Team Fortress 2 Development “On Hold” as Valve Focuses on “More Important Things”

A while back, Valve co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell shared with the world that Valve was going back to its developer roots in order to create new games for Steam users. Since then, they’ve released the card game Artifact, which in the years since its release has proved to be a flop, and they’ve been working on the upcoming VR title Half-Life Alyx.

The company is reportedly working on more projects at once as, according to a new rumor, it has put development of Team Fortress 2 content on hold in order to focus on “more important things.”

One might argue Team Fortress 2 is a really old game, sure, but it’s also one of the most played on Steam, and one that has proved to be gold mine for Valve over the years. But Greg Coomer, a veteran developer at Valve, has told YouTube channel Valve News Network that “there are very few people working on Team Fortress. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s hardly anyone anymore.

“I think that’s kind of obvious, because we don’t have big updates for that game really anymore,” he said. “We’re just kind of keeping it going and we’re just going to try and not shut it down or anything.”

“Valve doesn’t know right now what they will release in the next content update,” another anonymous dev told the YouTube channel, who recently shared the news of Half-Life Alyx way before it got announced, as the software house has “more important things” to care about right now (via Kotaku UK).

The sources claim that you should not expect an announcement of the development being put on hold or terminated, as they might change idea in the future about that, perhaps depending on how many resources they manage to free up to keep running the title or simply on how much money it proves it can generate going forward.

More than simply looking at Team Fortress 2 being put on hold, however, we can’t help but wonder about what Valve could be doing instead of working on more content for it. The report says they have “more important things” to do, so might it be that the developer truly has more games in its pipeline?