[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.

Long ago, in 2007, during the lead-up to the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two as part of the Orange Box, a man we know only as GooseGoose created a number of lengthy commentary videos of each of the Half-Life 2 games. These video critiques provided numerous insights, points and views concerning the HL2 series, tackling all sorts of topics, and analyzing the games themselves, on all fronts – story, gameplay, and tone alike.

These videos came at a time when most of the online video community was obsessed with superficial video reviews of various games – so, in a way, GooseGoose’s critique videos served as the forerunners to many of today’s comprehensive “Let’s Play” series, as well as other similar game-related video creations. And beyond that, his commentaries were simply very entertaining and extremely interesting, and to this day, I still consider the series a must-watch for every Half-Life fan out there.

But some time afterwards, GooseGoose simply… well, dropped off the face of the Net. His YouTube account vanished, and then Google Video went belly-up, which left us with exactly no remaining copies of GooseGoose’s HL2 commentaries. Community member Flamov succeeded in reuploading the original videos early last year, but those were primeval 240p copies that are practically unwatchable these days. If only someone could… oh, wait!

Last month, it was announced that Overkill’s PAYDAY: The Heist and Valve’s Left 4 Dead would come together, through a sort of crossover. Not in the form of a full game, but rather, in the form of some sort of DLC release – much like how the Potato Fools’ Day cross-game events played out (but with none of the glyph hunting and potato farming).

Well, it turns out that Valve and Overkill are not kidding around, as a teaser trailer has just been released for PAYDAY: No Mercy.

When trading was first introduced to TF2, most fans didn’t imagine it’d grow into a full-blown Steam economy, spanning multiple games, systems, communities and currencies. It’s pretty crazy, and sometimes I look at it all and just say “wow“. Don’t get me wrong – I say “wow” to a lot of things when I look at them (sometimes even when I don’t look at them), but Steam trading? That’s definitely something to say “wow” to.

I’ve always wanted to find out exactly how Valve managed to make everything come together and function in such a harmonious way. I’m also interested in how these gaming economies can interact with Valve’s monetization practices – or, to be more precise, the way Valve prices their games and services. Well, either Valve is spying on me or I have the most generic ideas ever, because Valve have come up with a way to enlighten us all regarding those exact topics!

You might know the one and only Jim French as the radio personality behind approximately 627 radio shows that have been aired all over the United States. But you probably know him as the voice of Gunman Chronicles’ Xenome researchers, as the voice of Father Grigori, as the voice of the Fisherman of the Lost Coast… or as the voice of Bill Overbeck, the tough Vietnam veteran from Left 4 Dead. While he didn’t get to do any voice work for L4D1’s first DLC, Crash Course (apparently he was on vacation during Valve’s recording time), he did return for The Sacrifice, where he delivered the greatest line the Valve continuum has ever known.

Well, it turns out that Jim French is back, doing some sort of voice work at Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington. Mysterious! Since the news was brought to us through the official Left 4 Dead Twitter, I’m going to assume he was doing voice work for Left 4 Dead – although what exactly he might be recording for remains unknown. Perhaps it’s retroactive voice work for the L4D1 campaigns set to be added to L4D2 through the Cold Stream DLC release, or perhaps it’s going to be voice work for the L4D-PAYDAY crossover that was announced last month. Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough!

This quite surprised me when I first spotted it.

Pretty sure there’s pigs flying outside.

I’ve just discovered that a pair of teaser trailers have gone live for “DEEP“, the animated feature film being built on the Source engine, which we discussed yesterday. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Now that is a headline.

Yesterday we let loose the news of Peter Konig’s departure from Valve. He’d been attached to the L4D2, Portal 2, and Dota 2 teams during his time at the company. But maybe you’ve been wondering about Valve’s losses on other fronts; such as their oldest ever team: the Half-Life 1 developers. Well, we’ve actually got the answer!