In Reddit’s 2013 April Fools’ Team Fortress 2 event, users were assigned to Orangered or Periwinkle.
The prank was presented as though Reddit had acquired Valve’s Team Fortress 2 by tricking the game’s developers with switched documents. Users who logged in were divided into two rival teams: Orangered and Periwinkle. The unusual color names played on Reddit’s visual identity and on the long-running internet tradition of turning online communities into playful competitions.
The event incorporated Team Fortress 2-style mechanics. Reddit users received weapons that could be used on themselves or other users, and people who connected their Reddit accounts to Steam received a Team Fortress 2 hat corresponding to their assigned team. In that way, the joke was more than a renamed page: it linked Reddit participation with a recognizable game-world reward.
A common mix-up is to substitute ordinary color names such as Crimson, Cerulean, or Chartreuse. Those were not the official team names. Periwinkle was the deliberately whimsical counterpart to Orangered, and both terms are associated with Reddit’s April Fools’ event on April 1, 2013.