OpenFront How to Make a Clan — Tags, Squads and Teams

OpenFront clans are the game's original social layer: a shared tag in your username that puts clan members on the same team in team modes. They are not the same thing as an in-match alliance, and they do nothing at all in Free for All. This page explains how the tag system works, how the developers have been changing clan joining, and how squads and alliances fit around it.

How Clans Work in OpenFront

A clan is a group of players who display a common tag. The community wiki describes it as setting that tag inside your username, such as [TAG] Player, and the payoff is automatic: members of the same clan are placed on the same team in team-based modes. That made shared tags the simplest way to guarantee you and your friends spawn and fight together, without needing a separate party system. The official client also surfaces clans through its Clans menu, where you can browse and view them.

• A tag is your identity, not a temporary in-match agreement.
• Team modes are where it counts, because Free for All ignores tags completely.
• Browsing is in the client, through the Clans menu rather than an external site.
• The system is changing, so check the live client before relying on old descriptions.

Concept	Where it applies	What it does
Clan tag	Outside the match	Places members on the same team in team modes
Alliance	Inside the match	Stops two sides attacking each other and protects trade
Team mode	Lobby setting	Defines the team structure the clan tag hooks into
Free for All	Lobby setting	Ignores clan tags entirely; everyone competes alone

Creating a Clan and Joining Team Games

The practical steps are simple, but the rules around them have tightened.

• Pick a tag and put it in your username, following the [TAG] Player format the wiki documents.
• Join a team mode, because the tag only does anything where teams exist.
• Check the lobby mode before spawning; a Free for All lobby makes the tag cosmetic.
• Expect membership checks. A May 2026 developer issue states clan tags were being locked down so you must be a member of a clan to join rather than just copying the tag.
• Browse rather than guess. The official client's Clans menu is the place to see what exists.

What you want	Where to look
Play with a fixed group	A clan with a shared tag in a team mode
Play with one player this match	An in-match alliance, not a clan
Join a public team lobby	The official lobby browser's team entries
Find an established clan	The in-client Clans menu

Squads, the Clans Menu and Free for All

The developer issue that describes locking down clan tags also describes why: the old method, agreeing to use the same tag as a friend, was not obvious and was easy to abuse. The proposed replacement was a dedicated squad or friends feature so that players are reliably on the same team as the people they chose. That issue was closed against a pull request in the v32 milestone, so this is an area the developers have actively worked on. In Free for All there is nothing to configure: the wiki states tags confer no team affiliation and everyone competes individually.

If you only want help in a single match, do not reach for the tag system at all. Offer an alliance through the radial menu instead, and remember that it is a temporary deal that can be broken by either side.