Team Fortress 2 Community - A free-to-play dressup game for grownups, home of troons, pedophiles, furries and bronies. "The game is dead!" for the 4th year in a row.

[Y2K Baby]

I'll start with something hot that probably went under the radar quite a bit.

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Meet [VALVE] Twilight Sparkle. He is a German pedophile, horsefucker, attention whoring faggot, cheater, DDOS'er and bot hoster. A well known black sheep in the TF2 community. He is overly attached to a cartoon horse named Twilight Sparkle, going as far as to (allegedly) change his legal name to Sparkle and tattooing the horse's mark on his body. He has promoted TF2 cheating software such as LMAOBOX and Nullcore for free on his YouTube channel for years. He is known to have no cheat programming experience himself and has not made a single penny off his channel.

Image through Sparkle's webcam in a Discord call
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An image of Sparkle's living room
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Spoiler: Overattachment

Sparkle comes out
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Sparkle leaves an image of Twilight Sparkle rule 34 among childrens' magazines
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At the end of 2020 he made a video claiming that he is being sued by Valve and therefore going to jail. Turns out he was found out and confirmed to be ERP'ing with a 14 year old when he made the video. He suicidebaited with a gun and a cyanide pill when the 14 year old tried to get out of the relationship. Valve had not taken any legal action at all.

Spoiler: Chat logs (potentially NSFW)

(These chat logs are not necessarily in chronological order)
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The controversy was reported on YouTube by a small-time TF2ber called WAMO. Later on, Sparkle was contacted by a popular griefing YouTuber MaximilianMus to set up a fake scheme against WAMO (which was planned by Max and WAMO) and incriminated himself even more, going as far as to post a fake dox on his YouTube community tab. He attempted to take down the video published by WAMO on the whole scheme because it showed Sparkle's face. WAMO reuploaded it censored as a result.

But it'll be archived here now uncensored.

THIS VIDEO WAS FORCEFULLY TAKEN DOWN BY A TF2 HACKER (censored)
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What a chad.

 

[Large]

The thing that's always stuck out to me the most about the TF2 community is how much they hate it when established TF2 content creators branch out and try doing other things. Creators who want to do something other than TF2 are labelled as sellouts or backstabbers even if they're not actually jumping to the newest trend. Every popular TF2 creator regrets making the game their main focus at some point, because breaking off requires dealing with nonstop harassment from the community. It's a level of entitlement that I don't think I've ever seen in other communities.

The best example of this is STAR_, a veteran TF2 creator who tried doing other things after deciding that TF2 no longer allowed him to produce content that was good enough for his standards. He received so much hate for this shift that he vanished for ages, only uploading one video in four years. It wasn't that he had run out of ideas, it was that he couldn't bring himself to make any videos when he knew that he would just get more angry comments from people who wanted him to go back to making TF2 content. He recently came back and made a video explaining why he stopped uploading for so long, and it's pretty upsetting.

This always happen with massive changes to the type of content on a YT channel. It's very visible here because TF2 youtubers are particularly prone to burnout and their fans are particularly prone to autism.

 

[Mister Loser]

Okay, actually, I'm stupid— I somehow completely missed that Tyler has his own thread here. Definitely worth looking there for a glimpse at the drama and infighting due to Creators.TF.

 

[Cheese-Loving Citizen]

A little tidbit of TF2 happenings that I'd like to throw in was sketchek. For those who don't know, sketchek was a prolific pyro main who uploaded videos of him doing pyro kills in stylish ways. High altitude kills, detonator jumps and the like. He also popularized the Degreaser + Axtinguisher combo.

Some years back, he stopped uploading videos and announced that he was stopping due a fatal illness of sorts. People understood and wished him luck. Years go by, and a lot of people finally concluded from the lack of uploads that he succumbed to the illness.

Well, turns out he didn't. He basically faked the whole thing as a massive commitment to stay away from making videos due to guilt. This incident caused some noise. A few articles were made on the incident, and a few people were also understandibly upset that he faked his own death. Eventually, the whole thing died down, and he's still making videos to this day.

And hey, he also helped buff the Axtinguisher.

Edit: spell

 

[Summoner]

The Sketchek situation happened a long time ago. Here's also something that happened the same year, 2019.

Mechawreck was an Engineer main YouTuber who got banished hard. When he was 19-20 years old, he sexted with many minors ranging from 12-17. He disclosed many times he has a masturbation problem and wanted the minors to moan on the mic in voice chat.

The Dark Side of Mechawreck

He confirms to have been masturbating on camera with a minor called "Wizard" in this phone call:

Spoiler: Chat logs

 

[catpin]

God, I had some good memories with tf2.
In middle school an old friend of mine started contacting me again and told me this neat trick on how to get free shit in tf2.

1. Go look what is the most popular game nowadays
2. Go on any tf2 or steam inventory trade site
3. Look for people willing to trade [Game] for their steam inventory
4. Look for the most retarded pfp and steam name (Bonus points if their obviously foreign.)
5. Contact them on steam saying you want to trade the game but its a CD key so they have to go first.
6. If they agree your set, if they disagree then try to convince them by asking half of their inventory first and the other half once they redeemed the game.
(Optional step: Fuck with them for a bit)
7. Block them and claim your loot.
8. Repeat

I had several nice hats like that bison hat and the ninja scout hat that way.
my friend however did it bigger and scammed like 150 dollars out of people wanting australiums.

Moral of the story is: if your a retard, do not trade on tf2.

 

[serious n00b]

God, I had some good memories with tf2.
In middle school an old friend of mine started contacting me again and told me this neat trick on how to get free shit in tf2.

1. Go look what is the most popular game nowadays
2. Go on any tf2 or steam inventory trade site
3. Look for people willing to trade [Game] for their steam inventory
4. Look for the most retarded pfp and steam name (Bonus points if their obviously foreign.)
5. Contact them on steam saying you want to trade the game but its a CD key so they have to go first.
6. If they agree your set, if they disagree then try to convince them by asking half of their inventory first and the other half once they redeemed the game.
(Optional step: Fuck with them for a bit)
7. Block them and claim your loot.
8. Repeat

I had several nice hats like that bison hat and the ninja scout hat that way.
my friend however did it bigger and scammed like 150 dollars out of people wanting australiums.

Moral of the story is: if your a retard, do not trade on tf2.

I'm stealing this.

 

[Large]

I'm stealing this.

This gets you tradebanned now.

 

[serious n00b]

This gets you tradebanned now.

Flippin' 'eck.

 

[Furret]

God, I had some good memories with tf2.
In middle school an old friend of mine started contacting me again and told me this neat trick on how to get free shit in tf2.

1. Go look what is the most popular game nowadays
2. Go on any tf2 or steam inventory trade site
3. Look for people willing to trade [Game] for their steam inventory
4. Look for the most retarded pfp and steam name (Bonus points if their obviously foreign.)
5. Contact them on steam saying you want to trade the game but its a CD key so they have to go first.
6. If they agree your set, if they disagree then try to convince them by asking half of their inventory first and the other half once they redeemed the game.
(Optional step: Fuck with them for a bit)
7. Block them and claim your loot.
8. Repeat

I had several nice hats like that bison hat and the ninja scout hat that way.
my friend however did it bigger and scammed like 150 dollars out of people wanting australiums.

Moral of the story is: if your a retard, do not trade on tf2.

At first I wondered how anyone could possibly fall for this, but then I remembered that this is the TF2 community we're talking about here.

 

[catpin]

This gets you tradebanned now.

I got multiple tradebans.
They go away after a couple months.
if you just say you got betrayed by your friends because they mass reported you they will still buy it.

 

[Lou Tenant]

This gets you tradebanned now.

1. Get someone's items.
2. Trade it to an alt account not associated with you in any way.
3. Either sell it from there on or trade it to yourself for some of your items so it looks like a legit trade.

There, you can't get banned that way because they will assume you did a legitimate trade and didn't know beforehand. (If you want to go extra safe route, fake a chat, decline few offers first to make it look 100% legit.)

Back in the day when steam offers were new and didn't have any warnings every time you clicked something I used to write stuff in the infobox that basically said "By accepting this transaction you will recieve $5 Steam Wallet Funds". Can't belive someone fell for it. Scummy? Yeah but in retrospective most of traders are scum too and won't ever do fair trades when it comes to their precious unusual items.

 

[Elaine Benes]

I was a mod on the 4chan Partyvan server for 5 years, but luckily managed to avoid a lot of the degeneracy.

 

[artilleryfroth]

There are TF2 things, basically decorative only, for sale right now in the steam community market for $2-3k. I can’t fathom the obsession it would take to spend that kind of money on a single item in a game that looks to be slowly dying anyway.

 

[Kanuckski]

There are TF2 things, basically decorative only, for sale right now in the steam community market for $2-3k. I can’t fathom the obsession it would take to spend that kind of money on a single item in a game that looks to be slowly dying anyway.

Obviously there's Covid and the Winter event map update to blame. But TF2 has never been more popular. It's both ingrained as a a nostalgia game for millenials and older zoomers. In addition to long being a top title and go-to F2P shooter game for newbies on the only relevant PC game distribution platform. Those games just don't die. Hell, even the likes of fucking Gmod has remained very stable. But yeah, TF2 is one of those games with absurd prices for rare items. I think the Burning Team Captain some are hats are still several thousand dollars. https://steamcharts.com/app/440

 

[José Mourinho]

Ironically, the game is more popular considering the increasing playerbase and it reached its highest peak playercount and they are on the Halloween 2020 update and the Christmas 2020 update. Of course, this inevitably led to jokes about Heavy being in Smash and this past year has been full of it.

Still, when you think about it, TF2 was one of the first few games that implemented the lootbox mechanic which spirals into this gambling effect. Sure, you can argue that they are just cosmetics and don't influence the game much or how you don't need them to progress or how there's earlier games that did it, but it doesn't change how when you look at it today, the idea of unboxing a crate has like 1% chance of an unusual (to the point even people ironically advise you not to unbox it) and the game has become more of a game about cosmetics and trading rather than actual gameplay speaks for itself.

 

[Summoner]

I might not have addressed this in a manner where the thread's purpose is clear, but that's entirely my fault. I might have to edit the OP to address this as well, but I'll already try to upgrade the OP over time with interesting media and all that.

While I cannot tell off the topic at hand, I have to remind that this is intended to be a community watch thread. I'm going to try and document on the happenings and antics of the community within, say, CC's, general people of interest or just public discussion. There's also some deviantART tier autist shit as well floating around the web. If anyone has a say on those fields, I encourage you to participate as well.

I can refer people to the TF2 thread in the Games section if you just want to talk about funny memories about the game, which has been active in the recent weeks already so it's not even a necro to touch that thread. Talk about the state of the game from a community POV is fine.

All in all, I'm happy about the healthy conversation about the game, I'm just hoping to point the thread to a certain direction. Hope this doesn't come off as too spergy of me or scare people off to point this out.

 

[Furret]

There are TF2 things, basically decorative only, for sale right now in the steam community market for $2-3k. I can’t fathom the obsession it would take to spend that kind of money on a single item in a game that looks to be slowly dying anyway.

Most of the buyers are probably people who have made all the money they need to buy things like that from trading. TF2 is an interesting case when it comes to people dropping fat stacks on video games because you can theoretically earn all the profit you need to buy ludicrously expensive items from a paltry investment if you're a smart trader. I imagine this attracts a lot of stupid people who view themselves as the wolves of trade.tf, but I haven't seen any of those types personally because I don't pay attention to the trading community.

 

[Kanuckski]

Most of the buyers are probably people who have made all the money they need to buy things like that from trading. TF2 is an interesting case when it comes to people dropping fat stacks on video games because you can theoretically earn all the profit you need to buy ludicrously expensive items from a paltry investment if you're a smart trader. I imagine this attracts a lot of stupid people who view themselves as the wolves of trade.tf, but I haven't seen any of those types personally because I don't pay attention to the trading community.

One of my friends was a pretty smart and dedicated trader. He still trades sometimes nowadays. But, he laments the death of the trading scene to increasing automation and the market manipulation of keys. The price of keys went from 2 refined metal and a reclaimed metal to upwards of 50+ refined metal made it impossible to enter the scene without a cash investment. Unusual trading has always been a pretentious joke. The days of 1 weapon to an unusual are largely over unless you want to spend an autistic amount of time. For people out of the know about TF2 trading's origins and defato currencies. Mann.co Store Keys are used to open crates, there are various series of crates which contain strange weapons, which count kills earned or other shit if the weapon doesn't kill. They can have strange parts applied to certain ones to count other misc kills or features of the weapon. Long distance kills, headshot kills, airblast deflection kills, etc. But crates can also contain hats and unusual variants. Unusuals have a special cosmetic effect such as adding burning flames to your hat, an orbit of nuts and bolts, or even just stinky flies.

So it was Keys that were selected as an additional currency because of their purpose and because you could only trade a handful of items at a time in a trade window initially. people weren't down to open like 4+ trades with people promising they'd totally be selling you that item if you paid up now and such. Metals are made by smelting weapons you find down. Scrap Metal is 2 weapons belonging to the same class. Reclaimed Metal is 3 Scrap Metal, so you need 6 weapon drops to make one reclaimed and 18 to make three. Refined Metal requires three Reclaimed Metal. Which means you need 18 weapon drops and you get one every 30-70 minutes and are eligible for drops 10 hours a week, with your timer resetting Thursday. So lets say you get 9-11 drops a week on average. It's still pretty variable because of the initial 2 weapons belonging to the same character class. But then you can trade weapons for 1 scrap too, what a deal! Going to need to find the right buyers but with websites that wasn't a problem. So within the first 20 hours of gameplay (if you bought an item from the store since you need to upgrade your account to Premium status to trade) you could get yourself a key and start your journey of trading up.

What was even better is that a lot of shit actually cost less than a key, so you could amass the cosmetics and weapons you personally wanted very very fast if you were a little smart. The market manipulation that devalued metal by constantly upping the price of keys absolutely shit on fine balance that. So now a cash entry is absolutely required. Which is actually very convenient because a lot of cosmetics didn't scale at the insane rate of keys going to 50 metal. Which means a tiny investment of 2 dollars can net you most cosmetics and weapons you want. I very rarely see people talk about this. But it did come at the cost of killing the spirit and joy of trading and its community. Trade Offers also put it into the ground since nobody talked to each other, they just say "Look at my trade offer and put in this price or get lost."

As for who was was manipulating the market, it was Trade.TF. Before them it was spreadsheet.TF run by one guy who just set the prices for whatever he wanted, people felt this was retarded. So they moved onto Trade.TF which promised a democratic and fact-backed voting system. Except high level people colluded to rapidly increase the price of whatever items they wanted and lower the prices of high value items they wanted to buy to line their inventories. These people happened to be furries and bronies. TF2 being around for the Brony fandom superpower explosion and the amounts of them involved in this shit is where the both the joke and legitimate sentiment that "Bronies ruined TF2" came from. This was my little song and dance summary I pulled out of my ass though, so I glossed over a shit ton of stuff and might have gotten some things wrong.

Virtual economies like TF2 and WoW's are absolutely fascinating in how autistic they are, they've been used for legitimate studies and even have mainstream infotainment made about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6Qn56QWI

 

[LargeChoonger]

Unusuals look kind of gross to me. Never understood their appeal, let alone how they're worth more than 3 real-world dollars