Team Fortress 2 Classic, the throwback version of Valve's famed team-based shooter, is having an open beta on Steam in October

Team Fortress 2 has come a long way in the nearly 20 years it's been around, not entirely in ways that everyone would agree is better. For those who yearn for the days before hats (and bots) dominated the scene, the Team Fortress 2 Classic mod does just that.

Originally released in 2014, developer Eminoma announced plans for a Steam version earlier this year, enabled by the launch of the Team Fortress 2 SDK in February, and work seems to be coming along well: The team announced today that an open beta will get underway on October 13, alongside the start of the upcoming Steam Next Fest.

"We're not sure if mods are normally at Next Fest, but the opportunity presented itself and we took it!" dev team member Nito wrote. "We have been working overtime for the past month to get ready for this, and I could not be more proud of the devs who have been toughing it out."

The open beta will include "every TF2C-exclusive weapon, gamemode, and map" (except Casbah), as well as new additions including damage feedback, balance changes, and "revamped" support for Four-Team, which adds Green and Yellow to the traditional TF2 mix of Red and Blue. The game will be playable on both official servers and "a number of community servers."

TF2 Classic has been available for years, but the shift to Steam is significant. For one thing, it adds new features like Steam achievements, and more importantly it greatly simplifies the process of running it for people like me, who might be interested in some pre-hat TF2 action now and then, but not so much that we're interested in dealing with the headache of setting it up.

We're also good sources of new information for the developers, as Nito said developers quite often only get feedback from people who already know TF2 Classic: "The open beta is a great chance to cut through any sampling biases and get a good look at what newcomers think. If you love what you play of the open beta, please let us know! If you don't, please let us know even more!"

The Team Fortress 2 Classic open beta is set to run for two weeks, until October 27. To take part, you'll need to have Team Fortress 2 installed (it's free, so no worries there)—otherwise, just download the mod from Steam when the open beta begins and you're set to go.