After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News's annual vaporware list.

Finally released on the Source game engine in 2007, Team Fortress 2 preserved much of the core class-based gameplay of its predecessors while featuring an overhauled, cartoon-like visual style influenced by the works of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, alongside an increased focus on the visual and verbal characterization of its playable classes and what the developers have described as a 1960s spy film aesthetic.

[8][9][10] The game continues to receive official Valve server support as of 2024,[11] in addition to new content being released on a seasonal basis in the form of submissions made through the Steam Workshop.

[22] Team Fortress 2 is the first of Valve's multiplayer games to provide detailed statistics for individual players, such as the total amount of time spent playing as each class, most points obtained, and most objectives completed in a single life.

[47][48][49] In April 2015, Valve announced that a dedicated competitive mode would be added to Team Fortress 2, utilizing skill-based matchmaking;[50] closed beta testing began in the following year.

Although Team Fortress 2 is designed as an open-ended multiplayer experience without an active storyline, the game and additional material feature a wider narrative centered around Mann Co.

The main PvP gamemodes are set during the "Gravel Wars", a conflict between the rival heirs Redmond and Blutarch Mann for which the nine playable characters were hired as mercenaries.

[90] Valve abandoned the realistic style when it became impossible to reconcile it with the unrealistic gameplay, with opposing armies having constructed elaborate bases directly adjacent to each other.

The bases hide exaggerated super weapons such as laser cannons, nuclear warheads, and missile launch facilities, taking the role of objectives.

[91] During the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference, Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 would ship as the multiplayer component of The Orange Box.

Valve offered The Orange Box at a ten percent discount for those who pre-purchased it via Steam before the October 10 release, as well as the opportunity to participate in the beta test.

[103] Themed patches have also been released, such as a yearly Halloween-themed event called "Scream Fortress", where players may obtain unique items available only during a set period around the holiday.

[108] Valve has released tools to allow users to create maps, weapons, and cosmetic items through a contribution site; many of the most popular are added to the game.

[100] The release was teased by way of an image similar to early iPod advertising, showing a dark silhouette of the Heavy on a bright green background, his "Sandvich" highlighted in his hand.

[133] Valve confirmed the legitimacy of the code leaks, but stated they do not believe it affects servers and clients running the latest official builds of either game.

[137][138] The announcement was met with an overwhelmingly positive reception, causing Valve to temper expectations by amending the blog post to read "holiday-sized update".

[141][142][143] On April 18, 2024, after testing on Windows and Linux,[144] Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2, adding 64-bit support to the game,[145][146] increasing the frame rate by an average of 22 percent,[147] although it was falsely detected as malware by some anti-virus software.

The lack of ongoing macOS support is largely attributable to Apple's use of its proprietary Metal graphics drivers, which are not officially compatible with the widely available Vulkan API that Team Fortress 2 can now run on.

Bots slowly began to resurface thereafter, and in January 2024, the '#savetf2' hashtag re-emerged on social media as the issue neared the severity it was a couple years prior, as well as to highlight a lack of promised fixes to other parts of the game.

[175][176] The day after, the game received waves of negative reviews on the Steam store page as part of a campaign by users for Valve to take action against the bots.

Constructed using Source Filmmaker and using more detailed character models, the series consists of short videos introducing each class (as they appear on RED) and displaying their personalities and abilities.

[190][191] Gabe Newell has stated that Valve used the "Meet the Team" series as a means of exploring the possibilities of making feature film movies themselves.

[194] In more recent major updates to the game, Valve has presented teaser images and online comic books that expand the fictional continuity and characters of Team Fortress 2, as part of the expansion of the "cross-media property", according to Newell.

[195] "Loose Canon", a comic associated with the Engineer Update, establishes the history of RED versus BLU as a result of the last will and testament of Zepheniah Mann in 1890, forcing his two bickering sons Blutarch and Redmond to vie for control of Zepheniah's lands between them; both have engineered ways of maintaining their mortality to the present, waiting to outlast the other while employing separate forces to try to wrest control of the land.

Hats and weapons can be gained as a random drop, through the crafting/trading systems, or via cross-promotion: Limited-edition hats and weapons have been awarded for pre-ordering or gaining Achievements in other content from Steam, both from Valve (such as Left 4 Dead 2[204][205] and Alien Swarm[206]) or other third-party games such as Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse,[207] Worms Reloaded,[208] Killing Floor,[209] or Poker Night at the Inventory (which features the Heavy class as a character).

[225] The economy of Team Fortress 2 has received significant attention from economists, journalists, and users due to its relative sophistication and the value of many of its in-game items.

[234] Many reviewers praised the cartoon-styled graphics, and the resulting light-hearted gameplay,[6] and the use of distinct personalities and appearances for the classes impressed a number of critics, with PC Gamer UK stating that "until now multiplayer games just haven't had it".

The Saxxy Awards featured many Team Fortress-related works, and the community has also received attention for internet phenomena like the "Gmod-infused pisstake" Heavy is Dead.

[252] Praise has been directed towards The Winglet, a Source animator on Youtube responsible for the crossover TF2 vs Overwatch[253] and the action comedy series The Fedora Chronicles, in particular the latter's 20-minute third installment "Live and Let Spy".

[citation needed] In 2020, some content creators in the Team Fortress 2 community began using 15.ai, an artificial intelligence text-to-speech tool that could replicate the voices of the characters.