Don't call it a comeback: Team Fortress 2 has smashed through its all-time record for concurrent players, and at the time of writing has hit a peak of 253,997 and rising. This enormous uptick has been prompted by the release of a huge summer update, which was assembled by Valve but consists almost entirely of community content, and in particular love at first sight between the TF2 community and a rather plump seal.
The seal appears on a map called Selbyen, created by longtime TF2 mapmakers Rhamkin, Zythe, and was textured by Blaholtzen, modelled by FGD5 and animated by Nanoco1000. The excellent Fisherman's voice is provided by MegaPieManPHD. The seal begins the map in a van, before "release the seals" is declared and it begins waddling in a line towards the sea: players can speed it up by collecting mackerel on the map and feeding it.
