To start this birthday celebration let us first pretend this is being written 11 days ago on the ACTUAL 9th birthday of the Cafe. Then second, do a mental double take and realize that the Cafe has now been around for NINE years.

Sure we haven't been relevant in, uh... a while, but that doesn't mean we've gone away!

Why, in the past year we have added 82 new members to our Steam group's rosters! (We might have also lost 71 members in the process over the same time period, so I'm not sure this was a real "growth" year for the Cafe.)

And that brings me to the topic of today's celebration: this Steam group no longer serves us much purpose.

We used to schedule events, we used to play on the TF2 server, but now the servers sit mostly empty and the Steam group remains quiet. What's strange about the Steam group is that it seems to constantly hover around 450 users, by following the trends we've seen play out over the last year with a few dozen people joining and leaving for unknown reasons.

Instead of watching this cosntant fluctuation of users I think I'm going to instead shift the Cafe's TF2 branch into its sunset period.

What does a sunset period for the Cafe's TF2 branch mean?
First: the Steam group is now no longer open invite. People will have to request to join and unless they're going to be sending us a message in Discord we probably are not going to be approving new members unless they wanna hang out with us.

Second: the servers might be coming to a close come this time next year. The TF2 servers do not get used, and when it does, it's being used by people that are no longer a part of the Cafe community, just passing through.

This sunsetting isn't because the Cafe is "running out of money" or "the burden of moderation has become too much" but instead is being done to give the community a proper send off, a send off that probably should have happened years ago if being honest.

No matter what servers are running with our name, the Cafe of Broken Dreams will forever exist as the group of friends that have formed in and around the banner, even if they don't play TF2.

For anyone who's actually read this all: thanks and I'll probably talk to you later in the Discord.
If you aren't in the Discord and still cared enough to read all this: thanks a little bit more than that first group - the majority of the Cafe's very modest fame and noterity has come from people like you, the people who happened to have found us in the server browser all those years back and decided to give us a shot. I'm sorry for what you had to endure while playing with us but I hope it's given you some good memories. Our Discord is always open just as chill as you remember the TF2 server of ye olden days being.

Happy Birthday Cafe