Every game has a “expiration date” of sorts where they either are replaced by updated versions of the original game, by similar games from another company, or has its fans move on to something else. This expiration occurs between the one to four year mark, and is proven by games such as “Battlefield” or “Call of Duty.” However this is not the case for Valves nine year old game called, “Team Fortress 2.”

“Team Fortress 2” or “TF2” for short, is an online class based game that averages 80,000 players every day and is usually the third most played game on PC. TF2 spikes in players two times a year, during summertime and winter due to the updates that usually come out around that time. However the size of this player spike has slowly been decreasing in size. The most interesting part is that the amount of people playing this game is directly correlated by the quality of the updates. It has been rumored that over 9 years the Team Fortress Team shrunk to only 8 members. There are many reasons for this decrease in size, such as working on more profitable and younger games such as Counter Strike:Global Offensive and DotA 2, but the biggest question is would you rather be a pioneer for the future by creating virtual reality or work on a nine year old game?

With the lack of staff has delivered questionable update after one another has caused the community to ask the dire question of does the TF Team care about the game anymore or are they just in it for the money? This is not the first time this question has been asked about a Valve game. When “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” first came out in 2012, it had such a bad start that the only reason people bought the game was for the promotional items that came with it. This all changed when Valve not only allocated more staff to the Counter Strike team but also hired a third party company to help with the game. Valve has also hired a third party to help in the past with DotA 2 and the mysterious creator(s) of the original DotA called IceFrog.

I personally think the TF Team does care about the game but they are so severely understaffed that they can barely have the game run properly.  As a longstanding member in the community and fan of the game, I believe that Valve needs to allocate more members to the Team Fortress Team or hand the game over to the community. No matter what option is taken one thing needs to happen to ensure that TF2’s expiration is as far away as possible. The end of the year update for 2016 needs to be absolutely amazing.