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Valve adds "all the Team Fortress 2 client and server game code" to its Source mod tools, letting modders "build completely new games based on TF2" and publish them on Steam (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 167 points 5 months ago

A few takeaways from the move:

  • Any modifications must be released as mods
  • Players downloading the mods must own the base game
  • The mods must be free and no aspect of the mod can be monetized.
  • The mods can now access TF2 steam inventory for cosmetics and weapons (but cannot modify the inventory)
[-] [email protected] 132 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ugh, greedy Valve making you spend $0 to buy the base game

[Edit] ok I read the article after making that joke and I see that it applies to several other valve games, not all of which are free to play

[-] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago

Lol. It's so greedy of them!

Jokes aside. It's an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn't mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

You can't do whatever you want with open source either. One big stipulation of copyleft licenses is the share-alike clause, which means you can't make modifications and then decide your program is now closed-source, so it protects the code from being enclosed again.

I mean yes you can make whatever modifications you want, generally, but it's not totally unrestricted.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, as a resident Valve hater I agree it’s a weird thing to get angry over.

If there was anything to get angry over is that I bought this game in a box (stand alone because I was too broke for Orange Box!) with an understanding that it’s an online multiplayer shooter. Meaning, there are servers you join manually from a list, shoot at other guys for a bit and return to that server or not based on how good time it was. This functionality has been ripped out of the game and replaced with some weird algorithm. Before that Valve broke their own design promises of clear silhouettes which made the game less accessible. The game has been dead, riddled with bots farming in-game items that can be traded for real money that Valve added to the game because they could. If it was any other game I wouldn’t care but TF2 started out as an amazing game that was mangled beyond recognition by Valve greed.

They should have released TF2 source code this way 10 years ago. They’re probably doing this now because income from TF2 related items on Marketplace is laughably small compared to their other titles.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This functionality has been ripped out of the game

Nope, see the server browser ingame

The game has been dead, riddled with bots

Not anymore!

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Not anymore!

Oh I gotta fire up TF2! These sorts of shenanigans are the main reason I drifted away years ago.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yeah it was rough for a year or two there... but Valve did a massive banwave and now I've only seen a group of bots join my server twice in the last year, and we could kick them easily

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Most players are using casual mode which is terrible. The community servers in TF2 are a pale shadow of what they once were.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Casual's fine

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah you'd think that if you never played before it ruined the entire game.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've played TF2 for years-- only, after Meet Your Match. (Wow this game is old...)

[-] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

The server list is still there fwiw. But yeah the matchmaking update was awful.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I'm a Valve stan but it's disgusting how they've abused and neglected TF2. It would unironically be significantly better if they just rolled back every change since 2016.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Isn't this how they all are? L4d and l4d2 are the same unless you're hosting a server with .smx plugins.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Sort of, but those let you use the pre-existing codebase for each game as is. This lets you play with the inner workings. You could do something drastic like implant rollback netcode, add new classes, wild shit.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Gotcha

this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
793 points (100.0% liked)

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