Is there actually a way to play enemy territory on steam? Seems like punkbuster only works through other download methods

Just use et legacy

No need for steam. Also, punkbuster is no longer relevant

if its not relevant then why cant i join servers because i 'dont have punkbuster enabled' and when i click enable punkbuster nothing changes?

Idk, but I wouldn't use the steam version. I use legacy which doesn't show punkbuster or ETPro servers. I'm unaware if any such servers are actually active anymore. If they are, you would need 2.6b

It's slightly complex but it is possible to play et legacy through steam. Just install steam version then install legacy In the same folder. Delete et.exe and rename etl.exe to et.exe

I use steam launcher to start legacy.

What does idk mean?

in steam it showed a lot of populated servers actually. are the steam servers separate from the legacy servers? id like the option to run both if so.

would i be able to play on both steam and legacy servers then? or is there even a difference? seemed like lots of steam servers with punkbuster were populated. figured someone would know how they did it

'I don't know'

I’ve asked loads of people, no one seems to know

I only play Legacy but use 2.6b for testing too. A lot of those server probably are mostly bots. You can get legacy here: etlegacy.com and 2.6b here: https://www.splashdamage.com/games/wolfenstein-enemy-territory/

There are literally no populated Steam/Vanilla servers, or populated servers where you would need PunkBuster enabled, so best to just use ETLegacy. If you want to play jaymod/noquarter/nitmod/silent mods install the 32bit version because they do not support 64bit. If you want to play legacy mod where everyone moved to from ETPro you can use 64bit. Hirntot, TeamMuppet and HBC are 3 populated legacy servers. Hirntot doesn't have bots enabled at all, HBC is active after 21:00 CET.