14 DAY TRIAL // Just last week, Valve went public announcing that whoever pre-orders their copy of Half Life: The Orange Box (Half-life 2: Episode One, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal and 10 levels of Peggle Extreme) would get access to the Team Fortress 2 Beta launching September 17th. Which... didn't happen, so official forums started to get filled up with fan cries.
Originally posted by tomsgames.com: "At midnight on Sunday the forum posts started on the Team Fortress 2 section of the Steam page. Gamers were sitting at their computers waiting... Waiting for that first opportunity to play one of the most infamous vaporware titles in PC gaming history. Of course nothing happened and no official word from Valve on when they were planning to unlock it. Time went on. The hardcore Valve fans grew anxious."
Forum entries revealed how users had taken the day off to get in on the action, canceled all their plans and even skipped school, yet the TF2 servers were unusable. It's true that Valve can't, under any circumstances be blamed for kids skipping classes just because they were anxiously waiting to play TF2, but they should be blamed for charging gamers for the goods a week early - goods that didn't even arrive on time.
Many websites are debating the issue that Valve is known to delay purchases and sometimes leave customers hanging with locked preloads, yet this is the first time gamers had to wait more than 12 hours.
Team Fortress 2 started as a sequel to the original Team Fortress mod for Quake. The final rendition of Team Fortress 2 seemingly looks more like the original Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic games, sporting a cartoon-ish visual style, much like Pixar's The Incredibles. Given that it took Valve 6 years to develop the game, it was labeled as vaporware.
Be sure to check back in soon because as soon as official word from Valve hits the Internet, we'll be updating this piece of news on the shortest notice. Oh, thinking of asking Valve for a refund...?