Why it matters: Team Fortress 2 launched 17 years ago but still receives significant updates, and its player base is as healthy as ever. The latest patch fully unlocks the game’s SDK, releasing virtually all modding restrictions. Several other mature Source Engine multiplayer games have also received their first significant updates in years, adding 64-bit support and other important features.
Valve recently published the Source SDK’s first significant update in a decade, adding all of Team Fortress 2’s client and server code. Although fan-made items and maps have long been available for the 17-year-old class-based shooter, the latest update allows dedicated modders to modify its code and create completely new games.
Similar to Half-Life 2 mods such as Minerva or the highly regarded VR mod, Team Fortress 2 total conversions would be freely downloadable from separate Steam pages. However, since the game has an established economy of monetized items from modders, some restrictions apply to how SDK projects can impact players’ inventories.
Many players have spent thousands of dollars on their loadouts, like Vytal, who recently set a new record by trading a hat for around $40,000. The new SDK rules aim to preserve those investments. Modders can control which items players can equip and what they do within a mod, but they can’t affect a user’s inventory in the standard version of Team Fortress 2.
Valve’s SDK update will likely boost activity for what remains one of Steam’s most popular games. A massive content update in 2023 pushed the concurrent player count to an all-time high of over 253,000. Since then, additional patches have added 64-bit support, increased the default frame rate to 400fps, and fixed dozens of bugs.
The new SDK update brings similar changes to Valve’s other aging multiplayer games, such as Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life: Deathmatch, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. All four titles just received their first major patches since 2021, adding support for 64-bit executables, borderless windows, Steam Networking, high-resolution user interface scaling, technical updates from Half-Life 2’s 20th-anniversary update, and client-side prediction fixes. Half-Life 2: Deathmatch also received numerous bug fixes.
Valve updated the SDK frequently throughout the 2010s, but the GitHub page’s commit history shows a 10-year gap since the last addition. It remains unclear whether the company plans to release more patches soon.