Yesterday I got an email from the server host with a message saying the hard drive of the machine that was running everything has failed catastrophically. Thankfully, we have backups, and on top of that they were able to recover ~90% of the information that was on the hard drive.

With that said, the servers aren't going to be coming back online.

TF2's custom server community has been slowly and steadily crushed by Valve's preference for matchmaking, the number of cheaters, and the generally slowly decaying interest of this game.

Over the course of the past ~10 years, me and several long-term community staff poured countless hours and even more countless thousands of dollars into maintaining these servers. I think I can speak for most of us when I say that we've reached a point where it's no longer engaging or motivating, and the community that was once extremely lively is mostly gone.

All the files have been backed up. All the databases, player statistics like ranks and play time, have been archived.

After weighing the cost and time it takes to maintain the servers with their declining popularity, I've come to the conclusion that the sunset is somewhat overdue.

We built an amazing community. One that managed to propel itself from a bunch of tiny, empty servers to literally #1 in worldwide ranks on multiple websites, continuously, for months at a time.

But we have to accept that those moments are in the past now, and it's time to take a break.

Man, can you believe it's been almost 10 years since this all started?

Will the servers ever come back? I'd like them to, some day. I don't know when that day will be, but I can say with certainty that it won't be in the near future.

If you were one of the people who joined and played, thank you :)
It's been great playing with all of you.
I'll see you around.