Team Fortress 2 ARG is getting bananas

Whenever I see Steam updating Team Fortress 2, I get extremely excited. I immediately check the patch notes, the Steam forums, and the subreddit. Recently, a new game mode has been teased — the community is calling it MvM or “Mann vs. Machines.” Even more recently, seemingly random items had began dropping with every item drop within the game. Things like Banana Peels, Pocket Lint, Damaged Capacitors, etc. Since the community knows Valve so well, obviously this is playing into something much, much bigger.

Holy cow was the community right. For now, I’ll just point you over to this megathread containing all of the details. Essentially this is how it unfolded: An update allowed Banana Peels to be crafted together, creating hexadecimal code which combined into a .png revealing some QR codes. With me? Good. The QR codes showed partial text, which eventually combined into this page of dialogue between Saxton Hale and some senators, speaking about Poopy Joe (also mentioned back in the WAR! update) and “monkeynauts.”

Oh, but it doesn’t end there! Super Monday Night Combat just updated last night, adding a space suit to the gorilla character, Cheston. Then, the official TF2 blog updated detailing how a weapon gets added into the game, showing off a new Pyro weapon. Then, at the end of the blog, this video is shown. At 7:08 YouTube tabs are shown with numerous music videos, including the Gorillaz and Goldfish. What the Hale?

Is the Pyro a monkey? Will “Meet the Pyro” finally be released? Will Linux support finally be added? Does this even tie into the MvM update? Chances are, we’ll know more before the day is up!