Around a month ago, Valve said it was finished with major updates for Team Fortress 2. With all the hubbub surrounding Half-Life: Alyx and their other projects, it was an understandable move. First making its debut in 2007, Team Fortress 2 is not a game that’s attracting scores of new players these days, but it does have a dedicated following that keeps the game alive even without new content. Even though Valve put the game “on hold,” the mapmakers and Workshop creators haven’t gone away. Now, they’re all hoping to keep the game alive in a new way with a project entitled Creators.TF.
ALSO: Team Fortress 2 update development reportedly halted
Officially launching over the holiday (or Smissmas in TF2) break, Creators.TF is a group of custom servers hosting a pipeline of new content for the aging first-person shooter. Going beyond the typical custom maps and server mods, the Creators.TF program will introduce new cosmetics, custom progression on supported servers, and even additional weapons down the line. Players can currently grab one of 10 cosmetic items by playing on the Smissmas maps and completing contracts. Since it’s an unofficial update, progress tracks on the website rather than in-game, but the process is very similar to Valve’s official implementation of such concepts.
Speaking to the community at large on Twitch earlier today, self-proclaimed project hype man (of Valve News Network fame) made a few things about the project abundantly clear. Items are earned only through gameplay, and all the content in Creators.TF is free of charge to anyone who wants to play. He also said that the servers would never offer items that are officially in the game and cost real money since that would be illegal. Later in the stream, he promised that there would be official VNN servers with exclusive items that would exist under the Creators.TF umbrella.
It’s heartening to see the Team Fortress community step in while Valve is stepping back, and hopefully this project continues to grow in 2020. Considering Valve’s renewed interest in making games, perhaps updates like this can revive their work on the game, or at least assign some prominent members of the community to curate fan content for the game’s official servers.
