Text chat
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| “ | Got anything funny to say about that, funny man?
Click to listen
— The Soldier to the late Scout
|
” |
The text chat is a communication feature available only in PC versions of Team Fortress 2. It is displayed in the middle left side of the HUD.
There are 2 types of chats: public and party chat. Public chat is the general chat, which can be accessed by pressing Y by default. It shows messages sent by all players of any team and spectators. Also shows notifications as player receiving items, duels status, etc., and server messages in community servers. Some servers, such as the Skial servers, allow you to use in-server currency to change the color of your font or your title. Players can send a message only for their team by pressing U — messages sent only for teammates are displayed with a team-colored "(TEAM)" tag —.
The party chat is a special chat, which can be accessed by pressing the Chat button on the upper left side of the main menu, but also by pressing P by default. It shows messages sent only by and for party members and party status. Messages sent here are displayed in the tab that opens when pressing said button, but also in the public chat as green text. Messages also play a specific audio cue.
Players can also send messages via the console with the commands say, say_team, and say_party.
As of June 16, 2020 Patch, in order to use the public chat in Valve official servers, a player must have a premium account and a non-limited user account on Steam. Players can still use the party chat without restrictions.
Chat filter and restrictions
The user can filter certain entries in the chat by accessing the "Filters" tab in the public chat. The options are the following:
- Joins/Leaves
- Name Changes
- Public Chat (disables messages sent only for all teams)
- Server Messages
- Team Changes
- Achievement Announce
After sending 2 or 3 messages in a row, players have to wait 5 seconds to send more messages.
Several slurs and inappropriate words are filtered by the Steam Text Filtering, which can be accessed through the Advanced options. Public chat can also be fully disabled in said dialog.
Update history
- When you mute a player, the mute settings now apply to text chat as well as voice chat. If you want the previous behavior, change convar
cl_mute_all_commsto 0.
- Restricted certain new accounts from using chat in official matchmaking modes
- Added "Enable text chat" and "Enable voice chat" options to the top of the Advanced Options dialog to disable in-game text and voice chat
- Added rate limit checks for in-game text chat
- Added support for Steam Text Filtering for persona names and chat. This is enabled by default.
- You can update your settings in the Adv. Options dialog
- You can also update your settings by opting into the Steam Lab
- Removed the disconnect reason from the message when players leave the server
- Fixed an exploit related to clearing the in-game text chat
Bugs
- On certain resolutions, party chat shrinks every time a player opens and closes it.
Gallery
An unused bubble was going to be used to indicate typing, similar to the one used in Left 4 Dead.
