Steam Community :: Guide :: How to re-enable sprays [2021-2025]

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How to re-enable sprays [2021-2025]

By Razorkiller

This guide helps you to fix the case where even on community servers your sprays and others' sprays are not being shown at all.
With a quick few steps.

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Created by

Razorkiller
Offline

Category: Achievements, Characters, Classes, Co-op, Game Modes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Maps or Levels, Modding or Configuration, Multiplayer, Secrets, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Class: Demoman, Engineer, Heavy, Medic, Pyro, Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Spy

Posted

Updated

15 Dec, 2021 @ 7:40am

18 Dec, 2024 @ 12:13pm

7,580	Unique Visitors
39	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

What's the cause and why you're not seeing your own sprays or others' sprays?

Personal rant and thoughts on this

The actual fix

Or fix via console

Sprays still don't work after these steps? Then read this

Conclusion: This was a very necessary thing

Comments

What's the cause and why you're not seeing your own sprays or others' sprays?

Apparently VALVe decided it's a good idea to turn off completely sprays and by default its value is enabled (disabled). This means whoever starts the game will not be seeing sprays at all unless they manually enable them back. Riveting decision, isn't it?

To further iterate: previously sprays were disabled on official Team Fortress 2 servers and no, you couldn't fix this seeing sprays at all unless you've downloaded that file previously on a community server or with a friend seen those sprays. If those requirements were met you could see sprays on official servers. Otherwise no way to get around but now VALVe disabled them for community servers too. Coolio.

Personal rant and thoughts on this

Now I don't know about'chu but I personally don't even get why VALVe or TF Team decided to turn off sprays for the millionth times (in reality 3-4th time now if counted). But I highly assume it's because devs don't like porn or other obscure things being posted in their game... or just probably trying to make their games into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive where sprays are completely dead and replace with a micro-transaction related sprays. Eww.

Fair warning, this isn't even affected on other Source games of theirs like: Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike 1.6 and so on. They're free from such taints. But apparently this is relevant to this game? Or some Tom wankery I am not aware of.

Imagine VALVe disabling sprays but not fixing bot infestations. Ecks dee.

The actual fix

Step 1: Launch the game called "Team Fortress 2".

Step 2: Click on the gear icon with a plus top right of it "Advanced Settings".

Step 3: Scroll down till you see Misc Options and there should be "Disable Sprays" option, by default right now it should be ticked on. Remove it if it's checked. In order to see sprays again. And click OK.

Step 4: Your spray preview here. Probably hentai as usual.

Or fix via console

NOTE! If you had sprays forcibly enabled in a config prior, you'll still need to do this. They changed the previous cvar from cl_playerspraydisable to cl_spraydisable.

If the value is set to 1 then just change it 0 to enable sprays.

Sprays still don't work after these steps? Then read this

If you still don't see your sprays after doing all of these things there's a few things you need to note:
1. Your spray file transparency didn't work properly or tendency doesn't meet the size of 512x512 for TF2 or 256x256
2. There are tons of guides out there, some related with decals and so on. Check out Steam guides sections or YouTube vids to have a proper use on spray tutorials to see what's wrong. This guide is primarily focuses on enabling sprays in general.

Conclusion: This was a very necessary thing

At the end of the day this change of disabling sprays doesn't do much but a waste of time for everyone. Anywho.

Go out there now and have fun spraying porn memes again. Have fun, hope this helped.

15 Comments

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Shmummble_Boi 8 Jul @ 2:10pm

Thanks Valve no one asked for this , no one needed this But everybody suffer from this

Zarkitek 18 Mar @ 9:16pm

how to see sprays in mvm?
One of my friends can see everyone's spray in mvm, but he doesn't know what he did, he doesn't know what command or configuration he has to see them.
I don't know if it's a bug, but it's great.

Kat 25 Feb @ 5:04am

@< crusto > you cant put steam loggers or ramsomware in a .vtf file lmao, y'all sound insane.

gunk 18 Feb @ 6:29pm

@Ikagura bad idea, if that happens, people could put ransomware or steam loggers into them. they could just make the images go into a custom cache folder where after the game is closed it all gets cleared but that might have to be used with ram which then im repeating myself

Razorkiller [author] 18 Feb @ 2:09pm

@Ikagura I wouldn't recommend since injecting viruses via sprays can be a thing. Same deal how objectors were able to crash servers.

Ikagura 18 Feb @ 1:27pm

Why Sprays couldn't just be saved on the RAM and when closing the game it automatically deletes it?

Long Bottom Leaf 12 Jan @ 7:55am

The issue with sprays isn't that porn exists and people can post it (if that was the issue then they would disable decals on signs). THE ISSUE is that sprays are not stored server side, they are downloaded directly to each players machine and stored in the game files. WHICH MEANS every single person who has played on a server with sprays enabled has had obscene files downloaded onto their pc, and stored there for years. On top of that, consider the racist, violent, or just straight up illegal sprays that people spray and remember.. all of that was saved to your pc.

It is a serious issue because the only way to delete them is manually going into the game files. It's a bad look for Valve and leaves them open to litigation. To be honest, it's insane sprays were allowed for so long.

gunk 8 Jan @ 10:50am

Is the person below me insane? scout is a grown man
Also quite alot of teens aged 13 to 16 play TF2

spidamonkeyx 26 Nov, 2024 @ 1:52pm

why did they do that? "but meh cild saw corn!!!!!!!!!!!!!>:(((((((((((((((((((((" so? Spy showed it in his Meet the team and Scout said the word [h1] "fuck" [/h1] as a voice line and the game is for teens so skill issue, and you can just spray over it.

TryHλrd 2 Oct, 2024 @ 4:15pm

It is terrible that they didn't disable sprays way earlier.. It was a terrible decision to even add such a feature. Any jpeg, img and gif can be used as a spray this includes ILLEGAL imagery. Also a lot of children play the game who should not be exposed to p0rnography nor illegal imagery. I think it is also a massive risk to server owners since if I understand correctly if a player is logged on the server and uploads his jpeg to the server as a spray it is in the servers' files and it could be an illegal image..

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