A e book with names from a 340,000-player TF2 petition has been hardbound and despatched to Valve, as a part of the #SaveTF2 marketing campaign

Staff Fortress 2 is—second solely to Half-Life—most likely what you consider once you image a Valve sport. It is constructed an enormous, passionate participant base of loyal followers who’ve, from an outsider’s perspective, been caught in a sisyphean, round nightmare of bots and banwaves for a while now.

For instance: In 2022, followers campaigned to #SaveTF2, resulting in guarantees by Valve to do one thing about the issue—which was adopted by a buoyed participant base and a brand new all-time participant report.

In June of 2024, followers campaigned to #SaveTF2, which noticed its participant depend double as Valve did one thing about the issue, mercilessly banning gamers and telling them “No” when it got here to appeals. It’s now September 2024, and—okay, in equity, this one’s an extension of the final plea, although I get the uneasy sense we’re caught in a time loop.

Compiled by the creator of that very same petition web site, TheWhat, this tome carries with it the hopes and goals of the petition’s 340,000 plus signatories and has, in accordance with the YouTuber-slash-organiser, been hand-delivered to Valve HQ. I’ve reached out to Valve itself to substantiate this, and I am going to replace this text if I get a response.

“340,000+ names all compiled into 1 e book,” writes TheWhat. “It is a image of the astounding quantity of those who love TF2 and wish to see it flourish.” That is one thing that is been within the works way back to July.

It is genuinely fairly a candy gesture, although the TF2 neighborhood itself appears to be reacting with its common combination of wide-eyed optimism and cynical, beaten-down grumbling that—contemplating the sport’s turbulent historical past—is not solely unwarranted, if a bit excessive.

“Valve will use this for lavatory paper,” one cynic foretells, getting about twice as many likes because the originally-quoted tweet. In a thread on the sport’s subreddit (highlighting an alternate the place a participant, er, hopes “their identify will contact Gabe’s a*sshole”), there’s some comparable meme nonsense abounding:

“They may use it as firewood tho,” writes one commenter, to which one other replies: “I need Gabe to throw my identify into his fire as he lies down bare on a bear pores and skin rug in entrance of it.” Okay.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, although. When it comes to what the marketing campaign achieved, there was a decently chunky TF2 summer time replace and, it appears, one other period of peace away from the bot menace—and even only a fast temperature verify on the subreddit (and from TheWhat themselves) means that it is sticking for now. The TF2 comedian can also be coming again.

Alternatively, I would not maintain my breath for a return to the great previous days. TF2 is sort of sufficiently old to drink within the UK, and whereas Valve at the least seems to be enhancing with regard to upkeep, that aforementioned summer time replace is basically an official collaboration of community-made stuff tied collectively by Gabe and associates, as they needed to make clear was the brand new regular final 12 months. Ah, effectively—if issues go fallacious once more, we’ll all the time have Madcap.