> TC2 is based on the 2017 TF2 source code leak ...

Has Valve ever made a statement on this? Sounds like a terrible idea to me / this could be taken down on a whim by Valve.

On the CSGO[0] and TF2[1] twitter accounts they made statements.

[0]: https://twitter.com/CSGO/status/1253075594901774336 [1]: https://twitter.com/TeamFortress/status/1253186403900420098

Judging by their people page, there is only 1 corporate council. So that person would have to first notice and also care to put up a fight.

They don't like the leaks but are quite tolerant of them. The exception seems to be the HL2 Beta leak from decades ago.

Team Comtress 2 is a fork of an older version of Team Fortress 2, with a community development team fixing bugs, improving performance, and adding quality of life features, with the goal of having those changes pulled upstream by Valve to the modern game.

Is there a precedent of something like this ever happening? Seems like an enormous leap, but who doesn't love an underdog? :)

Seeing as how they are basing their work on a leaked (stolen) version of the TF2 source code from Valve, I don't see this project even existing for very long, much less contributing anything back to Valve.

There actually is https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-21-the-boy-who-st... Dude got 2 years probation, Nowadays he steals source code for the Chinese I guess (tencent).

This project seems pretty promising. How many players are online?

I’d love to see a TF3 some day, although I don’t know video games economics well enough to understand if it would make financial sense for Valve.

Funny side story - just before COVID, my spouse and I had a dinner reservation at the Fogo De Ciao here in Bellevue, WA. We came out of the restaurant after dinner to go up stairs and walk to the Cinemark to catch a movie. Behold - Gabe Newell was coming down the the escalator as we were going up. He seemed like a pretty down to Earth, chill guy. Afterwards I figured out that Valve has offices in one of the upper floors in the same building as the restaurant (Lincoln Square).

That is pretty interesting. I used to love developing with the Source Engine, and I found their code base to be stable and easy to read. I hope TC2 gets the long term support and care that it needs to grow a healthy community.

I worked on extending the Source Engine with C#, some 7 years ago, and I feel like I got pretty far, but nothing really usable: https://github.com/SharpMod/SharpMod

But I have not kept up with the changes of what exactly Source 2 is, how backward compatible it is, and how it compares with Unreal/Unity.