How to Install Team Fortress 2 and Join a Server

Team Fortress 2 is free, installs in one click, and has one of the largest community server populations of any game still running — 567 of them are listed here.

It also has a well-documented problem with automated accounts in Valve's own matchmaking, and that has quietly made the community server browser the more sensible way to play. This is a guide to installing the game and going straight there.

What you need

• A Steam account
• Steam installed
• Around 40 GB free

That is the entire list. TF2 has been free-to-play since 2011 and there is nothing to buy to play it.

If Steam is new to you, our installation guide covers account creation and securing it — worth doing before you accumulate an inventory, because TF2 items are tradeable and therefore worth stealing.

Free accounts have limits

Worth knowing early so it does not surprise you. A free account cannot trade, cannot use the in-game market, and has a smaller backpack.

Buying anything from the in-game store at any price permanently upgrades the account. Most people who stay end up doing this. Nobody needs to do it to play.

Step 1: install

Search the Steam store for Team Fortress 2, add it to your library — there is no checkout, it is free — then install it from your Library.

Files land in steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2. The folder that matters is tf inside it: custom maps, configs and HUD files all live there.

Launch it once and let the first-run setup finish.

Step 2: enable the console

Options, then Advanced, and tick Enable developer console. Or right-click the game in Steam, open Properties, and add -console to the launch options.

The tilde key opens it. You need it to join a server by address.

Step 3: learn one class offline

There are nine classes and they play nothing alike. Trying all nine in your first hour on a full server is how people bounce off this game.

Start with an offline practice map against bots — the main menu has a training and offline practice section — and pick one of three:

• Soldier teaches you the game's movement, because rocket jumping is how you get anywhere quickly.
• Demoman is the same idea with stickies, and is the highest skill ceiling of the three.
• Heavy does not need mechanical skill to be useful, which makes it the honest recommendation for a first evening.

Medic is the most valuable class on any server and the most forgiving to learn under fire, if you would rather be immediately wanted.

What the other six do

You will meet all nine within an hour, so it helps to know what is shooting at you.

Scout runs at double speed, double-jumps, and captures points at twice the rate. Low health, and dies to almost anything that connects. The scariest class in good hands and useless in bad ones.

Pyro carries a flamethrower with a short range and an air blast that reflects rockets and grenades back at whoever fired them. Close-quarters, and the counter to a Soldier who thinks he is safe at range.

Engineer builds. A sentry gun that shoots for him, a dispenser that heals and resupplies his team, and teleporters that get people back to the fight. The class that changes a map's geography rather than winning fights directly.

Medic heals, and builds a charge that makes him and one other player briefly invulnerable. Deciding when to use that charge is the single most consequential decision in a competitive round.

Sniper does what the name says, with a rifle that charges the longer you hold it. Entirely dependent on sightlines, useless without them.

Spy disguises as the other team, turns invisible, and kills instantly from behind. He also sabotages Engineer buildings. The class most likely to make you angry and the hardest to play well.

The important thing is that no class beats every other class. TF2 is built on the assumption that a team has a mix, and a server full of Snipers loses to a server with two Medics.

Step 4: choose between matchmaking and community servers

This is the decision that shapes your experience, and the game does not explain it.

Casual matchmaking is Valve's queue. You press a button, wait, and get placed in a game with strangers. It is convenient and it is where the automated-account problem is most visible — you may land in a match where several players are obviously not human.

Community servers are individual machines run by individual people, listed in the browser, moderated by their own admins. A server with active staff does not have a bot problem, because someone kicks them.

The trade is that you have to choose one, and there is no queue to do it for you.

Step 5: find a server worth joining

The in-game browser is under Find a Game, then the Community Servers tab. It lists everything, sorts poorly, and includes a large number of servers configured to look busier than they are.

Our Team Fortress 2 list queries each server directly every fifteen minutes, so the player count is measured rather than claimed, and every entry has a copyable address.

Community TF2 has distinct scenes worth knowing about:

• 24/7 map servers. One map, forever, usually 2fort or Dustbowl. Enormously popular and the easiest place to start.
• Vanilla and near-vanilla. The game as shipped, with an admin present. What most people actually want.
• Jailbreak, dodgeball, surf, VSH. Modes built on TF2 that are their own games.
• Trade servers. Not really about playing. People stand in a spawn room and negotiate.

Step 6: connect

Console, then:

connect 208.103.169.29:27015

Copy the port with the address. 27015 is the default and any host running more than one server has moved most of them elsewhere.

The first join to a modded server downloads its custom content — maps, sounds, HUD elements. With a fast download host configured this takes seconds. Without one, minutes. It happens once per map.

The chat commands almost every server understands

Populated TF2 servers run SourceMod. Four commands are close to universal, typed in normal chat rather than the console:

• !rtv — rock the vote, to trigger a map change vote.
• !nominate — put a map on that vote.
• !motd — reopen the server's rules page.
• !admin — page a moderator about a cheater or a griefer.

Servers that use / instead of ! hide the command from other players. Both generally work.

About the hats

Everyone you meet will be wearing things you do not have, and it is worth knowing in the first hour that this does not matter.

Items drop at random while you play, on a weekly cap, and cost nothing. Cosmetics are purely visual — a hat has never affected damage, speed or health, and the game has never sold an advantage.

Weapons are the arguable exception, and the argument is thin. Unlockable weapons are sidegrades rather than upgrades: they trade something away for what they give you, and the default loadout every account starts with remains competitive at every level of play. Several of the most respected weapons in the game are the ones you already have.

Crates need a paid key to open and are a bad way to spend money. If you want a specific item, the community market sells it directly for a known price, which is almost always less than gambling for it.

None of this is required to play, and a free account that never spends anything is playing the same game as everyone else.

Problems you will actually hit

"This server is running an older version". The server has not restarted since the last game update. Nothing you can do; join another.

Missing textures on a custom map. The download did not finish, or the server's fast download host is misconfigured. Reconnecting usually fixes the first case.

Your custom HUD broke after an update. This happens after most major patches. HUDs are unofficial and their maintainers update them at their own pace. Delete it from tf/custom to get the default back and confirm the game itself is fine.

Kicked for being idle in spawn. Many servers run an idle kick. It is a plugin, not a bug.

Everything looks stretched. Set resolution and aspect ratio in Options, Video.

Settings that persist

tf/cfg/config.cfg is rewritten when the game closes. Put anything you want to keep in tf/cfg/autoexec.cfg, which does not exist until you create it.

Class-specific configs work too — soldier.cfg, medic.cfg and so on in the same folder run when you switch to that class, which is how people set different sensitivities per class.

Where to go next

The full guide to Team Fortress 2 community servers goes deeper into what separates a server worth becoming a regular on from one that is merely full.

If the Source engine community server culture appeals, it is the same culture on Counter-Strike: Source, Garry's Mod, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. The console commands, the download behaviour and the autoexec.cfg trick are identical across all of them.

And if you want to know where TF2 came from, Team Fortress Classic is the 1999 original on the GoldSrc engine, and it still has servers.

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JoinGG is a live directory of community game servers. Every listing is queried directly every fifteen minutes, so the player count you see was measured rather than reported by its owner, and each one carries a copyable connect address. Team Fortress 2 servers are listed here, and every game on the site has its own hub. Player counts across every game are on the statistics page, and Team Fortress 2's own numbers — servers online, players now, activity by hour — are on its statistics page.