Team Fortress: Source 2 and Portal 64 Fan Projects Shut Down by Valve Takedowns

By | January 10, 2024

Team Fortress: Source 2, a fan project seeking to port Valve’s classic shooter to the Source 2 engine, is officially dead. The news was announced following a DMCA takedown demand from Valve that blocked the group’s GitHub repositories. It joins Portal 64, which was also canceled less than a week after the release of its “First Slice.”

The takedown was the “nail in the coffin” for the project, the announcement read, which had already have been on shaky ground before Valve stepped in.

Team Fortress: Source 2 has been shut down.
Team Fortress: Source 2 has been shut down.

“While we were discussing the project’s future internally recently, we already came to the conclusion to stop the development of the project due to the current state of the code being unusable anymore with s&box’s recent major engine changes, and that we overall moved on from it,” the announcement read.

“Sadly, this means this DMCA takedown is the nail in the coffin. We cannot bring it back and we’ve hit Valve’s attention, it seems like they definitely don’t want us to use their IP (which is totally fair and legal from them). From the bottom of our hearts at Amper, it’s been an honour to grow this project with all of you and the incredible team behind, we cannot be thankful enough for all your support and enthusiasms over the last 3 years. We’re so happy we got this far.”

Portal 64 reimagined Valve's classic puzzle game on Nintendo 64 hardware.
Portal 64 reimagined Valve’s classic puzzle game on Nintendo 64 hardware.

In development since at least 2021, Team Fortress: Source 2 was envisioned as a new version of the classic game on Garry’s Mod spiritual successor s&box. With Team Fortress 2 now 17 years old and largely overrun by bots, Team Fortress: Source 2 was intended to inject fresh life into Valve’s beloved shooter. The team at one point had more than 20 volunteers helping to port assets from the base game and rebuild Team Fortress 2 mechanics.

Portal 64, meanwhile is being shuttered due to the project “depending on Nintendo’s proprietary libraries,” according to an update on the project’s Patreon. Like Team Fortress, Portal 64 sought to revive Valve’s 2007 classic, but on Nintendo 64 hardware. Its developer celebrated the release of its “First Slice” demonstrating its progress on January 5.

IGN has reached out to Valve for comment.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

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