'Not a hoax!'—Valve writers confirm the official Team Fortress 2 comic will continue, after over 7 years on ice
You can't keep a good game down, and the ongoing drama around Team Fortress 2 remains one of the most curious and entertaining rollercoasters there is. First released in 2007, TF2 was an instant hit that found a huge audience, but what has truly distinguished it over the years is just how many people have stuck with it, even though latterly developer Valve has focused purely on maintenance and curating community-created content.
A recent exception to this was a long-running player revolt against bots, one manifestation of which was the classic internet petition, which reached a degree of intensity that spurred Valve into action: earlier this month it unleashed a bot-demolishing banwave against offending accounts, refused them leave to appeal, and the crowd went wild. TF2's playercount more than doubled to around 145,000 over 24 hours, where it normally hovers around the 60,000 players mark (which is still an astonishing number for a 17 year-old shooter).
As if that wasn't enough excitement for July, now the fans have been given a whiff of their own white whale: new and official content from Valve. The studio's last major content update for the game was in 2017, since when any official releases have been tie-ins with other titles, but per multiple TF2 devs it is going to be returning to the game's tie-in comic series, for a seventh issue that is already fully written.
The TF2 comics are very funny indeed, and if you've ever dived into the game's bonkers lore (or watched Meet the Team) you'll have some idea of what to expect. The last issue was released seven years ago (The Naked and the Dead on January 10, 2017) and the news of a follow-up comes from Valve's Jay Pinkerton.
Pinkerton was responding to a query from one PieSpie, a TF2 player who's involved in an unofficial community comic project and asked the Valve writer (credits: Portal, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life Alyx, TF2) for some advice.
«That's amazing to hear you're hard at work on this,» replies Pinkerton. «Just
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