Team Fortress 2 is one of the elder statespeople of PC FPS games. Since 2007, it has been the benchmark for fun, quick, varied, and highly memeable online multiplayer, complementing Half-Life and CSGO as one of Valve’s best shooters. But now that’s all been turned upside down. The latest Valve update for Team Fortress 2 suddenly means that, rather than the standard 32, TF2 games will now support up to 100 players. The developer itself says that this is “unsupported and not recommended.” But if you want to experience Team Fortress 2 as a chaotic, crowded, and often comical battle royale game, now’s your chance.
On Tuesday, July 25, Valve’s Team Fortress 2 team posted a new update that will apply to the multiplayer game the next time you start it up. Among fixes for Saxton Hale’s weapons and some persistent crashing issues, the patch notes also explain that Team Fortress 2 servers are now getting bigger – much, much bigger.
“Unrestricted_maxplayers to raise the maxplayer count to 100,” the Team Fortress 2 update notes say, followed by a useful disclaimer that the feature “is unsupported and not recommended.” Nevertheless, Team Fortress 2 players have been trying out the new server size en masse, with often anarchic results. Take a look at the footage below from YouTuber ‘S4 Videos.’
I mean, this is beautiful, in the way that if you drop a full tray of drinks on the floor, all the shrapnel, spray, and carnage can actually look kind of beautiful. With the Counter-Strike 2 release date drawing near, and a variety of recent updates pushing the TF2 player count to record heights (it hit a new, all-time peak two weeks ago), it’s interesting to speculate how Team Fortress 2 might be changing.
Perhaps Valve is just laying the foundations for a new, fully supported battle royale mode. Or maybe this is some kind of field test for – dare we to dream – Team Fortress 3. Either way, it’s a glorious sight, and perfect reason to go back to TF2, a real PC classic.
Speaking of classics, you might want to try some of the best old games on PC, if you’re a fan of all the Valve stalwarts like Half-Life and Counter-Strike 1.6. Alternatively, get ready for the next generation of CS with the Counter-Strike 2 system requirements that we predict Valve will announce.