Team Fortress 2 players forlornly gaze at Counter-Strike 2 reveal: ‘Maybe our day will come in another decade’

Valve has announced Counter-Strike 2 is on the way and all the world is smiling. Well, nearly all. While plenty of people are happy to see Steam’s perennial most-played game getting a much-deserved update, at least one other Valve game community feels, uh, a little neglected by the attention lavished on CS2.

IT’S NOT FAIR from r/tf2

Having spent several years prodding Valve about bot infestations and a general lack of major updates, the Team Fortress 2 community was slightly taken aback by the sudden fanfare for CS2’s announcement. It’s reacted in its usual way: Wry, forlorn resignation. And memes.

The TF2 community isn’t really angry about CS2. Even users still holding out hope for some kind of TF2 news mostly agree that “Valve definitely made the right choice” updating Counter-Strike first. In fact, players seem to have reached the acceptance stage of grief, on the whole, and are now committed to wringing as much comedy as they can out of the game’s long, slow journey into the afterlife. 

Take, for example, the TF2 player threatening to turn each of the game’s characters into animals until the game gets a major update. Or perhaps the popular post making fun of the community for its reaction to Valve’s decision to update “one of if not the biggest fps game of all time,” rather than a “nearly 2 decade old game filled with cheaters and bots that barely runs on source spaghetti”.

r/tf2 users when valve decides to work on a huge update to one of if not the biggest fps game of all time instead of the nearly 2 decade old game filled with cheaters and bots that barely runs on source spaghetti from r/tf2

Meanwhile, a post sincerely, naively, optimistically asking if fans thought that CS2 indicated a possible update for TF2 was comprehensively answered by a single comment that received over 3,000 upvotes: “no“.

That’s pretty much the tenor of the response wherever you look, except the Steam forums, which mostly consist of people finding ambitious and inventive ways to insult each other. The TF2 community on Twitter, for instance, showcased the same kind of ironic stoicism, just with more gifs.

That’s not to say there isn’t any genuine upset on the part of TF2 players, who still rather like their game of choice even if they have glumly accepted the fact that it’s entered its twilight years. “I’m not saying CS:GO is a bad game,” said one player named InstantClassic257, “I just think TF2 deserves more”. But even they seem more resigned than angry: “Would I like an update like CS:GO? Fuck yeah I would. Are we gonna get it? Highly unlikely”. 

The closest thing to optimism I’ve seen in any response from a TF2 player came from the YouTuber SolarLight, who tweeted “TF2 fans, let’s try not to get too envious,” and that “Maybe our day will come in another decade”.

I’ve been racking my brain, and I think TF2 might be the only multiplayer FPS I’ve ever dedicated any serious time to. Habitual recluse that I am, none of the others ever tempted me, CS:GO included, but TF2’s comic sensibilities and fun mish-mash of classes led me to pour around a hundred hours of my life into it a long, long time ago. I have to give props to the game’s community for (mostly) accepting its current situation with grace and humour, but if the game really isn’t ever going to get a big update, I hope it at least gets a proper send-off at some point. It deserves that much.

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