Happy Birthday, Team Fortress 2

On October 10th 2007, Team Fortress 2 was released. Now, 15 years later, it’s still going strong. Okay, maybe not that strong, but we are still getting a handful of updates to this day. The yearly Scream Fortress event has been activated and we just got a handful of cool and interesting maps. There are still plenty of players picking up the game, and it’s still Free to Play. While there may not be as many active players as there used to be, it’s still easy enough to jump into a server and just start playing.

Admittedly, it’s been hard for Team Fortress 2 as of late. A massive wave of bots made casual play on official servers incredibly unpredictable and ruined a lot of games. Updates for Team Fortress 2 have dried up over the years, with only a few yearly events like Smissmas and Scream Fortress. But the Team Fortress 2 community AND the Team Fortress 2 voice actors stood strong and called out to Valve, and we are now slowly getting changes and updates once more. It’s been a very slow process and there’s still work to be done, but it’s nice to actually be listened to for once.

What I find most amazing though is that Team Fortress 2 has… outlived a lot of its competitors. Games like Super Monday Night Combat and Loadout have vanished completely, while Team Fortress 2 pushes onwards. Heck, Team Fortress 2 managed to outlive the original Overwatch, a game that actually recently got shut down, because Blizzard wanted to release Overwatch 2. And Overwatch 2 has decided to go down the same path that Team Fortress 2 did, going free to play. Overwatch 2 ought to thank Team Fortress 2, because it borrowed heavily from Team Fortress 2 – not just inspiration for playable characters, but for a lot of its gameplay as well. The only difference is that Overwatch 2 needs to keep on adding new heroes and maps to stay afloat, while Team Fortress 2 simply continues to float by with cosmetics alone.

But Team Fortress 2 still stands. Nine characters, a bunch of weapons and hundreds of hats. The gameplay is as good as it’s ever been, each class oozes with character, and there is a massive community still dedicated to TF2, 15 years later. Team Fortress 2 has grown, and not only that, but it has spawned dozens of sub-communities. We have Team Fortress competitive communities, custom game modes up the ying yang, thousands of memes and a dedicated Source Film Maker community. And the memes and pop culture for Team Fortress 2 is absolutely massive, bigger than the game itself.

I personally owe a lot to Team Fortress 2 as well. If it wasn’t for this game, if it wasn’t for me playing Medic, if it wasn’t me posting on the beloved but now dead Steam Powered User Forums, I certainly wouldn’t be here any more, writing daily articles and, well, doing any of this. Team Fortress 2 shaped my life in ways I never expected. And while I don’t play Team Fortress 2 much any more, it still does influence my life in subtle ways.

So here we are, 15 years later. Here’s hoping we’ll still be here, 20 years later and more.

Happy birthday, Team Fortress 2. You deserve it.