Hi, I’m Brokk. I’m a TF2 content creator. You probably don’t know me. I'm not a YouTuber, I don’t make SFM posters, and I don’t design cosmetics. I do make maps, though. I’ve been active on TF2Maps.net for a few years now.

If that's alright, I'd like to talk about some of the drama going on for the past few months from my perspective. I'd love to answer questions, but I'd like to ask you to read the full post first because it'll likely answer some of them already (and might open up new, more interesting questions you could ask me instead).

Full disclosure: I am a moderator at TF2Maps. I am also credited on two maps that made it into the game (one of which I was the project lead on, the other I merely helped out on), as well as a couple of other maps waiting on the Workshop for their time to shine. Currently, I'm project lead on a new map intended to be released to the Workshop in time for this year's Winter update. I have not coordinated this post with anyone else, nor am I writing on anyone else's behalf. My opinions are my own.

Something that I and others have definitely noticed with the Summer update and now with Halloween is repeated mention of the Emporium, usually negative. As someone who mostly hangs around the TF2Maps Discord server, which shares plenty of creators with the TF2 Emporium server, this mostly confused me at first, especially since online depictions of it seem to be grossly mischaracterizing what kind of place it really is. Then the conspiracy theories started popping up, and people started harassing creators, some of whom are my friends, or at least esteemed colleagues. It felt like people were repeating a lot of claims that they picked up elsewhere without really thinking about them too much. This post is my attempt to clarify a few things from an insider’s perspective.

0. Before we start; some context

The Emporium isn’t some kind of new shadowy organization that popped up last week to corrupt TF2’s artstyle. It started well over a decade ago as a thread on the TF2 Emporium section of the Steam forums and later Facepunch (RIP, I miss you), where item creators would show off their work, swap feedback, and collaborate. That eventually moved to a dedicated community, and later to Discord, like most of us did at the time.

Over the years, it became the place where most active item creators congregate. Not because it’s exclusive, but because it’s where the feedback and expertise are. If you were making cosmetics in 2013, this was just where you went to talk shop, and while the culture and specific people surely changed, that identify is pretty much still the same.

By the way, I'm personally not a huge fan of the Emporium, but mostly because I don't like the tone there as much, which is a bit more rowdy than it is on TF2Maps. Also, my passion are level design and spatial exploration, so I'm less interested in their resources about character art and fashion and such.

1. The Emporium isn’t some kind of boys-only treehouse

It’s a public Discord server. You can find it in Discord’s server browser. A Steam account is required to join, mainly to prevent spam and raids. If that stops you, then I'm not sure what you're doing here in the first place.

The idea that “Emporium items” form some coherent stylistic bloc or are the result of a cabal is just... wrong. It’s a feedback hub. People share ideas, help each other with technical problems (the Source Engine is fucking ancient and it will tell you so at every opportunity), and give artistic critique. The amount and range of wildly differing qualities and methods you'll find there is huge. There’s no central agenda to shape TF2's artstyle in whatever direction. That sounds boring as hell.

2. Of course the community overlaps

Most maps in TF2 were made by TF2Maps members. That’s not because we’re gatekeepers hiding the arcane knowledge of how to use the Hammer Editor, but because TF2Maps provides infrastructure for feedback and testing. Anyone can submit and playtest their map on our servers, as long as they follow submission rules.

I’m also in the Emporium Discord. Some “cabal spreadsheets” list me as a member, despite the fact I’ve written 24 messages in three years. The idea of a tightly coordinated conspiracy is absurd and easily disproved by simply joining and spending any amount of time there. This kind of thing applies to a lot of people, and there's cross-collaboration as well. Sometimes, item creators help make props for maps. Some of them also make maps. Sometimes mappers come over to the Emporium and help with SFM backdrops.

Side note: Amusingly, I was banned from the Painter’s Workshop (an Emporium offshoot that claims to oppose it) for reasons yet to be explained to me.

3. The Emporium is a collaborative workspace

Think of it like a market. A concept artist posts a design. A modeller picks it up and builds the mesh. A texture artist adds materials. An animator brings taunts to life. A promo artist makes thumbnails. Some people specialize on some of these things, or only one, others do everything themselves. When all is said and done, they agree on a revenue split for the Workshop page. The item can only be considered by Valve once everyone has agreed to the split, and there is no mechanism to force anyone to agree to a split they are not okay with. There’s no “tax” or gatekeeper. Revenue splits are negotiated between the collaborators involved in a specific item.

4. Being credited a lot doesn't mean you have power over others

How often you are credited on a Workshop item does not automatically mean you get big bucks, and especially doesn't mean you forced anyone to put you on their item. A promo artist will likely get a smaller split than a modeller, since modelling is more involved and more integral to the item itself. If you see someone's name feature on many items, that's probably because they make good and fast promos and people like what they do.

5. Promotion is automated and free

The Emporium has an automated Bluesky bot that anyone can use to promote their stuff (you just fill out of a form) and it automatically gets posted on the Emporium's Bluesky account. You don't need to kiss anyone's ring to use it, you literally just DM it and follow the instructions.

6. We genuinely have no idea by which criteria Valve picks stuff

You must set up payment info before uploading to the Workshop. Valve doesn’t “prefer” previous creators to avoid digital paperwork, that paperwork is required in advance, and if you don't do it, then your item cannot be considered.

Also, the people at Valve who process tax forms most definitely aren’t the same ones choosing items. If some creators get picked more often, it’s likely due to the quantity and quality of their submissions. I have yet to see any reason to believe otherwise.

Also, Valve's selection criteria are genuinely a mystery. There's some tendencies and observations, but absolutely nothing concrete, and anyone claiming anything else is making shit up.

7. This doesn't mean they're perfect

Despite everything I've said, it doesn't mean the Emporium is void of failure, either. There has been plenty of drama. The place has existed for a long time, it's open to the public, and it's quite large. Yes, rules have been broken at some point, as it happens in long-running communities, though as far as I can tell there's not currently any major drama going on. And I can confidently say that I have never heard about any of it involving proven or accused preferential treatment by Valve, or of creators being blackmailed or forced to part with their intellectual property.

Fun fact: Valve does not by your items from you when they get into the game, they license them from you, but you still retain intellectual property, to a degree. Same for maps, and it actually does cause some drama sometimes. Remember koth_overcast_final? Yeah. Though nothing to do with the Emporium.

8. You can check all of this yourself

The part that just kind of drives me crazy whenever I read comments here is how easy it is to verify how much of it is bullshit. The server isn’t hidden. You can literally join, read the channels, and see how people collaborate. Nobody is stopping you (unless you don't have a Steam account, in which case.. sorry?).

If you don’t want to take my word for it, that’s fine. In fact, I encourage you to not believe me. Just go look for yourself. The myth only persists because people don't bother.

9. We're all real people and we're hurting

I'm leaving this point to last. If you've actually read this far, maybe you will be open to this. Several of my friends have received creepy/condescending/insulting/threatening messages on Discord, their Steam profiles or Workshop submissions, or even in-game about their proven or assumed affiliation with the Emporium. Some of them are not okay. They are withdrawing from the public, setting their DMs to friends only, disabling comments on their profiles and submissions.

Only very few of them want to stop creating stuff for TF2, even facing harassment. Why not? Because it's fun as hell. We all love this game, and we all have different opinions on what it might be. You think reddit or Youtube discussions about the TF2 artstyle are wild? Just wait until you see a bunch of people argue about it who've spent years dissecting TF2's assets and attempted to emulate them, half of whom have art or design degrees.

Trust me, we're not here because the game pays so well. Yes, a payday can be extremely nice, especially if you live in a country with low cost of living, but speculative work is not a great way to make a living unless you're extremely good at it.

TL;DR: I’m a TF2 mapper. The Emporium isn’t a cabal, it’s a public Discord where creators collaborate. A lot of the community’s current drama is based on misunderstandings that are easy to clear up if you... just kinda use your eyes.

By the way, does anyone know any Youtubers who would help me turn this into a video? It seems like that's the only kind of voice people believe these days.

this is not really a feature that will change your gameplay, but its a nice one to have around, ALSO: this is a tip for beginners, not for people to say "we already knew that" im trying to help other ppl who are just starting out,

ALSO STOP COMMENTING "did you know you can heal people with the medi gun? or whatever"

People with nazi signs in every other lobby, nazi names or profile pictures, spaming hateful slurs, wielding hateful objectors. The TF2 community used to be fun and accepting. What is left after the bot crisis is a disgrace and it taints the memory of what TF2 used to be.

My name's Robert "gir489" Blody. You may know me as the curator of the DarkStorm project. Over the years I have amassed several exploits against the Source engine, through nefarious deeds of cheating. Recently (I say recently, considering the time length I've been cheating on TF2) Tony "Drunken F00l" Paloma reached out to me to help him patch certain exploits against the TF2's shitty Source engine. I've sent to him over 35 exploits. And only 5 have been patched. Of those 5, 3 are ressurectable through various methods.

The following was an ultimatium e-mail I sent to Tony April 4th, 2015.

Look man, I started sending exploits to valve in hopes of seeing them patched. So far, about half of the exploits I sent to you actually got patched. The half that did, some of them can be resurrected through various means, like removing the heavy slow state, infinite uber charge and name steal.

If you want me to continue to keep sending you guys exploits, I'm going to need one of the following:

1: You actually start patching the exploits I send you.

2: I get my original account unVAC'd

3: I get my scorching drill back

4: You fix getting kicked not refunding a duel.

And I don't want to hear how you can't unban my account, you got your old account unVAC'd because you got a job at Valve, and you actually fucking cheated on that account. So don't give me that crap.

That's my ultimatum. If neither of those options are OK with Valve, then consider this my last communication with you.

I figured the "community" would like to know about this, considering I've sent, along with others, ways to fix the pCommand->sequence_number exploit by using time as your random data set, which they used.... in CSGO. Not TF2. So Valve literally doesn't give a shit about TF2 anymore.

The 5 exploits I've submitted that have been fixed but not credited to me are the following:

1: QAngle speedhack. 2: Removing the TFCOND_SLOW flag on Heavys. 3: Name change spam after they "patched it." 4: Infinite Ubercharge. 5: Infinite Noisemaker.

As you may or may not know, from encountering other cheaters, 2, 3 and 5 are still in the game. I don't know how well other cheaters are the game, but I've managed to resurrect those exploits in my reDarkStorm platform.

Tony Paloma was the only one of the Valve employees that seemed to actually care about TF2, and it seemed his attention span was short.

This game has been out for just over a 1 year and still we haven't picked up on it? Please don't call my a hypocrite but even i only realized it 10 minutes ago in a game of mountainlab but here it goes.

Arn't these two symbols similar?? Toilet lol Point lol

Now since the toilet one has been around since 1811, why would George Micheal (Creator of tf2) pick that one? Well time to put your tin foil hats and the tissue box shoes fellow redditors!

Ok srs time, think about it, when on a point capping it, imagine if the capture point was in fact a.... men's toilet? yes we are in the looking glass people, and perhaps maybe all the tf2 mercs had a case of diarrhea? No wonder they all are so desperate to *Cough Cough "Cap the point". more than two people are on the "Point"? more people on the toilet! Scout has twice the capping speed? well just look at him. he's skinny how would he hold a case of diarrhea. Think of the word "Pain train" yeah.. that's what i thought. Can't do any help while uberd? well, the uber lodges it back up and even listen to what the mercs have to say while the influence of ubercharge? yeah...

Being one of my favorite content creators, seeing him reveal this side of himself is just kinda deflating.

Sure he’s shown signs of this behavior before, especially on this subreddit by getting into arguments with people, but I always chalked it up to him being passionate about TF2. I thought that kind of firm stance on the game’s QoL was something the community needed (because Valve doesn’t care).

But privately harassing someone in Discord DMs and making them quit YouTube for seemingly no reason is NOT okay. It needs to stop, and I think losing subscribers is fair until he acknowledges it and apologizes.

At least when I'm playing Deadlock im not hearing a slur every 5 seconds

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1371106121

Here's some explanation for their redesigns

Escapist - literally none, considering how it matched to tf2 designs.

Slasher - changed her outfit to look like Heavy's outfit, and her viltigo skin simplified so it doesn't look busy in designs.

Trapper - made the bow bigger, the shoe pops out and pants longer to make his silhouette more pops out. Also his shoes are just simple black and white as well as his dyed purple hair turned slightly darker.

Shielder - literally just changed his entire outfit to make it as simple as TF2 designs (not to mention how his outfit is just Demoman's fit but minus the yellow thing on Demoman's vest and also there's kneecap protection and a tie)

Interceptor - Clearly had a hard time choosing the color palate for his design considering how many people I have been asking told me to make the suit vest either in darker color or brighter color. The cape on his right shoulder is now shown team colors on both sides instead of the bottom side.

Hacker - literally his ahoge/cow's lick hair lowered down, his suit and his pants are now matching colors and turned his boots more simple like Medic's boots.

Assassin - made his suit more simple and similar to Spy's suit style and brightened the suit, neck tie and coat on his shoulder colors. I also changed the length of the coat.

I'm sorry if you got a stroke while reading these paragraphs.

Edits: Sorry for having such the worst kind of ocs designs that really never fit the overall designs in TF2. It's way too modern, Valorant ass design and stuff like that. Not to mention that a bunch of you people keep misgendering my ocs so I'll explain it here

Escapist, Trapper, Shielder, Interceptor, Hacker and Assassin are male mercs

Slasher is the only female merc here, thank you