In an ideal world, none of us would have to be bound by the rope called copyright, we could produce all the media we want about our favourite things, like that Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisend and Cinderella ship I have now likely made many of you aware of. Alas, this is not the world we live in, and because of that fact the team by the upcoming mod Team Fortress 2 Classic is having to rename it after a bit of a prompting from the original game’s creators, Valve.
“As most of you pieced together quickly, Valve requested a few months ago that we rename our mod, because the name Team Fortress 2 Classic was too similar to their Team Fortress Classic,” the modding team explained in a Steam post over the weekend.
“When we submitted our demo for Steam Next Fest, the review process was held up on IP rights. This was expected, and it had already happened to our main app, so we contacted Valve to get it cleared up. Upon doing so, we were met with the request to rename our mod. We’ve learned that various other mods have recently used the word ‘classic’ in ways that unintentionally made them look like official Valve products, and as a result, Valve had a new policy put in place back in September.”
Not being able to launch the demo led to the team focusing on the mod’s rebrand, though apparently deciding on a new name was pretty tricky. Namely that was because they couldn’t really find any other word apart from “classic” that conveyed what it needed to, and fit the same acronym of TF2C.
Despite “Classified” not being considered seriously as a name to start with, as time went on, its double meaning, with the word’s origin “classify” evoking “‘to make something classic” and its literal definition,” that lended itself well “into the spy film theming that early TF2 had carried,” meant that it ultimately won out in the end.
Alongside all of this rebranding is one more bit of news, however: the mod has been delayed to January 30th, 2026. It’s not the new name that’s led to this, by the way, it’s a few different reasons, including the classic need for more polishing and testing, but also because it’ll need to go through the Steamworks review process.
If you’ve not heard about this mod yet, the main focus of it is to bring the classic (word choice purposeful) shooter more in line with its original inspirations and tone, bringing back things like some cut weapons and Multi-Team maps, as well as completely new features like new gamemods, items, and visual enhancements.
