Team Fortress 2 Download: Valve’s Classic Free Team Shooter

Team Fortress 2 pits two teams, RED and BLU, against each other in objective-based matches. Its nine classes, each with a clear role and a lot of personality, and its cartoon art style have kept the game popular for well over a decade.

The nine classes

• Offense: Scout, Soldier and Pyro move fast and push objectives.
• Defense: Demoman, Heavy and Engineer hold ground; the Engineer builds sentry guns and teleporters.
• Support: Medic heals teammates, Sniper picks targets from range, and Spy sneaks behind enemy lines.

Getting started

1. Team Fortress 2 is a Valve game, so it lives on Steam; open its store page and click “Play Game”.
2. The download is modest by modern standards.
3. The offline practice mode against bots is a good way to try every class before going online.

System requirements

According to Steam, the Windows minimum is a 1.7 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, DirectX 8.1 and 15 GB of free space. On Linux, Steam lists Ubuntu 12.04, a 2.8 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM. Steam no longer lists macOS as a supported platform.

Free accounts and their limits

The full game is free. Free accounts have some limits, for example on chat and trading, which are lifted after any purchase in the in-game store. Purchases are mostly hats, cosmetic items and alternative weapons.