Hello everyone, here is another update on the state of Gold Rush as of December 2025. This blog marks our first major update post-launch.
The mechanics of the following weapons have been changed:
- Ullapool Caber (now the December 2010 iteration)
- Equalizer (now the April 2010 iteration)
- Minigun (now the April 2010 iteration)
- Natascha (now the December 2010 iteration)
- Dead Ringer (now the January 2010 iteration, plus May 2009’s no ammo refill)
The Caber and Equalizer should now feel stronger and truly authentic to early TF2.
The Heavy has also received some buffs. Thank you to Langos in the Discord for pointing us toward his missing 2009-2010 balance attributes:
- Minigun spread reduced by 20% (as per February 2009 patch)
- Spin-up/spin-down times reduced by 25% (as per April 2010 patch)
- Movement speed while revved increased from 80 to 110 (as per April 2010 patch)
Valve offset these buffs by slowing down the Natascha’s spin-up/spin-down times in December 2010, which we’ve followed suit on. Overall though, these changes should help Heavy fare better on a battlefield lined with powerful unlockables such as the Ambassador, Sandman, Axtinguisher, Flare Gun and Direct Hit.
We’ve also added an Advanced Options shortcut on the menu screen. If you didn’t know, Advanced Options houses many Quality of Life settings (such as auto-rezoom and toggle healing), as well as other popular features like hit sounds and damage numbers.
Although its previous location in the Multiplayer settings tab is more authentic to the 2007-2009 era of TF2, we noticed many players found it a struggle to locate, often assuming the mod simply didn’t support (or outright removed) all of their preferred Quality of Life features. While we have mixed feelings about adding more buttons to the menu screen, this shortcut seems like a worthwhile experiment to make Gold Rush more accessible for new players.
There have also been some miscellaneous fixes and improvements to the UI, particularly to the scoreboard. We’ve recreated some changes from the August 13, 2009 Patch, so the server’s current map and gamemode now displays in the corner:
We’ve also added class icons, though the original 2007 class text remains an option for those who may prefer it:
And finally, the missing domination medals mechanic has been restored as well.
That should about cover this update’s important changes, but as it’s been a little while since our last post, we’d also like to share more about the project and its future.
First, we should clarify that yes, we do intend to continue updating Gold Rush more post-launch. While we put a lot of time and thought into the major decisions of the mod, our team is not infallible, and the state Gold Rush shipped in wasn’t perfect.
The months leading up to Gold Rush’s launch were interesting. Although we didn’t have the time or resources to actualize some of the project’s longer term plans (such as revamped maps or improved hat models), we knew these goals mattered less to the public than the prospect of an early TF2 experience being offered officially through Steam.
Neither our community nor us could deny that this was the serious draw of our project for most people. Some TF2 players, including many on our dev team, had been waiting over 10 years for something like this!
Frankly, at a certain point making complicated map and model overhauls started to seem like a poor use of our limited time, since many players would likely hardly notice or care about such details regardless. These things could always be added in a later update after all, and once our mod became established, we might even wind up being able to recruit more help to speed up the process.
Eventually it became clear that if Gold Rush’s goal was simply to offer an accessible and consistent early TF2 experience, a release was well within reach for us. We realized that with just a few weeks of focus, we could easily get this out and share a truly meaningful moment with other fans of early TF2. So, we imposed a 2-month deadline on ourselves, to ensure we kept on-task and got the project out in a timely manner.
We like to think that we got things into pretty good shape by the end, big picture-wise. But unfortunately, when time rolled around to start pushing the project out the door, there were a few notable things we hadn’t quite finalized yet: namely the Ullapool Caber, Dead Ringer, Equalizer, and Flamethrower.
For clarity, most of the project’s focus for the last year has gone toward the task of surgically removing 16 years worth of elaborate systems and code from the TF2 SDK (which is essentially a copy of the 2025 game). We did this on our own, as no centralized community effort toward something like this existed when we started back in February.
The process involved complicated reversions of countless visual downgrades and mechanical changes the game has accrued over the years. Everything from making players drop weapons instead of Gun Mettle-era ammo boxes, to the deletion of gameplay outlines and Halloween bosses, all the way up to the removal of Mann vs. Machine and the entire Casual matchmaking system. With time though, the game’s original foundation seemed to emerge; hearing certain players express confusion as to whether Gold Rush was genuinely built from an old build of the game or not has been flattering.
We had an idea that weapon and game balance probably wasn’t going to be entirely perfect on launch no matter what, since our rag tag playtesting group was pretty small. So once the major gameplay reversions were out of the way and things felt pretty much accurate to the pacing and balance of early TF2, most of our focus remained on visual improvements. There were countless small systematic tweaks and fixes for almost every asset you can think of–it might not be terribly obvious, but pretty much every weapon, hat and unlockable was touched up in some way or another.
Since many of these efforts are subtle things that players might not notice, it’s unfortunate we haven’t had time to compile before-and-after examples of all of the mod’s visual tweaks. The most obvious example we could point to for now, though, is the custom bucket icons.
During Team Fortress 2’s initial development, Valve’s art team created unique high-effort renders for each weapon in the game, featuring a very distinct lighting and composition style. On launch, these images were used in-game as the weapon select icons.
However, when the game’s first unlockable weapons were released in April 2008, these stylish renders were immediately phased out in favor of the more generic icons seen in the game today.
In Gold Rush, we’ve opted to not only bring back the original bucket icons from 2007, but we’ve also done our best to continue the series by creating our own original high-effort bucket icons for all of the mod’s unlockable weapons.
It was our goal to make these brand new visuals fit so seamlessly into the experience that you wouldn’t even notice them-or you’d assume they must have been officially included at some point even if you don’t personally recognize them.
We hope that additions like these will add up, and with time Gold Rush’s visuals will begin to almost feel as cohesive and polished as the launch game did. Ideally, even more improvements like these ones will be on the way now that we’re settled on Steam–so stick around for that!
Returning to the topic of balance: The old Equalizer, Dead Ringer and Ullapool Caber are somewhat infamous among players, and we hadn’t gotten around to testing the different iterations of them as much as we had hoped to before launch day crept up on us.
The versions of these items that Gold Rush launched with were something of a mix between an oversight and a compromise. They were work-in-progress variants that we knew were weak and didn’t really fit–but we figured it was better to simply buff and finalize them sometime soon after launch than to unleash untested, potentially experience-ruining items on release day. Regardless, it’s regrettable that they didn’t get the attention they needed in time for launch, and we’re relieved to finally be fixing them.
We are also aware that the flamethrower mechanics in Gold Rush are a bit messy, as our current temporary solution mixes the 2007 flame visuals with the Jungle Inferno flame hitboxes. This is absolutely not ideal at all, but there is a reason we didn’t simply pick one or the other: the old flame system isn’t entirely supported in the SDK and was also outright broken in multiple ways, while the new system has its own technical problems and is visually at odds with the rest of Gold Rush’s early TF2 aesthetics. Regardless, we’re actively looking into the matter and working to improve both the flames and the airblast mechanics in another future update.
Unfortunately, issues like the ones described above did somewhat compound on launch, giving some players the impression that our mod team is indifferent (or ignorant) to the intricate details of weapon balance–or otherwise places little emphasis in remaining mechanically authentic to early TF2. Neither is the case; truthfully, TF2 is simply a mechanically dense and complicated game with 18 years worth of code piled onto it, and there’s a few things we missed or didn’t get around to while sorting through it all.
This is why, as of late, the biggest concern among our dev team has been communication. As the Discord server has become more active and harder to manage post-launch, it’s no longer feasible for our small dev team to explain every detail or decision of the mod to everyone all at once. These are natural growing pains for any mod, and to offset them, we’re currently planning to produce more extensive write-ups and articles for the website FAQ. These will elaborate in depth on the logic behind certain decisions in Gold Rush that have sparked curiosity, confusion or contention among players, such as auto-reload’s omission or the Wrangler rebalance and corresponding Direct Hit tweak.
We would also like to apologize for how long this update has taken to arrive. For what it’s worth, the mod is created by an extremely small team with practically every developer living in different time zones. There have never been more than 2 to 4 active devs managing all of Gold Rush (including its Discord) at any given time. All of the developers are also adults with real-world obligations, and some are splitting their time on Gold Rush among other modding projects.
It was very satisfying to finally enjoy the fruits of that labor on launch week, playing with our community and taking notes on their input. Now, things are kicking back into gear.
We are extremely grateful for the mostly positive reception the mod has received on Steam, but we’re hoping steps like the ones in this update can help us take things even further in the right direction. Watching communities form, noticing new regular users, and witnessing the project reach over a thousand concurrent players has helped us realize the potential Gold Rush truly has as a place for fans of early TF2. We only hope you’ve been having as much fun with it as we have.
Thank you for your time and interest in reading this post to the end. If you have any input or thoughts that might be of value, we welcome you to post it in the Discord–or more directly email us at tfgoldrush@gmail.com. Also, if you’ve been having a good time with the mod, consider leaving a positive review if you haven’t already :>
The full changelog for this update can be found here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3826520/view/538872373928003282
With Love, The Gold Rush Team