Team Fortress 2 Sees An Explosion Of New/Returning Players Following Summer Update

While it doesn’t get a lot of headlines, Team Fortress 2 still has one of the largest gaming communities around. It routinely sits at 100,000 concurrent players but saw a massive bump on Wednesday thanks to the Summer Update. This update brought lots of new content, including more than a dozen new community maps along with new taunts, effects, and cosmetics. 

All of these new goodies translated into 150,000+ more players. Team Fortress 2 hit an all-time peak concurrent earlier today at 253,997 players simultaneously, nearly 16 years after its release date in October 2007. 

That puts it at the #5 spot on Steam for the highest peak players in the past 24 hours. Valve has three of the top five games on Steam right now. Here’s how the top 5 shake out currently (peak players in the past 24 hours):

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – 1,079,556

Dota 2 – 592,216

PUBG: Battlegrounds – 330,828

Apex Legends – 280,811

Team Fortress 2 – 253,997

The numbers above come from SteamDB.

Team Fortress 2 shifted to a free-to-play model in 2011, and has seen a consistent community flourish over the past decade. Like many games, Team Fortress 2 saw its player base get bigger in 2020 during the start of the COVID pandemic. And thanks to this new update, the game is getting even bigger.

The Summer Update kicked off this week and will run through September 15. Here’s all the new stuff it added:

• Featuring 14 new community maps: Sharkbay, Rotunda, Phoenix, Cashworks, Venice, Reckoner, Sulfur, Hardwood, Pelican Peak, Selbyen, VSH Tiny Rock, VSH Distillery, VSH Skirmish, and VSH Nucleus

• Added the Summer 2023 Cosmetic Case
  • Contains 25 new community-contributed items

• Added 6 new community-contributed taunts to the Mann Co. Store
  • Taunt: Killer Joke
  • Taunt: Star-Spangled Strategy
  • Taunt: The Head Doctor
  • Taunt: Tuefort Tango
  • Taunt: The Road Rager
  • Taunt: The Killer Signature

• Added 20 new community-created Unusual effects
  • 12 new effects for Unusual hats
  • 8 new effects for Unusual taunts

• Added the Summer 2023 War Paint Case
  • Contains 10 new community-created War Paints that make-up the Summer 2023 Collection
  • Has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item

• All cosmetic and taunt cases will grant Summer 2023 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects during the Summer event. This does not include crates.