It seems as if Valve's wacky shooter that I poured hours of enjoyment into during my teens has been reportedly put on hold. The news comes from YouTube channel Valve News Network in which Tyler McVicker shares an interview with Valve developers which goes into detail about the current state of Team Fortress 2.

Greg Coomer, a developer at Valve mentions that the team working on Team Fortress 2 is now very small, "I don't know the exact number, but it's hardly anyone anymore." He goes on to say that the game doesn't get any big updates anymore and that the team are just now trying to keep the game alive and stop it from being shut down.

An unnamed employee at the company mentioned that they don't know what they'll release in an upcoming content update but also states that "Valve won't ever announce that Team Fortress 2's development is over". They also state that the team is working on "more important things" and that fans will have to wait for the next content update but that Valve won't tell fans that nothing is coming.

In the above video, it's also stated that employees with Half-Life experience are being shifted over to help out with the freshly announced Half-Life: Alyx which we should be seeing an announcement at some point today. Due to this shifting around, Team Fortress 2 has been put on hold. McVicker also suggests that once Half-Life: Alyx launches, employees will be free to move back to other projects, but that the production is likely to spin off into brand-new games.

Kotaku mentions that this report comes after fans noticed that both Team Fortress 2 and the Left 4 Dead series were absent from Valve's new Twitter account. According to Steam's game and player statistics, the concurrent count sits at 38,280 players active in Team Fortress 2 today with 52,127 being the peak at the time of writing. However, community site Teamwork.TF shows a significantly lower number with 5,479 active players at the time of writing.

I've been planning to clear my backlog of games and work over the past few months and have been wanting to jump back into the game. So I hope the title continues to remain in development so I can at least revive and hone my Spy skills.