It's a Friday. You come home from school or work or whatever, excited to log onto your computer, open up Team Fortress 2, and enjoy your weekend. First and foremost, it's time to unbox. You have a couple of crates, a couple of bucks, and a couple of minutes to wait while Steam goes through a bunch of safety precautions before letting your spend your money to buy keys. It's finally the moment you've been waiting for, the great 5 (or 10 or 15 or crap TF2's item servers are down again) second build up to the crate being opened, aannnnddd...

Nothing. No Unusual. Maybe a Strange bat, a Prince Tavish's Crown, that weird signpost people used to beat you to death with porn that one time on a custom server, but the lack of purple lettering lets your heart down. You think back to your friend, always parading around their unusuals, the two or three or four or endless stream of rare, expensive, purely cosmetic items that must feel like you've won the lottery when you've received it, you wouldn't know if it did or not since you've never won the lottery or gotten an Unusual, but you feel pretty confident in that they must be pretty similar experiences.

I've been there. I've felt the tangy taste of defeat time and time again as I've spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars on TF2, looking for that elusive unusual. I've felt the mockery of people with unusuals, smirking as they say "Hey, you'll get an unusual one day, you just gotta keep trying!" before prancing off with a moon dangerously orbiting their head or a depressed rain cloud constantly making them the worst people to have at parties. I, too, have had those same daydreams you have. All I want is to one day feel the joy of unboxing a hat with a funny little glow around it. To feel the jubilation of seeing that purple text after an uncrating. To feel the satisfaction of rubbing my rare unbox into the face of those who already have it and probably got bored of theirs long ago. Is that so much to ask?

No. No, it is not. And it is because of that, that feeling of disappointment that I easily overcome by playing the actual game, that I'm here today. To no longer plead with my money to Gaben, beg for him to give me mercy. No. Today, I am here to DEMAND one thing.

Let my people go.

My Scouts. My Soldiers. My Pyros. My Demomen. My Heavies. My Engis. My Medics. My Snipers. My Spies. My people. Let them go.

Let them go free from the shackles of monetary debt created in the pursuit of a special hat. Let them go out from their spawns with a glowing hat placed gently upon their heads. Let them go without the constant worry and pressure of the struggle between the haves and have nots.

For it is not much that we ask of you. Simply that you deliver to us the incredibly expensive hat found by pure chance that wouldn't be worth nearly as much if we all had it. The one we so rightfully deserve after spending double, perhaps triple what any Unusual could be worth attempting to get it.

For it is not just a silly, glowing hat that we all want here today. No. It is a symbol, of finally, FINALLY, after so much time, so many tears, so much sweat, hopefully not nearly as much blood (it's just a game, after all), so much money poured into this game, the usuals becoming the unusuals.

Give the usuals what they want, Gaben.

Let our people go.