Valve sleuth says new datamine is "effectively direct confirmation" of Team Fortress 2 being ported to Source 2

With all the hopium-fueled hubbub about Half-Life 3 recently, it's worth remembering where the majority of that hype has stemmed from - new Source 2 code being datamined from updates to the likes of CS2 and Deadlock. With Valve notoriously hush about upcoming projects, virtually everything we've heard about 'HLX', as it's referenced, has come from datamines. But it's not the only mystery project that's been spotted this year, as a new branch for something titled 'TF' has emerged too, seemingly in reference to Team Fortress. Now, some new TF-related code has been highlighted by notable Valve sleuth Tyler McVicker, which he says is "effectively direct confirmation" that Team Fortress 2 is being ported into Source 2.

All these years later, Team Fortress 2 still goes toe-to-toe with some of the best multiplayer games on Steam, and Valve continues to roll out updates both big and small. It's not exactly in desperate need of rejuvenation, then, but you could argue that CS:GO wasn't either when it was upgraded to Counter-Strike 2. The mention of this new TF project within Source 2 has had Valve aficionados and series fans stroking their metaphorical beards (and probably real ones in some cases too) about what it actually pertains to. Theories range from an all-new game based on Team Fortress 2, to a CS2-style enhanced port, to some kind of TF2-themed demo for Valve's upcoming hardware slate.

Even with the new information in McVicker's latest video, we're still none the wiser on what this TF project is exactly, but it does shed more light on what the devs are up to.

A new datamine shows that on October 14 of this year, some new lines of code were added to Source 1 import strings, which are of course used for moving things from Valve's older engine over to its newer one. It shows a mechanic specifically found in Team Fortress 2 was being ported into Source 2, which is displayed in the datamine as 'func_respawnroomvisualizer.' While past finds such as this merely suggested that project TF was related to Team Fortress 2, McVicker feels far more confident now.

"This seemingly confirms that TF is referring to Team Fortress, and it's also revealing that they are porting Team Fortress 2 maps into Source 2," he says. "With most multiplayer-related entities that are exclusive to Team Fortress 2 now being taken advantage of, this is effectively direct confirmation that yes, there's a team at Valve that is for some reason working on porting Team Fortress 2 into Source 2."

As I alluded to earlier, though, this doesn't confirm what Valve intends to do with these ported TF2 components. "Are they trying to do a CS2 thing, where they almost remaster Team Fortress 2, or is this a sequel?" McVicker ponders. With Deadlock still being built alongside its community, this mysterious HLX project seemingly in the works, and of course its support for Team Fortress 2, CS2, and Dota 2, I feel like a full-blown sequel may be optimistic. Given the first mention of this TF project only appeared this year, maybe it really is TF3, but just the very early foundations of it - a game we wouldn't see for many years to come, most likely. But if it is a CS2-style upgrade, that's something we might be playing a lot sooner.

Of course, as with anything that Valve hasn't officially announced, all of this could be put on the shelf and never see the light of day, and in comparison to HLX, not much work at all appears to have gone into this mysterious Team Fortress project yet. That doesn't stop it being a very interesting one to keep an eye on, though.