Team behind project had already put development on hold due to code problems
A fan-made remake ofTeam Fortress 2in the Source 2 engine has been cancelled after the ambitious project, three years in the making, ran into a double-whammy of recent development issues and a legal takedown from Valve.
Specifically, the remake was built ins&box- pronounced “sandbox” - thelong-in-development Source 2-based spiritual successorto immensely popular physics sandbox and piss-about simulatorGarry’s Modfrom developers Facepunch.
Using s&box as a foundation ran Team Fortress: Source 2 makers Amper Software - made up of fan devs - into trouble last September, asplanned major changes to the underlying engineforced the project to be paused while s&box was “retooled” to separate its engine and client/server system and allow creations to run “out of game”. The upshot was that the majority of existing creations built in the older s&box - including Team Fortress: Source 2 - would no longer work.
“This doesn’t mean the project is over, we are simply putting it on hold,” Amperwroteat the time. “The team decided we will be holding off our efforts until s&box’s future gets clearer and more stable.”
Hello everyone. We have some unfortunate news to share with you.Today, we received a DMCA takedown from Valve on all our public GitHub repositories and all its forks made by the community.https://t.co/BQvtPwjPtn
While the engine hurdles didn’t bring an immediate end to the project alone, Amper announced this week that original Team Fortress 2 developers Valve hadissued a DMCA takedown requestto the GitHub page for Team Fortress: Source 2, flagging the use of TF2 assets “without permission” as a violation of their IP rights.
Amper admitted that they had “already came to the conclusion to stop the development of the project due to the current state of the code being unusable anymore with s&box’s recent major engine changes”, adding that Valve’s takedown notice was simply “the nail in the coffin” for the project.
While Valve have allowed some use of their IP in fan-made mods and spin-offs such asHalf-Life remake Black Mesaandrecent Portal 2 prequel Revolution, Amper accepted that the refusal in the case of Team Fortress: Source 2 - which effectively offered the whole of Team Fortress 2 for free, mind - was “totally fair and legal”.
“It’s been an honour to grow this project with all of you and the incredible team behind, we cannot be thankful enough for all your support and enthusiasms over the last 3 years,” the team wrote. “We’re so happy we got this far.”
