You may’t preserve a very good sport down, and the continued drama round Crew Fortress 2 stays one of the curious and entertaining rollercoasters there’s. First launched in 2007, TF2 was an instantaneous hit that discovered an enormous viewers, however what has actually distinguished it over time is simply how many individuals have caught with it, despite the fact that latterly developer Valve has targeted purely on upkeep and curating community-created content material.
A latest exception to this was a long-running participant revolt towards bots, one manifestation of which was the basic web petition, which reached a level of depth that spurred Valve into motion: earlier this month it unleashed a bot-demolishing banwave towards offending accounts, refused them go away to attraction, and the group went wild. TF2’s playercount greater than doubled to round 145,000 over 24 hours, the place it usually hovers across the 60,000 gamers mark (which remains to be an astonishing quantity for a 17 year-old shooter).
As if that wasn’t sufficient pleasure for July, now the followers have been given a whiff of their very own white whale: new and official content material from Valve. The studio’s final main content material replace for the sport was in 2017, since when any official releases have been tie-ins with different titles, however per a number of TF2 devs it’ll be returning to the sport’s tie-in comedian collection, for a seventh situation that’s already absolutely written.
The TF2 comics are very humorous certainly, and in the event you’ve ever dived into the sport’s bonkers lore (or watched Meet the Crew) you will have some concept of what to anticipate. The final situation was launched seven years in the past (The Bare and the Lifeless on January 10, 2017) and the information of a follow-up comes from Valve’s Jay Pinkerton.
Pinkerton was responding to a question from one PieSpie, a TF2 participant who’s concerned in an unofficial neighborhood comedian challenge and requested the Valve author (credit: Portal, Left 4 Lifeless, Half-Life Alyx, TF2) for some recommendation.
“That is superb to listen to you are laborious at work on this,” replies Pinkerton. “Simply so you realize, the identical group that made the primary six [TF2 comics] have been engaged on and off on situation quantity seven for some time now, in-between different initiatives. The script is completed and it’s being drawn as we communicate. No guarantees when it is going to be launched however it’s being labored on. This is a sneak peek.”
Pinkerton shares the opening panels, which present vultures choosing away on the skelli-fied stays of the TF2 mercs. Do observe that this comedian delights in ‘killing’ the solid repeatedly.
The TF2 neighborhood reacted to this very like the Spy in header picture, and commenced to scrutinise the e-mail intimately to work-out whether or not this was a pretend, or somebody impersonating Pinkerton. Issues went back-and-forth although the final sense was leaning in direction of it being legit, earlier than Valve author Erik Wolpaw (who’s labored on most every thing the corporate’s achieved within the final 20 years) eliminated all doubt along with his personal affirmation.
Sharing the subreddit thread the place Pinkerton’s response had been posted, Wolpaw says merely: “Not a hoax!” He then goes on to develop on the place the challenge’s at:
“Jay and I are achieved with script”, writes Wolpaw, sharing a picture of the script’s final web page that exhibits it is a whopping 184 pages. “If me and Pinkerton die in a writing accident, comedian nonetheless comes out. If [the artists] Heather and Maren die, although, you are screwed. Pray for them. 3 variant covers!”
I might reproduce varied fan responses right here, although the reality is it is a hundred variants of “we’re so again child” with all-caps, swearing and keyboard mashing to style. They’re a mixture of excited, gobsmacked, and naturally have moved proper on to hypothesis about what else this would possibly imply: previously, in spite of everything, the discharge of latest comics typically coincided with new content material for the sport itself.
That looks as if somewhat an excessive amount of huffing of the copium, although as everyone knows Valve strikes in mysterious methods. The true take-home for the TF2 neighborhood over the previous couple of months is definitely extra that they are being listened to, albeit after an extended interval the place the bot downside did appear to be spiralling uncontrolled, and Valve is not only persevering with to tinker with the sport however nonetheless planning on official spinoffs. I am undecided TF2 will ever fairly be again in the best way a few of its neighborhood need, nevertheless it positive is not going wherever anytime quickly.