Valve is quiet with its copyright strikes. The company rarely reacts and speaks out about anything, especially regarding Team Fortress 2, but sometimes Valve acts drastically out of nowhere. The same is true with a TF2 port for Source 2, on which Valve reportedly issued a DMCA claim on Jan. 10.
Team Fortress: Source 2 was a fan-made project built on the s&box game. The latter is the spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod, a sandbox title that allowed players to tinker with the Source engine in a free-of-trouble environment. GMod, as it is popularly known, has spawned myriad different spin-offs to Valve’s titles and game modes. Naturally, fans wanted to see where they could take the Source 2 counterpart to GMod, but their efforts were cut short by a very direct and effective Valve DMCA claim.
In a Jan. 10 tweet, the team behind Team Fortress: Source 2 issued a few statements regarding the DMCA that Valve sent them. The team had already decided to end development due to mounting complications and the complex nature of the Source 2 code. Now, the team says Valve’s DMCA claim is “the nail in the coffin” and that the project won’t be revived. They’ve thanked their supporters for staying with them for over three years, but the story didn’t end there. Some users pointed out that this could be a false DMCA claim, and the team decided to check with Valve if the claim was legitimate.
Unfortunately, it was, as the team confirmed on Jan. 11 on X (formerly Twitter). Valve has previously conflicted with creators of mods and remakes that dealt with their biggest IPs, but has allowed and cooperated with fan-made games and spin-offs as well. Valve doesn’t seem definitive in its stances on what could and could not pass, but these are, nonetheless, their IPs, and the decision ultimately lies with them.
In the meantime, Team Fortress 2 is having a rough time as its item servers went completely offline for over three days (likely due to a surge in players), preventing players from accessing their cosmetics and items. This caused outrage among fans of the game, particularly those who saw what happened with the Source 2 remake of the game. After Valve took half a week to reinstate item servers, one player said that it’s a shame Valve ignores GitHub cheats for TF2 while attacking a fan-made mod on the same website. In case you’ve missed it, Team Fortress 2 faces mounting issues with cheaters and bots, most of which have pages hosted on GitHub, just like the TF Source 2 mod did.
Whenever Valve acts decisively in taking down a mod related to their flagship, it means a sequel or significant update is around the corner, so let’s hope those three years of fan development didn’t entirely go to waste.
