Valve has announced the release of Counter-Strike 2, and the world is smiling. Well, almost everyone: while many are happy that Steam's most played game in years (opens in new tab) is getting a deserved update, at least one other Valve gaming community feels a bit alienated by the attention being lavished on CS2.

After poking Valve in the eye for several years about the prevalence of bots (opens in new tab) and the general lack of major updates (opens in new tab), the Team Fortress 2 community was a bit surprised by the sudden fanfare of the CS2 announcement. The community reacted as it always does: grim, forlorn resignation. And then there were the memes.

The TF2 community is not really angry about CS2. Even users still expecting news of TF2 mostly agree that "Valve definitely made the right choice (opens in new tab)" in updating Counter-Strike first. Indeed, players seem to have reached a stage of overall acceptance of grief, trying to extract as much comedy as they can from the long, slow journey to the afterlife.

For example, a TF2 player threatens to turn each character in the game into an animal until the game gets a major update (opens in new tab). Or popular posts poking fun at the community's reaction to Valve's decision to update "one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fps games ever" instead of "a nearly 20 year old game filled with cheaters and bots, barely running on sauce spaghetti."

Meanwhile, a sincere, naive, and optimistic post asking if fans think CS2 represents a potential update to TF2 was comprehensively answered by a single comment that received over 3,000 upvotes: "No (open in new tab)."

Such responses are almost everywhere one looks, with the exception of the Steam forums. The TF2 community on Twitter, for example, presents the same cynical stoicism, along with more GIFs.

This is not to say that there is no genuine upset on the part of TF2 players, but they still rather like their chosen game, even if they have pessimistically accepted the fact that they are entering their twilight years. Said a player named InstantClassic257 (open in new tab), "I'm not saying CS:GO is a bad game." But they also seem more resigned than angry: "Want an update like CS:GO? Yes, I do. But do I want an update like CS:GO?"

The closest to optimism I've seen in responses from TF2 players comes from YouTuber SolarLight (open in new tab), who tweeted, "TF2 fans, try not to be too jealous," and "Maybe in another 10 years our day will come."

He stated.

I've tried to wrap my head around it, and TF2 may be the only multiplayer FPS I've ever devoted serious time to; I've never been tempted by any other FPS, including CS:GO, but I enjoyed TF2's comical flair and mish-mash of classes, and long ago I have immersed myself in it for about 100 hours. Kudos to the community for accepting (almost) the current state of the game with grace and humor. It's worth it.