2013-2023: 10 Years of Daily SPUF

Phovos’ Nightwave critique yesterday clocked out 10 years of articles on The Daily SPUF!

That’s right, on August 18 2013 we published our first article, a rant about Team Fortress 2’s Half-Zatoichi. Over the past decade since, we have published a new article every day without fail (except once), covering a huge swathe of games and topics from all across the Steamosphere and beyond, and we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you who read, commented on, or submitted articles over the past 3,652 days.

In order to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to write another article in our “In Which <author> Writes Articles“ series, but this time dedicated to all the other writers who have populated our blog from the early years to the modern era. There are so many of you that I unfortunately couldn’t include samples from everyone, but every submission y’all ever contributed helped us reach this milestone and is a cherished part of what makes SPUF what it is.

Halo’s Perfect Pistol by Glacier

Glacier has been knocking it out of the park with his recent articles. Not only is he covering Halo, a seminal FPS series sorely underrepresented on this blog, he does so with crisp writing and excellent tie-in videos on the sort of minutiae I love. Sometimes he challenges himself with harder-than-hard difficulties, others he waxes on about specific firearms, but my favorite has to be this one on the infamous Combat Evolved pistol, which he discusses from a diegetic, design, and developmental perspective that really ties together the full story of this superlative sidearm.

Mod Showcase: Jailbreak by Brickinator

Brickinator’s Mod Showcase series is one of the longest on our site (beaten only by Phovos’ Let’s Play of Pokemon Sword), and houses many of my favorite articles among it. His writing style is simple and informative when discussing rules or mechanics, yet peppered with humorous side notes to keep them entertaining. I spent hundreds of hours playing the custom game modes I discovered through his series, and looking back I’m really glad they exist because some of these game modes are hard to find in the modern day. TF2 is a one-of-a-kind game in large part due to community creations, and Brickinator did his part to ensure some historical standouts won’t be forgotten.

An Engineer’s Guide to Engineering by Gamemaster1379

Despite publishing this in our first year, Gamemaster1739 has retained the record for writing our longest article with this 7,155-word guide to everything Engineer. And as you could guess at that word count, he goes deep into the intricacies, playstyles, weapons, and statistics of everyone’s favorite Texan. It’s basically a one-class masterclass on a single page, and a comprehensive league of its own. But the second-longest article we ever published deserves mention too:

Saxton Hale – The 10th Class by Answers

What can I say, man’s a prophet! Over eight years before VSH became an official game mode, Answers wrote one of the most in-depth TF2 suggestions to ever grace our site. His article goes so far beyond merely asking for a tenth class, he systematically breaks down our favorite Australian’s relationship with the other classes on basis of mechanics, personality, team role, and even control scheme. Everything he posits comes with developmental justification and a cavalier tone that really accentuates the writing style and makes the 6,978 words blaze by as a very entertaining read.

Real Teammates of Genius by delirious biznasty

Biznasty’s tone is impeccable, I can’t help hearing the narrator’s voice from the old Bud Light commercials when I read this article and its sequel on spawn snipers. His wry sense of humor comes through perfectly as he ‘praises’ the noobiest free-to-players on the server, complete with as many alliterative appellations as he could fit into each article.

PlanetSide2: Diary of a Little Aviator by Corvette

Corvette’s experience taking to the skies in Planetside 2 shed some sunlight on a facet of the world’s best MMOFPS I’d never been brave enough to touch myself. I love her detailed recount of everything she went through to earn her wings, and her use of GIFs was actually what inspired me to create a Gfycat account (RIP) and start adding them to my own articles.

The potentially unintentional PAYDAY: The Heist update 1.22.0 by hugthebed2

This article by hugthebed2 holds a special place in my heart for several reasons. Firstly, it covered Payday the Heist, one of my favorites titles that gets largely forgotten by the gaming community at large. But it also chronicled a memorable event that would have otherwise disappeared into the memory hole if he hadn’t been there to recount it. Obscure game updates (or hotfixed bugs) are always in serious danger of being forgotten, and I love every time our blog did its part to preserve one for posterity.

Bush Sentries: When Man & Machine team up with Nature to ruin your day by Reima

With this article, Reima became our first-ever author to augment an article with a tie-in video. And what an article it was too! I fondly remember using this trick to rack up lvl 1 sentry kills for months after reading it, proving that Reima is far more than just the demoknight demigod he’s primarily known for. He covers all the contingencies and considerations of the playstyle, and ushered in a new era of ‘underappreciated TF2 playstyle’ articles that endured for years after.

Regarding the Difference Between SPUF and the Steam Forums by Jaydor

And I wanted to end with this one because it discusses the reason all of this happened, the Steam Powered User Forums and everyone on it. You may have noticed I highly value historical preservation, and with SPUF’s deletion, Jaydor’s article remains one of the few places discussing and immortalizing what it was like on that lost site. All of our early readers and submitters hailed from those green-and-black forums, and we’re humbled not only by those who rallied to support the Daily in our tumultuous early years, but also everyone who has stuck with us over half a decade after the original SPUF disappeared. From the new faces to the veterans, we wouldn’t still be around today if it weren’t for every one of you. Thanks again for a wonderful ten years, and here’s to ten more!