as the rest of the game.
- The browser is split in two: Community separately, Official separately.
- Filters are gone from the official tab: there are no modified modes there, so there is nothing to filter.
- Community servers got more reliable filters.
- Community servers got text search by name.
- Community server IDs no longer reset between matches or after restarts. Every server gets its own permanent number — a longer one, for security reasons.
- The quick panel got a show empty / full switch.
- The Host button now goes where it should.
- Server names were tidied up: alphabetical sorting regardless of special characters and digits, and more than one space in a row is no longer allowed.
The apology
For a week, community servers carry a +5% cash bonus per match.
What is promised next
- Favourite community servers
- Priority queues for community servers
- Message of the day (MOTD)
- A warm-up that does something
- Turning off the AFK kick during seeding
- Control over switching between teams
Other fixes
- Several cash exploits fixed.
- Another batch of graphics-card crashes removed.
Asia
Server capacity in the region was increased: interest from there has grown, and the studio acknowledged it separately.
Where the studio stands on economy abuse
- Abusing cash bugs: a temporary ban, its length depending on previous ones; cash and experience are reset to zero.
- Content that teaches people to abuse bugs: a permanent ban. The studio put it on the same level as advertising cheats.
- XP farming: a permanent ban. Every entry to a server is tracked, and the studio knows the farming servers.
Finding something and checking it once or twice is fine, the studio says — that counts as helping with testing. Doing it again and again is abuse.