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

Team Fortress 2 is—second only to Half-Life—probably what you think of when you picture a Valve game. It’s built a huge, passionate player base of loyal fans who have, from an outsider’s perspective, been stuck in a sisyphean, circular nightmare of bots and banwaves for some time now.

As an example: In 2022, fans campaigned to #SaveTF2, leading to promises by Valve to do something about the problem—which was followed by a buoyed player base and a new all-time player record.

In June of 2024, fans campaigned to #SaveTF2, which saw its player count double as Valve did something about the problem, mercilessly banning players and telling them “No” when it came to appeals. It is now September 2024, and—okay, in fairness, this one’s an extension of the last plea, though I get the uneasy sense we’re stuck in a time loop.

Compiled by the author of that same petition website, TheWhat, this tome carries with it the hopes and dreams of the petition’s 340,000 plus signatories and has, according to the YouTuber-slash-organiser, been hand-delivered to Valve HQ. I’ve reached out to Valve itself to confirm this, and I’ll update this article if I get a response.

“340,000+ names all compiled into 1 book,” writes TheWhat. “This is a symbol of the astounding amount of people that love TF2 and want to see it flourish.” This is something that’s been in the works as far back as July.

It’s genuinely quite a sweet gesture, though the TF2 community itself seems to be reacting with its usual mixture of wide-eyed optimism and cynical, beaten-down grumbling that—considering the game’s turbulent history—isn’t entirely unwarranted, if a little over the top.

“Valve will use this for toilet paper,” one cynic foretells, getting about twice as many likes as the originally-quoted tweet. In a thread on the game’s subreddit (highlighting an exchange where a player, er, hopes “their name will touch Gabe’s a*sshole”), there’s some similar meme nonsense abounding:

“They might use it as firewood tho,” writes one commenter, to which another replies: “I want Gabe to throw my name into his fireplace as he lies down naked on a bear skin rug in front of it.” Okay.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. In terms of what the campaign accomplished, there was a decently chunky TF2 summer update and, it seems, another era of peace away from the bot menace—and even just a quick temperature check on the subreddit (and from TheWhat themselves) suggests that it’s sticking for now. The TF2 comic is also coming back.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a return to the good old days. TF2 is almost old enough to drink in the UK, and while Valve at least appears to be improving in regards to maintenance, that aforementioned summer update is essentially an official collaboration of community-made stuff tied together by Gabe and friends, as they had to clarify was the new normal last year. Ah, well—if things go wrong again, we’ll always have Madcap.

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