Team Fortress 2 / CS:GO Code Leak

Submission 8,176

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Overview

Team Fortress 2 / CS:GO Source Leak refers to a source code leak from Valve video games Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive" that occurred on April 22, 2020.

Background

On April 22nd, 2020, an anonymous 4chan's /v/ user posted leaked source code for Valve video games Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 was leaked.^[1] The source code versions were Operation Hydra update for CS:GO, released in 2017, and Jungle Inferno update for Team Fortress 2, released the same year (censored post shown below).

The leak also contained screenshots of an October 2016 conversation between Valve News Network creator Tyler McVicker and another person. On the same day, McVicker denied^[2]^[3] any connection to the leak and stated that the leaked code appeared to be a repetition of a previous leak that occurred in 2018 but was contained (tweets shown below).

Developments

On April 22nd, 2020, Team Fortress 2 creators community Creators.TF announced^[4] that they are temporarily shutting their servers due to "the uncertainty surrounding security to our infrastructure as well as your computer."

Later on the same day, Valve^[5] announced that they reviewed the leaked code and concluded that no danger to the players was present through the official Counter Strike: Global Offensive Twitter account. On April 23rd, 2020, a similar announcement was made through the official Team Fortress 2 Twitter^[6] account.

Online Reactions

The leak prompted the spread of memes in which Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO players imagined the games being hacked and malware being spread through them, with the memes often using various malware clichés. For example, on April 22nd, 2020, Twitter^[7] user @stephanielgbt posted an edited image of a Team Fortress 2 alert featuring Tyler, the Creator Mugshot (shown below, left), with the image gaining spread as a meme format on in TF2 communities such as TF2 Shitposting^[8], /r/tf2^[9] and /r/okbuddyfortress (examples shown below).^[10]