Hey, I’m Kaneco.
Some of you may not know me, as I’m not active in the scene anymore but because I’m linked to a few community projects that affect the scene I decided to make this post.
Some of you may know me as being the founder and admin of Comp.tf. Others may know me as that guy who made a 10 mins fragmovie of himself and edited a bunch of other youtube stuff. Or even from my involvement with the various community projects I worked on like tf2pickup.net, Saloon.tf, etc…
You are probably already guessing the point here, and as apparent from my steam profile, I haven’t really had the time nor will for tf2 or even gaming lately, this post will be my goodbye to the community and the game which I loved and brought me many happy moments and friendships (including real life ones) which still last to this day.
Competitive TF2 was much of my life for years, I spent literally thousands of hours playing it and working for it. Because of such a huge time sink, it was also a constant battle with myself, because while not being profitable or a realistic career path I still greatly enjoyed it and put the work hoping some day comp tf2 would get the recognition it deserved. It sadly didn’t (or at least not yet) but by then it had already affected my personal and academic life. This was my main reason to quit tf2 and all involvement with the scene. I’m currently working while also studying at the university and I can’t afford the dedication it required.
With this being said, and considering I’m currently Comp.tf’s admin and “owner” I have decided to step down and to pass the project onto my fellow admins’ hands, corbt, ffc and the rest of the team have the passion and time I can’t really afford to have right now, and I will trust them with the project in its entirety knowing it’s in good hands, and that the path they decide to take forward with it will be the best for the project and the community. This transition will take place sometime during the next couple weeks hopefully.
Regarding the i55 fragmovie, I feel I owe you an explanation and apology for not having released it or giving updates on it, admittedly it’s my biggest regret now that I’m “retiring” and it’s the reason I leave with a slight bitter taste. Honestly it was a typical case of Murphy’s law, I spent literally months chasing the players for demos and collecting resources and even then I was not able to get a bunch of them as evidenced here. By the time I had all I needed I started to work to support myself while studying at the university, so was left with absolutely no time. A few months later I got back on it, only to be let down by a broken HDD (accidentally broke the drive pins while cleaning my pc) which contained much of the resources and material I was working on. By the time I had it all back up and running, i58 was approaching fast and lots of pov demos were already broken or left completely unusable due to some of the big matchmaking updates during last year. I was left with very little material and shattered motivation for it. By then my relationship with tf2 was already distant, I didn’t even play the game anymore, just did work on comptf and edited videos, because that was all I enjoyed, I was just staying around until I finished the movie and that would be my goodbye, unfortunately things don’t always go quite how you expect them to, so a bit after i58 I changed jobs after working most summer, classes started again and a bunch other personal issues arose so I just called it off and stopped gaming altogether. I do have some raw footage and some very early work, nothing really relevant but I might scroll through it to see if there’s anything worth releasing. Don’t really get your hopes high tho.
Despite this slight bitter taste because of not having accomplished everything I set out to, I also leave proud and confident that I helped create and develop a lot of resources that are used nowadays by a majority of the competitive tf2 community. This was of course not an easy road and I was at times the focus of a lot of criticism and attrition from other prominent community members but I hope, now that I’m leaving, that those people understand I never had bad intentions, that I always loved tf2 and tried to contribute to the scene as much as I could, it’s just very hard to make a name for yourself in such a closed environment, that can also be hostile at times, so I just had to keep going.
As a final note, I wanna thank personally to all the people who crossed paths and that worked with me in the various projects and that made this a very interesting and enriching experience.
San alex for getting me into competitive tf2, Nacho for always being my tf2 bro, CanFo for being one of the OGs of European tf2 and helping me reach out to sponsors when comptf was starting out, Crafz for the original tf2pickup site and for giving me the opportunity to help and admin the project from the start, the very first community project I was involved in, ducky for being my go-to technical guy that made our first comptf cups possible. EVLGaming for providing servers and resources that kept comptf going. Tragic, simrai and all the people that helped run and host our bball, ultiduo and newbie cups. Cherry for the always interesting conversations and for giving me the opportunity to work in Saloon.
SonnyBlack for being an excellent admin taking European tf2 to new highs and being a very collaborative person. Atlas for being the very first admin on comptf along with me and being an unmeasurable help that made it possible for the wiki to grow so much at the start. ffc for being an amazing admin and person, by being always incredibly helpful and level headed, and whose opinion I always respected and valued very much. Corbt for his great admin work and his insane number of contributions to the wiki and for at times making me see the other side of a certain situation. Quantic for his outstanding work with Lawena recording tool and for working closely with me and listening to my feedback on improvements to the tool that made life incredibly easier for me to edit and record tf2 videos.
The rest of the comp.tf team (cirlo, Concordia, armadillo, etc…) and all the contributors to our site, I can’t possibly name them all but I am so thankful for all your help and contributions that made the wiki what it is today.
The entire Portuguese competitive scene, which sadly died out the last couple years, but that provided me with some of the most enjoyable ad enriching experiences I ever had. Going to my first lan, and creating real life friendships that still last to this day.
All my past teams and teammates (specially .avi and v3) which made this game so enjoyable and exciting and always making me strive to improve. Moments like these, make it all worth it.
All the pro players that were kind enough to reply and give feedback on my work, provide demos when requested, and help out the wiki or other projects. Sorry for letting you down, I know some of you were really excited for the i55 movie.
Sorry for the incredibly long post, and I’m probably forgetting a ton of amazing and kind people but I could be here all day listing them, just really, thank you for making it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Now it has come the time for me to close this chapter and pursue other things in life.