The story of Valve over the last several years has not been what you would expect. Instead of focusing on games, which was how they made their name in many cases, they have been focusing on Steam. They also made the Steam Deck, which has been wildly popular since its arrival. While that may have been the best “business move” for them, it’s not exactly what fans have asked for. Valve has become infamous for not continuing franchises that fans want to enjoy. As such, the fans have had to do their own thing, including adding more content for titles like Team Fortress 2 on their own time.
But then, out of nowhere, the official website for Team Fortress 2 got a blog post. The cheekily written post noted how the Summer updates for the game have been minimal for the last couple of years. They admit they had only done “item updates,” which wasn’t enough for fans. However, that’s going to change this upcoming Summer:
“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!”
That’s right. Valve is making a full-on update that will feature your content alongside other things they appear to be making. So if you’re interested in that, you’ll want to head to the Steam Workshop and submit whatever items you’ve been making. You have until May 1st, so feel free to take your time to get things where you want them to be.
Not surprisingly, the reaction on places like Reddit and Twitter was stunned. Fans are still determining what to make of this, and that’s fair. Could this be a one-off? Or will this be the beginning of a series of “revolutionary blog posts” from which fans will slowly get new insight and content?
The big question is, “Does this mean Valve is slowly getting back to making games?” It almost seems like a scandalous statement, but why not have hope? When it launched, they released a sort-of game for the Steam Deck to help people get “acquainted” with what the platform could do. So why not wonder if they’ll make more?
Naturally, the big hope from fans is that we’ll finally get Half-Life 3. But that might be too big a dream to reach for right now. So accept the coming update, and we’ll see where things go.
