Gamers connecting to Team Fortress 2 on Tuesday June 19, 2012 may have noticed an update—but when they checked the Team Fortress Blog and the Steam Updates feed, no details were to be found. Strangely, though, odd items start dropping from the item system alongside the normal guns, hats and miscellaneous items. Banana Peels, Goldfish, Cheese Wheels, Barn Door Planks and… Pocket Lint? Some lucky few got Damaged Capacitors and Secret Diaries. Each had somewhat long-winded descriptions on them referring to nothing in particular. What could these mysterious treasures be? One thing was clear—we were starting another Valve ARG (Alternate Reality Game).

Some players decided it was time to put on their detective hats and figure it out. So they opened their inventory and equipped their Medic with the “Eliminating The Impossible” because, well, why not? The set bonus says right on the items “Reduces mystery solving time by up to 88%”. Another look at the random items, this time with the mystery-solving item equipped, changes everything. A goldfish now has a description “Thi.k of .he…” and a piece of Pocket Lint’s description has changed to “…the… w.ich…”. A detective lucky enough to have a Damaged Capacitor now sees ” .n such pl..es, .nd …”

This all seems foolish in the eyes of a non-detective, but we have the advantage of knowing the habits of Valve. Some elementary thought processes (read that as “Google Searches”) reveals each of these are part of a larger quote—a Sherlock Holmes quote no less. “Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

What does that mean? No one knew at the time so the detective work continued. Can we make anything out of these mysterious treasures? Craft them? A breakthrough. Excitement. You can craft two Banana Peels together! Then disappointment when crafters were only met with an error:

BANANA ERROR #3!

ERROR DE DESBORDAMIENTO DEL PLATANO!

YKSITYISKOHTAINEN RAPORTTI;

Code: 215 / ‘ 0XCA 0X71 0XE1

0X89 0X97 0X40 0X64 0X65 ‘

There were eight of them. Eight different Errors De Desbordamiento Del Platano (Banana Overflow Errors), each of them with different codes under them. The community banded together to collect the error codes in a Google database. The codes caught some brilliant mind’s eye and a light bulb went on. If you assemble the hexadecimal strings you get QR codes! Yeah… I know, I don’t fully understand that myself. The point being, the numbers in the error created visual codes you can scan with a QR reader to produce URLs that took you to PNG files on the Team Fortress website. When stitched together, the eight images created a two-page excerpt of an interview with Saxton Hale. It spoke of the Monkeynaut Poopy Joe and Australium. It’s an interesting read.

On Thursday, just two days later, a blog post appeared on The TF2 Official Blog about a new weapon and how it was created. The design process of a new Flare Gun called The Scorch Shot was detailed by its creator, a Steam Workshop contributor who goes by Jalcober. Near the end of the blog entry was the line “look for it in an upcoming update!” The focus on The Pyro, coupled with the fact that Valve had confirmed back in February that Meet The Pyro was coming in 2012, cemented the idea in players’ minds that this was what would lead up to just that—we would finally officially meet the final member of the team.

PYROMANIA

Just like that there was a stopping point. The Mysterious Treasures continued to drop in-game, with no one knowing what they would be used for—but oh the speculation. Because the broken capacitors and secret diaries were rather rare, traders were asking for upwards of $50 worth of in-game items for them. Great profit was made by some, but would the gamble of trading for them pay off? We’ll come back to that.

Friday rolled around and another entry was posted on the Official Blog. It was posted by The Pyro.

“Mmmmph mmmmph, mmmmm mmmmmp mmmmmph. Mmmmmph mpm! Mmmmmph mph mm! Hm mmmmmph, hmmmmph mm mmmmmph mmmmmph!”

Valve had our attention by this point and it took no time at all to translate that.

— — -. -.. .- -.–

Each muffled word longer than 3 characters was a dash. Three or shorter was a dot. Punctuation was a stop. This was Morse Code for MONDAY. This could only mean we were going to have a very long weekend, waiting for what was coming our way Monday. A long weekend it was, and many of the same random items showed up in players’ backpacks, sometimes being found two at a time.

Nothing eventful happened over the weekend—a calm before the firestorm, you might say. As for Monday? Pyromania was upon us. We learned in a new blog post that Pyromania would be detailed in regular TF2 update fashion over three days, with the crescendo being Meet The Pyro’s release on Wednesday. Day One detailed a new game mode and a map, Doomsday, to go with it. Day two, City On Fire introduced us to new items including The Scorch Shot we found out about a week earlier. Soldier, Scout and Sniper also had new weapons detailed along with accompanying hats and miscellaneous slot items.

Day three started as Meet The Pyro day. In a blog post, Meet The Pyro was finally available for viewing. It is indescribable: Go watch it. After introducing the new short, the TF2 Team explained that the Day three details and the accompanying update would be out later that day, so as to not spoil what you were to see in Meet The Pyro. Later? An hour goes by and nothing. The average release time passes, no update. No less than six hours later the update hits. More new Pyro items are detailed in Pyroland, including rainbow-shooting horns. Servers crash. Players rage as they can not even get to the update let alone play the game. You know… a typical TF2 update.

CRAFTMANIA

Players lucky enough to get the update logged in and took a look at their backpacks. The mysterious treasures the players had became so attached to over the last week had been burnt to a crisp. Roasted goldfish. Charred pocket lint. Burned banana peels. Each of them was now a pile of ash. The description of the items now told players what to do: craft four of them together. Doing so resulted in a receiving a pile of ash—a one-time use item that must be used before July 11th and will give you a random item when used. Most of the time you will receive a series #46 Scorched Crate. Lucky ash crafters will get a randomly selected item from the update along with the crate. Scorched Keys are then available to purchase in the store to open the Scorched Crates. The crates contain strange versions of the weapons detailed in the update along with even more community created items.

Remember that gamble I told you about? It still may or may not have paid off. The diaries and the capacitors did not burn into piles of ash as the other items did. Their names changed to Fireproof Secret Diary and Barely-Melted Capacitor and their depictions in the backpacks changed slightly to show some char. The lucky holders are still asking some very high prices for them. Will they ever do anything? Only Valve knows at this point.

As players funneled onto servers, they also received Pyrovision Goggles, allowing the players to play TF2 as seen through the eyes of the Pyro. Log in before July 5th to receive a pair of Vintage Pyrovision Goggles and experience it for yourself.

A lot of content was added during the ARG and the Pyromania Update. There is lots of new stuff to check out in game. Hop on to TF2 with the best gaming crew ever (that’s us!) and check it out. You should know that TF2 is free to play by now and even if you missed the fun last week, the charred Mysterious Treasures are still dropping so you can craft your own pile of ash and try your luck! Have fun!