Team Fortress 2 cost to play

Team Fortress 2 came out in October 2007 and has been free to play since 23 June 2011. Nineteen years on it still draws a big crowd: over the 30 days to 3 October 2026 it peaked at 77,668 players online at once on Steam.

Crates, keys and the 1% figure

Players get Mann Co. Supply Crates as random drops. Opening one takes a key, which players buy from Valve's in-game store or from other players on the Steam Community Market. Each crate gives one item from its list, with a small chance of an "Unusual" hat with a particle effect.

Valve doesn't publish the odds. The figure you will see everywhere, about 1% for an Unusual, comes from players and press, not from Valve, so it isn't in the drop-rate index. The one time the real odds became visible was by accident: in July 2019 a bug made Unusuals drop from every affected crate. That episode, which Valve itself called the Crate Depression, is told in our history of the 2019 crate bug.

How it plays

Team Fortress 2 is a free-to-play online team shooter played in first person. Two teams compete in game modes including Capture the Flag, Control Point, Payload, Arena and King of the Hill, and Valve keeps adding modes and maps through free updates.

You choose from nine classes, each with its own tactical abilities and personality, which Valve says suit a range of player skills. New players can use the detailed training and offline practice modes to learn before joining online matches.

There are hundreds of weapons, hats and other items to collect, craft, buy and trade, letting you adjust a class to your own style. Valve says the game isn't pay-to-win, as virtually all the items in the Mann Co. Store can also be found in play. The game supports cross-platform play, Steam Workshop content and a level editor.

What it costs

The game is free. On 3 October 2026 the cheapest Mann Co. Supply Crate Key on the Steam Community Market was £1.74, with a median sale price of £1.72. That is a price between players, set by supply and demand, not a price set by Valve. Valve's in-game store price for keys isn't on any public web page we could find.

If the community figure of about 1% were right, an Unusual would take about 100 crates on average, or roughly £174 in keys at that market price. Treat that as a rough guide only: it rests on an unofficial rate, and Unusuals vary hugely in value. Our guide to expected cost explains how to do this sum with real published rates.

Age ratings

Team Fortress 2 is rated PEGI 16 for violence (PC entry on pegi.info). Valve's own store data doesn't list the PEGI rating, but it does list 16 in Germany (USK), 18 in Brazil (DEJUS) and Indonesia (IGRS), and 12 in Italy (AGCOM). That meets our audience rule (rated 12 or over).

TF2 Steam Charts and player count

The 30-day peak on Steam Charts was 77,668 concurrent players on 3 October 2026, with 76,665 online at the time we checked. Its all-time Steam peak is 253,225, in July 2023. In 2024 players ran a #SaveTF2 campaign, with a petition of over 100,000 signatures, asking Valve to deal with cheating bots in public matches.

How we checked

Valve's next game. For the latest on HLX, the project most people believe is the next Half-Life, see our Half-Life 3 release date tracker.

The PEGI rating comes from pegi.info, read on 4 October 2026. The other ratings come from Valve's Steam store data and the key price from the Steam Community Market, both read on 3 October 2026. The free-to-play date is from Valve's own announcement. The player figures are from Steam Charts on the same day. The gameplay description is based on the publisher's Steam store page.

Card art and page images: screenshots from Valve's Team Fortress 2 Steam store page. © Valve Corporation. Team Fortress, the Team Fortress logo, Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks of Valve Corporation. GamesChart is not endorsed by or affiliated with Valve Corporation.