[UPDATE 3: In a suspicious new blog post written on the official TF2 blog by the Pyro, Valve cleverly uses Morse code to convey a simple message: “Monday“.]

[UPDATE 2: The codes have been deciphered, and the mysterious image has been revealed to be a 2-page transcript of a discussion between Saxton Hale and 4 United States Senators concerning America’s reserve of Australium, and the whereabouts of Poopy Joe – for the time being, it appears that this phase of the mystery event has ended. Check out the image, and find out more from this event summary, on the Steam Forums.]

[UPDATE: A third update just came out for TF2 earlier today. Crafting together 2 Banana Peels will yield an intentionally placed error message, that contains special numeric values (including hex codes), unique for each player. It is believed that by getting enough of this unique data together, we can assemble a PNG image.

In conclusion, get playing TF2, and get two Banana Peels through random drops (they’re very common, so just play a bit and you will get them). Craft the peels together, write down the resulting error message, and then send your unique error data to this data dump. The future of TF2 might just depend on it!]

When it comes to TF2, is Valve ever not up to something?

[UPDATE: According to Jason DeMarco, Adult Swim’s Vice-President of Marketing, there is no new Adult Swim series on the way, which means that this Valve project must be something else entirely.]

Adult Swim is a U.S. television network oriented towards, as you can tell, adult audiences, ages 18 to 34. Broadcasting a huge assortment of live-action and animated shows, most of them experimental, transgressive and alternative in nature. It’s a pretty cool network, believe it or not – it scared Boston into submission 5 years ago, and single-handedly brought Toonami back from the grave.

Which is what makes it so surprising that they have literally just announced that they are teaming up with Valve for: “something that you’ll probably enjoy“, due to be revealed some time next week. No further details are given, but the page shows the Team Fortress 2 team roster, and all of the announcement’s hashtags clearly refence Team Fortress, implying that whatever this thing is all about, it’s got something to do with TF2.

Adult Swim also says that you’ll want to register for their newsletter, adding: “you’ve been warned“. The registration webpage shows a fairly generic picture of the Pyro, saying “We’re your new family now.”. When inspected, the picture’s description is revealed to say: “Uncle Colonel Soggington and Jasper“, which is, as far as I can tell, some sort of overly convoluted Adult Swim injoke, although I honestly can’t tell how that relates to this Valve project.

With the reveal of the TF2 mystery event nearly upon us, who knows what this could possibly mean. One thing’s for sure – Valve and Adult Swim have got my utmost attention. We’ll let you know as soon as anything new and interesting occurs. But if I were a betting man, I’d be betting on the possibility of some sort of Team Fortress TV series, online or otherwise.