Team Fortress 2 fans are going NUTS for the Summer Update’s blubbery, adorable seals

“Give a man a seal and he’ll forget the last 6 years without major updates.”

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What you need to know

In case you haven’t heard, Valve has finally pushed the first major Team Fortress 2 release since 2017’s Jungle Inferno live: the Summer 2023 Update.Originally teased earlier this year, the massive patch adds tons of community-created content, including a Valve-supported implementation of the beloved VS Saxton Hale custom mode and 14 brand new maps. For many, though, the ultimate highlight of the update are theabsolutely adorableseals that appear in Selbyen, one of the new maps created by well-known TF2 mapmakersRhamkinandZythe_.

Periodically, players will hear a fisherman (voiced byMegaPieManPHD) proclaim “release the seals!” as a van located in the back of the Norwegian fishing village opens, revealing a blubbery, plump seal (modelled byFGD5, textured byBlaholtzen, and animated byNanoco1000) that hops out and begins shuffling towards the sea. It moves at a pretty leisurely pace on its own, though players can speed it up by collecting mackerels around the map and feeding them to the critter.

The seals don’t have names officially, though Selbyen’s creators seem to have settled on Silvia.Community members on the r/TF2 subreddit have made several suggestions of their own, including Clubsy Sr. (named after the Clubsy the Seal cosmetic for the Engineer), Clubby, Badger, Sir Payload, Big Slappy, and Bobby T. Efteu.

new tf2 update conclusion:this seal is the best fucking thing they’ve ever added to the game pic.twitter.com/FC3RipbCf4July 13, 2023

Team Fortress 2 Seal 💕🦭#TF2 #TF2SummerUpdate pic.twitter.com/8KToGx2tTsJuly 13, 2023

pic.twitter.com/Mar8bvroIAJuly 12, 2023

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Though the typical chaos ofTF2battle ensues whenever there aren’t any seals around, players on both teams are frequently agreeing to ceasefires whenever one spawns. Why kill each other when you can collectively fawn over cute animals, am I right? Unsurprisingly, there are several hilarious clips and memes about the seals on the TF2 subreddit and Twitter — the best of which we’ve embedded above — along with plenty of comments from enamored fans.

“Give a man a seal and he’ll forget the last 6 years without major updates,“wrote u/IHateDeepStuff. “I love this map. Every time the seal crawls out everybody cease-fires just to admire him. The second the seal disappears it’s immediately back to war,” says u/Memegamer3_Animated. At least the precious little blubbo’s arrivals offer abrief respitefrom the bloodshed.

Notably, theSealSummer Update has propelled TF2’s concurrent player count to record highs, with the population peaking at 253,225 this morning according toSteamCharts data. At the moment, it’s soared past PUBG and Apex Legends to become the third most-played game on Steam.

Team Fortress 2 is completely free-to-play on Steam, and is undoubtedly one of thebest PC gamesavailable on Valve’s distribution platform.

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Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2’s amazing gameplay, charm, and community make it one of the best games ever made, even after 16 years. It’s available now on Steam for free, as is all of the amazing gameplay content added in the 2023 Summer Update.

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).