There have been some dark days for Team Fortress 2 recently. Amid a growing botting crisis, fans have created a gigantic petition calling for Valve to take action. There has been review bombing on Steam and a growing sentiment that the longstanding FPS was beginning to run aground. But now things look more positive. Valve has cracked down on the notorious bots and two former developers from Left 4 Dead and Half-Life have confirmed a new TF2 comic is inbound. Nevertheless, our community has just taken another hit, as one Team Fortress 2 legend confirms that they will no longer produce videos on the beloved shooter.
Between the early days of homemade machinima, the latter years of Source Filmmaker, and the pioneering works of ‘an0nymooose’, ‘CoreyLaddo,’ and more, Team Fortress 2, like every Valve game, lives and dies by its community. As the bot problem in the FPS game is finally addressed and the new TF2 comic is confirmed, Team Fortress 2 video creator ‘elmaxo’ unfortunately announces that they will no longer make videos about the game.
“Today is the 15th of July 2024 which marks exactly three years since I created the elmaxo channel,” the creator says. “This would usually be something I’d celebrate but after a lot of thought and reflection, I have decided that today will also unfortunately mark the end of my time creating TF2 videos. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this for well over six months now and have realized that creating TF2 content doesn’t fulfil me in the way it once did.”
If you’re not aware of elmaxo’s work, their greatest video is a documentary on ‘TF2’s strangest player.’ In 2022, elmaxo discovered a TF2 user named ‘Bing Soy’ who seemed almost supernaturally capable of scoring imaginative, bizarre, and improbable kills – in one example, Bing Soy leaps off a cliff, pirouettes in midair, and hits an opponent in the head with a sniper rifle round on the way down. Elmaxo becomes determined to track this player down, and what follows is one of the best videos in Team Fortress 2 history, which as of this writing has accumulated almost ten million views.
Elmaxo says that their channel will remain online and that they will continue creating videos focusing on topics other than TF2. “I have loved every single second of this journey and words cannot express how grateful I am for even having this opportunity in the first place,” they say. “I hold the community which surrounds this game in very high regard and I will always be indebted to you guys for actualizing my childhood dreams of becoming a YouTuber.”
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