Equip Regions are fake
Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2026 11:40 am
I thought this would just be a fun bit of knowledge to share for any curious nerds
Quickswitch
You have probably heard of the quickswitch exploit. This basically involves using a cosmetic classified as a whole_head equip region along side +quickswitch to be able to equip conflicting items. Normally, the game has a clear check to prevent you from equipping two items of the same region, but certain regions (glasses and whole_head) have a second extra check to have them conflict with other regions, namely things like face or hat.
Server Side
But the most interesting part of the quickswitch exploit is not that it works as it does, allowing you to equip the loadout. Instead, it's a question of why does the server even allow you to spawn in with this loadout at all? You would think, sure maybe the item server lets you equip some wacky loadout, but surely the server itself would prevent you from spawning in with it, right?
As it turns out, the server does not care at all about equip regions, it doesn't even check them. The only things the server cares about is if the item is in the correct slot, if it's equippable for your class, and if you actually own the item.
If you are familiar with some of the bots that infested casual you might remember them wearing conflicting cosmetics. They did not "hack" the item server or anything like that to allow them to equip multiple items of the same equip region, the item server already allows you to do this, the only thing they hacked was their client.
The Exploit
TF2 has something called an item schema. It's a big text file that lists every single item in the game and every property those items have. When your game launches, TF2 retrieves a new copy of the schema and then processes it, saving the information to memory for later.
If you recall, since the server doesn't care, the only thing we have to change is our client. So surely all we have to do is find the file on our computer (located at tf/scripts/items/items_game.txt), then update it to make items have no equip regions, right?
If you were asking this question about 12 years ago, you would be correct! This is actually how this exploit used to work circa 2014. I know because I remember doing it. You could edit your copy of the item schema and your game would load it and allow you to play without equip regions. This meant that in your loadout menu, you could equip any cosmetics together, or even weapons and cosmetics that normally conflict (such as the gunboats and any boot cosmetic). While the game does have a hard limit on only allowing one item of a certain type, you technically can tell the item server that your loadout contains three of the same hat just slightly different (different level/paint/etc).
At some point, I suspect in around 2015 though I can't be certain as I was on a hiatus then, this version of the exploit was patched. But notably this was not fixed by performing a server side check, instead the game now verifies your item schema and if it sees it has been modified, it forcibly downloads a new copy.
You might think that means the ship is sunk but there's still hope. Remember, when the game loads the item schema on startup, it saves everything to memory in a cache. It only ever does this once per startup. So what happens if we somehow manage to modify that cache?
Calculating equip regions
To see how equip regions are calculated we can look here in econ_item_schema.cpp in the sdk.
At a high level, what this does is it starts off each item at equip region 0 (no equip region) then goes over each region it has in the list and sets it by incrementing the equip region flag which is a bitmask. Crucially this equip region mask only results in conflicts between other hats of the same region, which is why whole_head quickswitching gets around this even if it's set.
But say this value was stored as zero for all hats. This would be the equivalent of our 2014 version of the exploit of just setting our item schema items to have no equip regions. This would mean that the game stored every item in memory as having no region and when opening your loadout and determining what you are allowed to equip or not, it would not have a mask set so it would not find any conflicts and thus allow you to select anything.
We can actually accomplish this using a memory patcher. By using an external program you can edit the memory of TF2 while it's starting, and just prior to the regions being calculated, we patch the bit of memory that tells the game to calculate equip regions, and we have it stop right after starting them off at zero.
Lo and behold, this actually works! I made (or rather got gpt assistance on, I'll rewrite it myself some day) a patcher that does exactly this for Linux that you can find here.
Mine is a linux version of the original patcher that is only for windows, which I did not write, you can find it here though it is long outdated. I forked it with some new memory locations for 64 bit here though I don't really have a windows machine to test this on so I don't know if it was broken since I made the fork or not. The specific methodology of the patch is described in each, though my version goes a bit more in depth. I am not responsible for finding this exploit, nor (do I think) is the person who made the windows patcher, the original bug finder is lost to time.
You can run these right now and you can completely ignore equip regions. I have been running it automatically when my game starts for the last ~2 years and it has worked just fine. If you are concerned about VAC, just know that VAC is not a system that just detects "have you edited the memory at all" but rather it checks for certain known cheat programs. The list has not been updated in years (unless they updated it for the recent bot ban wave but supposedly that was more manual). Therefore since this program only runs during startup and then closes, there's no way for them to detect you running it. On top of that, though it doesn't do this currently, it would be trivial to just patch the memory so that it calculates equip regions, then re-patch it back to the original state. It would then not even be possible to determine this was done by scanning for memory editing, there would be no trace of it and your items would already be cached. You need to actually join a VAC server for it to do any detecting so game startup doesn't matter. I would not run this program while connected to a server just in case, however.
Fixing the bug
So if this has technically existed for over a decade why hasn't it been fixed? Back in 2014 when the exploit involved editing the item schema, the solution from the Valve perspective was simple - prevent people from editing the schema. This has implications beyond just equip regions so it made sense to just put the check in as a solution to the problem.
But evidently this is still an issue so why hasn't it been fixed? Well, in reality it actually was almost fixed once. The date escapes me but sometime in I believe 2022 or 2023, Valve actually did patch the quickswitch exploit. Since this was prior to the sdk releasing we can't be sure exactly how they did this and whether it was fixing quickswitch itself, or fixing the server parsing equip regions, but what we do know is they reverted the change almost immediately. You see, traders got very attached to quickswitchable items (whole_head equip region unusuals) and complained en masse to Valve when they attempted to fix the bug. So Valve decided not to touch it and left the bug in until this day.
The quickswitch exploit in reality is just a small side effect of this larger exploit which I've described. Therefore, fixing this would mean fixing quickswitch, which in turn means that if they were unwilling to patch that, then they won't patch this. So the way I see it, it's unlikely this will ever get patched. Since it's not detectable from Valve's side, and fixing it will anger traders, we will forever know that equip regions are fake.
I would hope that spreading of this knowledge causes a crash in the TF2 economy because it would be funny, since this means every single unusual is a misc. I tried it myself and can provide pictures later but you can get easy triple unusual combos this way. Were it to crash the economy it would bring a smile to my face but I suspect it won't as using a memory patching plugin probably spooks too many people and they would be averse to even trying it.
And just to answer preemptively, yes I did check to see if you can use weapons from other classes and no this does not work. The game hard limits items to the correct class/slot and this is enforced serverside when spawning your loadout. Only equip regions are ignored in this check.
Quickswitch
You have probably heard of the quickswitch exploit. This basically involves using a cosmetic classified as a whole_head equip region along side +quickswitch to be able to equip conflicting items. Normally, the game has a clear check to prevent you from equipping two items of the same region, but certain regions (glasses and whole_head) have a second extra check to have them conflict with other regions, namely things like face or hat.
Server Side
But the most interesting part of the quickswitch exploit is not that it works as it does, allowing you to equip the loadout. Instead, it's a question of why does the server even allow you to spawn in with this loadout at all? You would think, sure maybe the item server lets you equip some wacky loadout, but surely the server itself would prevent you from spawning in with it, right?
As it turns out, the server does not care at all about equip regions, it doesn't even check them. The only things the server cares about is if the item is in the correct slot, if it's equippable for your class, and if you actually own the item.
If you are familiar with some of the bots that infested casual you might remember them wearing conflicting cosmetics. They did not "hack" the item server or anything like that to allow them to equip multiple items of the same equip region, the item server already allows you to do this, the only thing they hacked was their client.
The Exploit
TF2 has something called an item schema. It's a big text file that lists every single item in the game and every property those items have. When your game launches, TF2 retrieves a new copy of the schema and then processes it, saving the information to memory for later.
If you recall, since the server doesn't care, the only thing we have to change is our client. So surely all we have to do is find the file on our computer (located at tf/scripts/items/items_game.txt), then update it to make items have no equip regions, right?
If you were asking this question about 12 years ago, you would be correct! This is actually how this exploit used to work circa 2014. I know because I remember doing it. You could edit your copy of the item schema and your game would load it and allow you to play without equip regions. This meant that in your loadout menu, you could equip any cosmetics together, or even weapons and cosmetics that normally conflict (such as the gunboats and any boot cosmetic). While the game does have a hard limit on only allowing one item of a certain type, you technically can tell the item server that your loadout contains three of the same hat just slightly different (different level/paint/etc).
At some point, I suspect in around 2015 though I can't be certain as I was on a hiatus then, this version of the exploit was patched. But notably this was not fixed by performing a server side check, instead the game now verifies your item schema and if it sees it has been modified, it forcibly downloads a new copy.
You might think that means the ship is sunk but there's still hope. Remember, when the game loads the item schema on startup, it saves everything to memory in a cache. It only ever does this once per startup. So what happens if we somehow manage to modify that cache?
Calculating equip regions
To see how equip regions are calculated we can look here in econ_item_schema.cpp in the sdk.
At a high level, what this does is it starts off each item at equip region 0 (no equip region) then goes over each region it has in the list and sets it by incrementing the equip region flag which is a bitmask. Crucially this equip region mask only results in conflicts between other hats of the same region, which is why whole_head quickswitching gets around this even if it's set.
But say this value was stored as zero for all hats. This would be the equivalent of our 2014 version of the exploit of just setting our item schema items to have no equip regions. This would mean that the game stored every item in memory as having no region and when opening your loadout and determining what you are allowed to equip or not, it would not have a mask set so it would not find any conflicts and thus allow you to select anything.
We can actually accomplish this using a memory patcher. By using an external program you can edit the memory of TF2 while it's starting, and just prior to the regions being calculated, we patch the bit of memory that tells the game to calculate equip regions, and we have it stop right after starting them off at zero.
Lo and behold, this actually works! I made (or rather got gpt assistance on, I'll rewrite it myself some day) a patcher that does exactly this for Linux that you can find here.
Mine is a linux version of the original patcher that is only for windows, which I did not write, you can find it here though it is long outdated. I forked it with some new memory locations for 64 bit here though I don't really have a windows machine to test this on so I don't know if it was broken since I made the fork or not. The specific methodology of the patch is described in each, though my version goes a bit more in depth. I am not responsible for finding this exploit, nor (do I think) is the person who made the windows patcher, the original bug finder is lost to time.
You can run these right now and you can completely ignore equip regions. I have been running it automatically when my game starts for the last ~2 years and it has worked just fine. If you are concerned about VAC, just know that VAC is not a system that just detects "have you edited the memory at all" but rather it checks for certain known cheat programs. The list has not been updated in years (unless they updated it for the recent bot ban wave but supposedly that was more manual). Therefore since this program only runs during startup and then closes, there's no way for them to detect you running it. On top of that, though it doesn't do this currently, it would be trivial to just patch the memory so that it calculates equip regions, then re-patch it back to the original state. It would then not even be possible to determine this was done by scanning for memory editing, there would be no trace of it and your items would already be cached. You need to actually join a VAC server for it to do any detecting so game startup doesn't matter. I would not run this program while connected to a server just in case, however.
Fixing the bug
So if this has technically existed for over a decade why hasn't it been fixed? Back in 2014 when the exploit involved editing the item schema, the solution from the Valve perspective was simple - prevent people from editing the schema. This has implications beyond just equip regions so it made sense to just put the check in as a solution to the problem.
But evidently this is still an issue so why hasn't it been fixed? Well, in reality it actually was almost fixed once. The date escapes me but sometime in I believe 2022 or 2023, Valve actually did patch the quickswitch exploit. Since this was prior to the sdk releasing we can't be sure exactly how they did this and whether it was fixing quickswitch itself, or fixing the server parsing equip regions, but what we do know is they reverted the change almost immediately. You see, traders got very attached to quickswitchable items (whole_head equip region unusuals) and complained en masse to Valve when they attempted to fix the bug. So Valve decided not to touch it and left the bug in until this day.
The quickswitch exploit in reality is just a small side effect of this larger exploit which I've described. Therefore, fixing this would mean fixing quickswitch, which in turn means that if they were unwilling to patch that, then they won't patch this. So the way I see it, it's unlikely this will ever get patched. Since it's not detectable from Valve's side, and fixing it will anger traders, we will forever know that equip regions are fake.
I would hope that spreading of this knowledge causes a crash in the TF2 economy because it would be funny, since this means every single unusual is a misc. I tried it myself and can provide pictures later but you can get easy triple unusual combos this way. Were it to crash the economy it would bring a smile to my face but I suspect it won't as using a memory patching plugin probably spooks too many people and they would be averse to even trying it.
And just to answer preemptively, yes I did check to see if you can use weapons from other classes and no this does not work. The game hard limits items to the correct class/slot and this is enforced serverside when spawning your loadout. Only equip regions are ignored in this check.
