Officially, Team Fortress: Source 2, a fan project aiming to convert Valve’s iconic shooter to the Source 2 engine, is no more. After Valve disabled the group’s GitHub repositories with a DMCA takedown demand, the news was made public. Alongside it is Portal 64, which was likewise shelved less than a week following the publication of its First Slice.
According to the release, the removal was the “nail in the coffin” for the project, which was already in doubt before Valve intervened. Team Fortress: Source 2, a fan project, has been abandoned. Its goal was to port Valve’s well-known multiplayer game to the Source 2 engine. According to the project’s developers on Twitter, the project’s development issues forced it to effectively be put on pause since September 2023. Valve’s DMCA removal resolved this.
“While we were discussing the project’s future internally recently, we 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, and that we overall moved on from it,” the release stated.
Modifications may be the reason for the shutdown
Because of significant modifications to the s&box engine, it appears that the developers of Team Fortress: Source 2 intended to terminate the project even sooner. The creator of Portal 64, a fan-made port of Portal for the Nintendo 64, had before disclosed that the project had been prohibited by Valve. James Lambert claimed that because the project uses exclusive Nintendo libraries, the business got in touch with him and asked that it be discontinued. In related news, the creator of the fan-made game “First Slice” published a demo version toward the end of 2023.
“Unfortunately, it appears that the DMCA removal is the final straw. We are unable to get it back, and after bringing it to Valve’s notice, it appears that they firmly object to our using their intellectual property, which is entirely acceptable and lawful. Sincerely, the entire team at Amper and I would like to express our gratitude for the past three years of support and excitement. It has been an honor to build our project with all of you. We’re overjoyed to have reached this point.
In development from at least 2021, Team Fortress: Source 2 was envisioned as a new version of the iconic game on Garry’s Mod spiritual successor s&box. Team Fortress: Source 2 was designed to breathe new life into Valve’s cherished shooter, Team Fortress 2, which is now 17 years old and mostly controlled by bots. At one time, the project had over twenty volunteers working on rebuilding project Fortress 2 mechanics and porting assets from the source game.
Meanwhile, an update on the project’s Patreon page states that Portal 64 is closing because it “depends on Nintendo’s proprietary libraries.” Portal 64, designed for Nintendo 64 hardware, aimed to bring back Valve’s 2007 hit, much like Team Fortress did. On January 5, the “First Slice” that showed off its development was released, which was praised by the developers.
Although Valve is renowned for not forbidding fan projects for its games, if it had to make that determination in the cases of Team Fortress: Source 2 and Portal 64, it may have discovered some grave infractions.
