TF2 Leaked 7 Years Early & We Lost It

Team Fortress 2 as we know it the version that you can download and play right now started development around 2005 however a sequel to the original Quake mod Team Fortress started around 1997 independent of valve software it was Robin Walker and John Cook attempting to iterate on the original Quake World Team Fortress design during the development of Half-Life Gabe new and a few others at valve software saw enormous potential in both the developers and the Fran and took on the team Fortress 2 project it was at this time that the scope and general ideas for Team Fortress 2 evolved and mutated into something far more ambitious it started life as something called valves Team Fortress and quickly was renamed to Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms it's not actually known if there is a major mechanical difference between vales Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms but it's not very important to this story Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms or as I'm going to be referring to it for the rest of the video B way started legitimate development during the tail end of halflife 1's development cycle in the summer or late fall of 1998 valve was proud of this project and talked about it constantly if you were at all paying attention in the late '90s and early 2000s you were very aware that valve was making something really cool in this team Fortress franchise as a followup to the incredibly successful Quake World Team Fortress modification it was in magazines they did webcast interviews they did television interview interviews if you went to E3 you could play the game valve hosted modding expose for the best Half-Life modding teams and let those people play boa it was everywhere screenshots interviews descriptions short videos that would take hours to download it was all out there but the game never happened in fact they rebooted the project three more times Val's Team Fortress boa Team Fortress 2 Invasion a weird Roman alien invasion game and then the version that we got which honestly and this is a true story was the result of valves being frustrated with the complex development cycle of Team Fortress 2 Invasion and following the crunch that they had to go through to get halflife 2 out they didn't really feel like going back to that project so the team kind of collectively just went fuck it let's just remake Team Fortress classic again Team Fortress classic only exists because boa was taking too long and it was originally announced as a near one toone remake of the original Quake World modification in halflife engine which in itself is just a souped up version of Quake 1's engine that's not exactly what happened there were some major mechanical changes to better suit the new software that it was running on but generally speaking it's spiritually very similar and it was a very successful launch Team Fortress classic was hotly anticipated and for anybody that was around on uset was talking about it constantly okay this is where I probably have to explain myself to anybody under the age of 30 uset is described nowadays as the quote unquote original social Network it's not really that it's just a message board that leveraged email software to allow people to communicate without utilizing too many of their internet minutes because you could just download everything in a couple of minutes and then read it offline also by the way for those that were born in the early 2000s or later you had to pay per minute to get onto the internet Because the Internet Was effectively just a phone call uset or as it's also referred to news groups or Niche communities of pretty much anything you can think of effectively acted like a message board you can start new conversations and then respond to other people underneath that board you would interface with this technology using your email client like Outlook Express or Netscape Communicator there was a halflife news group and it was very popular and reading it is actually really cool it's all archived on the internet you can find it linked down below to research this video I actually read every single News Group post on the alt games halflife News Group between 1998 in 2001 I am not joking I read every single post and I learned a few things number one the internet has not changed in 25 years everybody acts the same it's actually kind of funny number two a lot of people just wanted to get the game for free and tried to come up with a lot of stupid excuses to get other people's CD keys because at the time the WAN network which was how people played halflife on the internet used your CD key to authenticate with the servers and allow you to play the game if you used somebody else's CD key they got kicked off and you used it so people would create excuses like oh I lost my CD case can I have a key so that they could use a pirated copy of the game it's actually hilarious it's very cool to watch people play the game for the first time in November of 1998 when the game came out and find secrets and talk about their favorite parts and react to the game as if it is the most technologically impressive piece of software they've ever seen but you also see people react to the news of the day react to things like patches for halflife awaiting patches for halflife watching people experience valve time in real time for the first time but you also watch people react to things not happening Team Fortress classic was announced to be released at the end of January 1999 it did not make that deadline in fact it didn't ship for a few months following that but people on these news groups were antsy they were constantly making new threads about when Team Fortress Is coming out what is the difference between Team Fortress 2 and Team Fortress classic a real sticking point a lot of people were confused and a lot of people were pissed by the way when Team Fortress 2 and Team Fortress classic were announced not to dig up over 25-year-old drama but apparently Sierra sold halflife partially on the idea that it would be used as the base for the next Team Fortress Game following Robin Walker and John Cook's hiring at valve software it was talked about and discussed as if Team Fortress 2 would be a free add-on for halflife after halflife was released and people had started actually shelling out money for the game which at the time was $50 they were then told that Team Fortress 2 would be a separate retail product and you have to pay more money for it then Team Fortress classic was announced as a free update for halflife and people started to calm down but a lot of people got confused was Team Fortress classic Team Fortress 2 wait what what is Team Fortress what what is this does it run on Quake do I have to is it free what and the game kept getting delayed which only added to the confusion because at this point a lot of news was being distributed in print so you would read something in a magazine that showed up to your door about the game coming out sometime in April that was written months before it showed up to your door and it can't be changed it's on paper but then valve doesn't actually hit those deadlines of course they didn't they never do and so you have a message board excuse me a news group filled with confused and somewhat angry people it's in this confusion and anger that a couple of things happen and this is all true I've never seen people discuss this and I can't believe it's never been discussed before two things happened number one around the time of the original announced release date of Team Fortress classic a few versions of Team Fortress classic 3 in particular leaked out onto we's sites it's not entirely known how it leaked but the theory at the time was valve was beta testing it in a closed beta and somebody gave the files to somebody else and then that person leaked it it's it's very similar to how leaks happen nowadays actually anyways these leaked and because they were in development software at valve they didn't properly interface with the master servers to allow people to play online so people actually cobbled together a combination of land forwarding programs which allowed you to play a land game over the Internet through things like Ki or mplayer or gam spy there were specialty mods set up to allow the people in the no so the people on this news group to download a specific file called LP party.exe to install Team Fortress classic and all IP forwards to allow people to try out this beta of Team Fortress classic for the first time and it was buggy but it worked kind of and people freaking loved it do you want to know something crazy that beta build is nowhere to be found it does not exist on the internet anymore at least for what I'm aware of I cannot find it if you have the land party executable file somewhere where let me know that is lost but that's not actually what this video is about I didn't get you on to this video to tell you about a weird beta build of Team Fortress classic oh no no no let me read you an interview with Robin Walker Circa June 2000 this interview was conducted over the course of a few days as people on the planet Fortress website a subset of games spy I'm not going to get into what the planet websites were these people were actually able to catch Robin Walker on different chap rooms and get him to answer questions over a few days compile those questions onto the web page and act as if that's a full interview quote how do you feel about the certain mod developer which posted the official valve login password on his mods news page and in result it got leaked Robin Walker said in response quote it's a fact of life that betas get leaked will live Robin is not referring to Team Fortress Classic's land party leak that happened a whole year before this occurred what Robin and the interviewer is talking about is an incident that took place in the first half of the Year 200000 when a mod developer realized that valve's FTP server was unsecured and just brute forced the password posting those findings onto the internet and anybody following the development of whichever mod this was was able to log into valve's development FTP and take everything the biggest thing that leaked from this was a closed beta build of Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms there is a build of the unreleased Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms out there it has been out there for 24 years and it did not get the same level of attention as the Half-Life 2 leak which occurred 3 years later it's out there I spent over a week straight from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed reading every post on every valve and Half-Life related news group I could find and here's what I know this beta build was being played around this time there are tiny bits and pieces of conversation related to this build discussing this kind of content it could result in ISP bans especially if you lived in England because it was very common for people to call a person's internet service provider report them for harassment and they could get their internet shut off so discussing pirated or leaked software or as it was referred to at this time Wares publicly could result in some massive repercussions that said there are remnants of conversations that didn't get deleted or banned this was out there this is a public service announcement this is a cry for help me Tyler McVicker the passionate gamer if you were around at this time if you were one of the few people that stumbled on The Mod page that had the valve login and downloaded anything from the FTP server please get into contact with me my email is Tyler newws Network atgmailcom this doesn't currently exist this is quintessentially lost media a full playable build Circa the first half of the year 2000 of Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of arms would be massively important for anybody that cares about game preservation because up until this point we have nearly nothing I am not kidding we have have nearly nothing from the development of this game there has to be somebody somewhere that downloaded the build and has it on a hard drive somewhere and valve hey if you're watching this Brotherhood of arms was a playable thing you had people play it all the time why not let people archive it people love what you do and it would it would generate a lot of Goodwill Robin if somehow this reaches your ears I'm I know I'm either annoying or not important maybe consider releasing some old unreleased content I mean you already did for the 25th anniversary of halflife why not let people check this out there's definitely content out there floating around on the internet somewhere I can't find it I don't know what mod page this was that's the the limiting factor oh I spent so long trying to research this project and I had to call it because I have other stuff to do but now the ball is in the community's court I will continue to look this is out there I will I I yeah I don't know where to go from here other than talking about it publicly and hoping praying to gab and himself that somebody out there was around for this and can point us in the right direction or they have the files I'm Tyler mcer the passionate gamer this was a this this project took way too long I hope you guys are having a great time a great life a great day a great week you want to support content like this because I'm trying to make less frequent but far more in-depth research-based content like this took a really long time to make uh even though the video itself is quite simple the research itself is quite complex and any who I'm Tyler mcre the passionate gamer please consider supporting on either my float plane or patreon Pages or just you know get on the Discord server I'm going to be opening a channel on the Discord server to discuss this specific thing so the invite link to that is down in the description below or my Twitter page or X whatever it's also down there I'm Tyler mcer the passion gamer thank you so much I hope you're having a great day a great life and I will talk to you next time my next video uh I don't know what it'll be but I have an interview coming up that you guys will freaking love peace and hair grease adios

Channel: Tyler McVicker

Views: 53,254

Keywords: Tyler McVicker, Tyler, McVicker, VNN, Valve News Network, Valve News, Half Life, HL2, Half Life 2 Beta, Half Life 2 Alpha, Half Life 2 2002, Half Life 2 2003, Half Life 2 2001, Half Life Alpha, Half Life Leak, Half Life 2 BEta Leak, Team Fortress 2, TF2, Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of Arms, TF2 BOA, Valve's Team Fortress, Half-Life: Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2 Beta

Id: 9eDaG1uR5T4

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024