“TF2 is on Hold”… So?

According to the Valve News Network, a Youtube channel that is known for digging deep into cut content and discussing and speculating about all things Valve, they got in touch with a couple of people at Valve and apparently Team Fortress 2 is on hold for the time being. There’s essentially no one working on Team Fortress 2 and there are no new TF2 updates in the future because it’s all hands on deck for the new Half-Life VR game. We won’t know whether Valve will ever do anything with Team Fortress 2 for a long time.

My response to this? Tell me something I don’t know.

I mean, come on, this has always been the case. The last actual genuine update was the Jungle Inferno update, which apparently didn’t do as well as Valve had hoped. Probably because it was a semi random update for a game that doesn’t get updates and is regularly neglected. One new update isn’t suddenly going to bring a billion players to the game, new or otherwise. Content in Team Fortress 2 has been nonexistent and what content we have received has mostly been community-made. Not just hats any more, maps are made by the community, skins are made by the community, even unusual effects can be community-made now. The community has also made entire updates, only to have them neutered by Valve when it’s time for the updates to be released.

Either way, the community has been doing all the work for years. Valve has been ignoring Team Fortress 2 for years. So suddenly saying that “TF2 is on hold” means basically fuck all. It already was on hold. It has been on hold for years upon years.

It doesn’t matter. The community has kept Team Fortress 2 alive this entire team and it will continue to do so. The community won’t bloody stop because there’s still a ton of value in this game. The only difference now is that we are much more certain that we won’t be getting an update any time soon, but a lot of people kinda expected that to be the case anyway. Community competitive tournaments will continue to be a thing. Community map makers will continue to churn out maps and missions. There will always be a constant flow of new hats and cosmetics in the TF2 workshop.

Heck, even if Valve takes down its servers, there will always be someone with a community-run server and it’s still pretty easy to create your own server.

In the VVN video, there’s a lot of comments about how “TF2 is dead” and people being sad and shit like that. There’s also a ton of awesome TF2 memes referencing Expiration Date. But most of those comments are lamenting. No, you’re all fucking wrong. You’re all acting like Spy after being told we’ve only got three days to live.That’s not true at all. Our entire situation is best summed up by the end of Expiration Date.

Scout: Yeah, sure! [He smiles, then it quickly turns into a frown] Wait, nah. We can’t. I’m going to be dead.

Miss Pauling: Wait, what?

Soldier: Good news! We’re not dying! We are going to live forever!

Medic: I didn’t say that! I just said we’re not filled with tumors!

While we’re not going to live forever, we’re also definitely not filled with tumors either.

Sure, while Team Fortress 2 is tiny compared to what it once was, it will never truly die because it has a dedicated fan base and, frankly, it has spawned so much quality meme material that the game cannot die a true death. So what if there’s no new content? There was no new content anyway and what content we did get was made by the community anyway.

My point is, people are still going to play Team Fortress 2, whether we get updates or not. Team Fortress 2 won’t be truly dead for a long, long time.