Team Fortress 2 is getting a mega update, but Valve is relying on the community to create for it

If you had “Valve launches big Team Fortress 2 update” on your 2023 gaming bingo card, you should automatically win a prize. On top of the usual, smaller summer updates the now 16-year-old game tends to receive, Valve is pushing a “full-on update-sized update” live too. 

In a post to the TF2 website, which appropriately still feels like a page launched in 2007 alongside the game, the game’s development team confirmed that item updates won’t be the focus of this new content. Instead, the game will receive new items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, and war paints added officially into the game—though there is an asterisk hanging off the side. 

While this sounds like Valve will be putting in the work to create new content and provide the still thriving TF2 community, which has averaged over 90,000 players each month since June 2022 according to Steam Charts, that isn’t entirely the case. 

Yes, the TF2 team will be developing some of the content for this summer update, but the blog post is essentially acting as a call to arms for the Steam Workshop community for the game. Valve is letting, and relying on, the community to create the content for this update, which is “not Summer-themed” according to the devs. 

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“The last few Team Fortress summer events have only been item updates. But this year, we’re planning on shipping a full-on update-sized update—with items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, war paints, and who knows what else?! Which means we need Steam Workshop content! YOUR Steam Workshop content!” the TF2 team said. 

This is something Valve does with a lot of its properties and projects, with Dota 2 also frequently bringing fan-created item sets and cosmetics into the game for special collections. 

The “as-yet-unnamed, un-themed, but still very exciting summer-situated (but not summer-themed)” update will be accepting submissions until May 1 through TF2’s Steam Workshop, which is still incredibly active. Actual details about this update will be shared closer to that submission deadline and once the content being bundled in is selected.