Greetings NS2 community! Wasabi and Obraxis here with an important news update. Today marks a very important day in Natural Selection 2 History: the day in which the game’s future has the potential to be a whole lot brighter, thanks to its own community. Dating way back to the original NS1, you guys have made selfless efforts to improve and enhance the Natural Selection experience as well as keeping the franchise alive for years after release. We are happy to announce that Unknown Worlds Entertainment has approved a team of experienced and passionate community members to help carry on the development of NS2 into a potential patch 266 (and hopefully, beyond!).Unknown Worlds Entertainment is a small team, currently their time and resources are going into exciting new projects. However, because they love NS2 so much, they have entrusted their very valuable IP in the hands of the NS2 community, who will nurture and cherish it in order to continue to evolve NS2, as it always has. This win-win scenario will allow Unknown Worlds to focus on their next project and we get to potentially continue to create new patches for NS2!It means that now with Unknown World’s blessing, we as a community can forge patch 266. We can hopefully start to incorporate the best the community has to offer, such as bug fixes and popular features...with many more ideas for the future!For the everyday player, they can now rest easy knowing that NS2’s future developments will be in the trusted hands of a team of experienced NS2 players just like them, who only wish to see NS2 become bigger and better than ever before! There is potential for greatness, but we will have many hurdles to overcome along the way. While these things take time to implement and grow, we plan on being very open with what we are actively working on. Afterall, it is by the community, for the community!As with any community driven project, we want to recognize those who have contributed to the growth of NS2. We have reinstated a community recognition project called Squad 5. For example, if you have helped out with a notable bug fix, made a nice mod that enhances core gameplay, or created a killer map, you could get a sweet Squad 5 badge in recognition. It will show up both on the forums and in game next to your name! You can head over to the Squad 5 section of the forums to nominate a player! http://forums.unknownworlds.com/categories/squad-five One of the biggest changes is that the on-going development of the game will be more publicly visible. We want to share with the community what we are working on. Not only that, but our Community Development Team will be accessible and active on the forums and social media. You’ll also likely run into them in live streams, podcasts, or even just in game!You may have already met some of these folks, but now they will be operating in NS2 Community Dev Team (CDT) capacity. So, put your hands and claws together to the men and women who will voluntarily dedicate their time and experience to the continued long term growth of NS2, you can reach them on the forums, twitter and steam.NS2 Development Leadership - ns2wasabione NS2 Development Leadership - obraxis Bugs and Gameplay Programming - samus_droid Bugs and Gameplay Programming - McGlaspie Bugs & Engine DevelopmentUI Features, Bugs and Map Touching - mendasp Art and GUI DesignNSL Competitive Community Relations - dyphan Technical Support and QA - ironhorse386 Video Patch Change Logs & Trailers - ISEGaming Map, Mod Creation and Testing - SCC_Loki UWE Test Lead & North America Play Test Lead - narfwak North America Play Test Lead - ns2decoy UWE Test Lead & Europe Play Test Lead - Explosifbe In celebration of this new dawn, Natural Selection 2 will be part of an 80% off Humble Bundle sale from May 19th to May 21st. Better hurry and share that sale goodness because there has never been better time to play Natural Selection 2! https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/naturalselection2_storefront