Text chat

General public text chat, involving both RED and BLU players

“

Got anything funny to say about that, funny man? Click to listen — The Soldier

”

The text chat, also simply known as chat, is a communication feature available only in PC versions of Team Fortress 2. It is displayed in the middle left side of the standard HUD (the position may be moved in custom HUDs).

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. Within the public chat, 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. Messages sent by players spectating are displayed with a white "*SPEC*" tag, and a grey name.

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.

Messages of dead players are prefaced by a white "*DEAD*" tag.

Players can also send messages via the console with the commands say, say_team, and say_party.

Specific players can be muted in the PC version via the main menu by clicking the "Mute players" button near the bottom of the screen.

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; this does not affect community servers.

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 normally must 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; said dialog also allows players to disable public chat altogether.

Update history

October 1, 2014 Patch

• 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_comms to 0.

October 20, 2017 Patch (Jungle Inferno Update)

• Added a global party chat system that allows party members to chat with each other from anywhere in the game
  • Party chat is printed in the in-game chat interface when in a game
  • Added ConCommand "say_party" (default bind 'p') that allows for party members in a game to chat with other party members using the in-game chat interface (similar to how "say_team" works for chatting amongst your team) and with members not in a game

June 16, 2020 Patch

• 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

June 24, 2020 Patch

• Added rate limit checks for in-game text chat

October 1, 2020 Patch

• 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

June 22, 2021 Patch

• Removed the disconnect reason from the message when players leave the server

June 21, 2022 Patch

• 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.
• If a message consisting of the maximum amount of spaces is sent, the next few chat message will appear in full white, rather than in the team color.

Gallery

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  An unused ellipsis bubble was going to be used to indicate typing, similar to the one used in Left 4 Dead.