[The ongoing drama surrounding Team Fortress 2 is one of the most intriguing and entertaining roller coasters: first released in 2007, TF2 quickly became a huge hit and gained a large user base. But what has truly set TF2 apart over the years is how many people have stuck with it, even though the developer, Valve, has since focused purely on maintenance and curation of community-generated content.

The most recent exception to this has been the long-running player revolt against the bots, one manifestation of which was the classic Internet petition: the number of people playing TF2 has more than doubled to about 145,000 in 24 hours, usually hovering around 60,000 (still 17 years old, a staggering number for a shooter).

As if the excitement of July wasn't enough, now Valve has delivered fans the whiff of a white whale: new official content. The studio's last major content update to the game was in 2017, and since then, official releases have been tie-ins to other titles, but according to several TF2 developers, a return to the game's tie-in comic series is already in the works, with a fully written seventh issue scheduled.

The TF2 comics are really funny, and anyone who has ever dived into the game's bonkers lore (or watched Meet the Team) will have some idea of what to expect. The last issue was released seven years ago (The Naked and the Dead, January 10, 2017), and news of a follow-up came from Valve's Jay Pinkerton.

Pinkerton responded to an inquiry from PieSpie, one of the TF2 players participating in an informal community comic project, to a Valve writer (credits: Portal, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life Alyx, TF2). He asked for advice.

"I'm surprised to hear you're working so hard on this," Pinkerton replies. The same team that made the first six issues [of the TF2 comic] has been working on issue #7 for a while now, in between other projects." The script is complete and being drawn as we speak. No word yet on when it will be released, but it is in production. Here's a sneak peek."

Pinkerton has released the opening panel, which depicts a vulture picking through the skerry-covered wreckage of a TF2 mercenary. The comic takes delight in "killing" the cast repeatedly.

The TF2 community responded to this, as did the spy in the header image, and began scrutinizing the email in detail to determine whether this was a fake or someone impersonating Pinkerton. However, Valve writer Erik Wolpaw (who has worked on most of Valve's productions over the past 20 years) removed all doubt with his own confirmation.

Sharing a subreddit thread where Pinkerton's response was posted, Wolpaw states only that it is "not a hoax." He then elaborates further on what stage the project is in:

"Jay and I have finished writing the script," Wolpaw writes, sharing an image of the last page of the script, which is a whopping 184 pages long. He added: "If me and Pinkerton die in a writing accident, the comic will still be published. If (artists) Heather and Maren die, you're done. Let's pray for them. Three variant covers."

I could reproduce the various fan reactions here, but the truth is, there are 100 variations of "We're so back baby," savoring the all-caps, the swearing, and the keyboard mashing. They are excited, amazed, and, of course, moving on to speculation about what else this could mean.

That may seem like a bit too much kopium to indulge in, but it's no secret that Valve works in mysterious ways. The real takeaway for the TF2 community in recent months, beyond the fact that their voices were heard, albeit after a long period when the bot problem seemed to be spiraling out of control, is that Valve is not only continuing to tinker with the game, but is still planning an official spin-off It's unlikely that TF2 will ever be resurrected in the way that some of the community would like, but it's certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.

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