Team Fortress 2 is—second only to Half-Life—probably what you think of when you picture a Valve game. It's built a huge, passionate player base of loyal fans who have, from an outsider's perspective, been stuck in a sisyphean, circular nightmare of bots and banwaves for some time now.
As an example: In 2022, fans , leading to promises by Valve to —which was followed by a buoyed player base and a new .
In June of 2024, fans , which saw its player count double as , mercilessly banning players and telling them "No" when it came to appeals. It is now September 2024, and—okay, in fairness, this one's an extension of the last plea, though I get the uneasy sense we're stuck in a time loop.
340,000+ names all compiled into 1 book. This is a symbol of the astounding amount of people that love TF2 and want to see it flourish.This book has now reached its destination at Valve HQ. The future is looking bright for TF2. Thanks for taking part, everyone ❤️#FixTF2 pic.twitter.com/6VLiVG99Pa
"340,000+ names all compiled into 1 book," writes TheWhat. "This is a symbol of the astounding amount of people that love TF2 and want to see it flourish." This is something that's been in the works as .
It's genuinely quite a sweet gesture, though the TF2 community itself seems to be reacting with its usual mixture of wide-eyed optimism and cynical, beaten-down grumbling that—considering the game's turbulent history—isn't entirely unwarranted, if [[link]] a little over the top.
"Valve will use this for toilet paper," one , getting about twice as many likes as the originally-quoted tweet. In a thread on the (highlighting an exchange where a player, er, hopes "their name will touch Gabe's a*sshole"), there's some similar meme nonsense abounding:
"They might use it as firewood tho," writes , to which another replies: "I want Gabe to throw my name into his fireplace as he lies down naked on a bear skin rug in front of it." Okay.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. In terms of what the campaign accomplished, there was a decently and, it seems, another era of peace away from the bot menace—and even just a quick temperature check on the subreddit (and from ) suggests that it's sticking for now. The .
On the other hand, I wouldn't hold my breath for a return to the good old days. TF2 is almost old enough to drink in the UK, and while Valve at least appears to be improving in regards to maintenance, that aforementioned summer update is essentially an official collaboration of community-made stuff tied together by Gabe and friends, as they had to . Ah, [[link]] well—if things go wrong again, .