Valve’s Upgrade Breathes New Life into the Classic Shooter for Enhanced Performance
While Team Fortress 2 has received less attention from Valve than its other team-based shooter Counter-Strike 2, it hasn’t been abandoned as some corners of the Internet claim. The game has been consistently receiving small updates every few months, tweaking maps and characters as Valve sees fit. The latest update is more substantial than usual, however, as it finally brings Valve’s 17-year-old shooter into the 64-bit era.
Valve rolled out the new update to the game yesterday, introducing 64-bit support to TF2 for both Windows and Linux users. The update also addressed a specific issue “related to uploading invalid custom decals that would crash other clients.”
Valve mentioned that the change “should include performance updates for most users,” and this pertains to more than just the transition to 64-bit. As highlighted on the TF2 Wiki (via PCGamesN), the patch also incorporates a few other undocumented changes that may further optimize the game’s performance. The update increases TF2’s maximum FPS from 300 to 400 frames per second, enhancing the game’s fluidity. Additionally, it enables raw mouse input by default.
Additionally, Valve has introduced a “-vulkan” command line option, allowing players to render the game using Vulkan if they prefer. This feature is enabled by default on Linux-based systems, meaning anyone playing TF2 on Steam Deck will immediately reap its benefits.
The transition hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing. Earlier today, Valve rolled out a second, quickfire update to address “an issue where the game would be falsely detected as malware by some anti-viruses”. Oops! However, the update might offer a temporary respite from TF2’s frequently reported bot problem by rendering them incompatible with the game. That said, some users argue that, in the long run, the update may actually facilitate easier bot hosting.
Nonetheless, the update indicates that Valve still has an eye on its vibrant team-based shooter, even if TF2 players understandably feel overshadowed by the attention Counter-Strike has been receiving. Last year, fans even attempted to meme a character into existence through collective gaslighting, reminiscing about a non-existent tenth-character class.