It has been a long time coming, but Valve Corp will finally be introducing a competitive matchmaking game mode to its popular team-based shooter, Team Fortress 2, nearly nine years after the game was originally released. In a post to the game’s Steam Community page, Valve employee “Jill” explained the developer’s plans for the competitive game mode beta, along with how it will prioritize who gets access.

“We know you’d all like to start testing now, and eventually we hope all of you WILL get a chance to play and share your thoughts,” Jill said. “But remember that all testing happens in stages, and right now we’re at stage one.”

“Our plan is to start small and increase participation as we go. For this initial phase of testing – which will begin in the next week or so – we’ll be gradually granting random members from this group an in-game item called a Competitive Matchmaking Beta Pass. Once you’ve been granted a pass you will have ongoing access to the beta.”

While the closed beta will generally be restricted to a limited number of users, Valve also plans on holding multiple stress test events, which will temporarily allow a much larger group of users to participate in the new game mode.

How to (maybe) get into the beta

If you desperately want to get into the closed beta for competitive matchmaking in Team Fortress 2, Valve was kind enough to reveal how it will be prioritizing players.

According to Valve, here are the three most important Steam account features that will make sure you are near the top of the list for an invite (via SteamCommunity.com):

• Have either purchased a copy of Team Fortress 2 prior to June 23, 2011, or have made a purchase from the Mann Co. Store. (AKA premium accounts)
• Have Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator enabled. ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030 )
• Have a phone number associated with your Steam account ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030#addphone )

Obviously, the first requirement ensures that beta participants include long-time fans of the game who purchased it before it was free-to-play, as well as fans who enjoy the game enough to spend actual money on it even though it is not required to play.

The other two requirements feed into Valve’s attempts to get users to take account security more seriously, as the company noted earlier this year that it wanted to encourage more users to take advantage of two-step authentication and more secure password recovery options.

Image courtesy of Valve Corp