After Half-Life: Alyx we got a storybook of what Valve has been up to in the past decade. The thing is the only games that were addressed in that book were mainly Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. There was actually quite a bit of Team Fortress 2 related stuff that was never revealed and addressed by Valve. Although TF2's player count is still strong and keeping the game active Valve doesn't seem interested in finishing their plans for the title, here I will walk through them and by the end of it you might be a bit furious, but know that there's not much to do at this point.

This one is already widely popular but I will address it here since Valve also never announced anything. Way back even before 2012 Valve was planning to make a Team Fortress 2 Series on Adult Swim based on Source Filmmaker. Valve's failure to meet Adult Swim's requests and deadlines ended on the series being cancelled. The pilot that was made for the series was reused as the Expiration Date short released in the Love & War update. Now all That Remains of that partnership is their in-game items and a commercial for the premiere of a new season of Venture Bros at the time. Artwork for the Fight Songs: The Music of Team Fortress 2 album was made using assets created for the series and also used in the Boxing Ring SteamVR Home map.

Venture Bros commercial:


The artwork in the album:



Example of the artwork in the Boxing Ring:



VNN made a more detailed report here:

In 2015 people found strings in the game code that pointed towards a Spy vs Engineer Update as the next versus style update. Some of the code pointed towards a revolver as the reward for the winning class, new features like killcam messages, a prototype matchmaking system, updated Civilian class code and much more. Also some new building concepts for both classes that were actually addressed recently were present. As everybody know we never got any of that content and instead the next versus was between Pyro and Heavy. (More details about this unused buildings can be seen in the extra section)

Example of the code leaked by Testinglol on Facepunch (he leaked stuff before but since Facepunch is no more i don't have the thread link, only this screenshot of a low-res video):



Again (a much more enthusiastic) VNN made a report about it:

In the beginning of 2014 Valve announced that they were making a moon base map that would become Asteroid with the Robot Destruction game mode (which was being worked on alongside Cactus Canyon, both were never finished). It was the beginning of the idea to make a space-related update that was dragged on for years and years. Evidence for the update aside the map were the strange cubic ores that were being mined by both teams in the Moon, these ores appeared in other maps such as Powerhouse alongside some references to Poopy Joe, the moon landing and Alien, also even appeared recently on SteamVR Home in the Team Fortress 2 Supervillain Lair map made by Valve and part of a TF2 asset pack. The robots were also modified and used in the Boxing Ring map as the NPCs you interact with. The lore explanation for it was basically that according to TF2 Comics #6 earth was out of Australium and they needed a substitute for it, I guess it's safe to assume that this cubes were to be used as the new MacGuffin of the series. it may also be why the final comic was never released as they knew how it would end and just needed the update to be shipped. Since we never got it the comic was delayed to oblivion, the comics lead writer, Jay Pinkerton, even left and returned to Valve in the meantime. Tyler McVicker stated that he knows about this update but since he might have gotten this information from inside Valve (probably on his visit there) he cannot just spill it out, and according to him it was scrapped.

The ores being mined on Asteroid:



Powerhouse easter eggs:







Updated model of the cube in Source 2 as a prop in the supervillan lair on SteamVR Home:



One of the bots in Asteroid and the Boxing Ring:



TF2 Comic snip showing the last Australium on Earth that was later used by the Administrator:



And the hint that they might find something similar:

There was a corkboard prop that was added to many maps just after the Love & War update that hinted towards a next major update, even possibly the space update alongside some easter eggs. At the time I made a highly detailed analysis of it in this guide. At the current state of the game this led to nothing.

The corkboard in 2Fort later replaced by the End of The Line poster in all maps that had it:




Hinted by the Holy Mackerel in the corkboard there was a possibility of paintable weapons being introduced in the game, this was supported by the painted Shovels in Mannhattan and the fact that the Cow Mangler used to be paintable for a short period of time (a couple of other weapons like the Vita-Saw also had this property but lacked any visual changes). Since decorated weapons became a thing it's safe to assume that this idea was scrapped. I also addressed this in the previously mentioned guide.

The painted Holy Mackerel on the corkboard:



The painted Shovels in Mannhattan:



A painted Cow Mangler 5000:

shounic made a video about the weapons that were found on the leaked Team Fortress 2 code, the buildings are also addressed there. You might want to check him out too, he makes very detailed videos about Valve's unused and broken codes:


VNN also made a review of the Spy's buildings:



The Wiki's is unused content page also has a lot of information about unseen content, I just addressed the most important or overseen stuff here.


Tyler McVicker (VNN) recently made a video addressing the current state of TF2. Although I don't usually take what Tyler says too seriously he has some insight that we don't about Valve since he's been to their headquarters and had contact with some of them but he basically confirmed my worst fears if the information here is to be taken seriously.



Although kinda off topic (I mean could be to show how this game's community still kicks hard) I would like to let those who don't know that the community reanimated Team Fabulous 2 in honor of Kitty0706 and created a Charity for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society[tiltify.com] if you want to participate:

...is this happening? Well.. Team Fortress 2 is a old game and Valve (although wrong) sees no need in keeping it alive. We only had a few updates in this hiatus and they were all mainly to fix or address important stuff that has happened. In summary they were:

• The Crate Depression
  
• Rick May's death
  
• The racist spamming bots

So you see, if the issue is not some serious subject like death, something that gets the media's attention or economy-related then valve doesn't have any reason to do anything about it, sometimes Jill may do it just to shut us up (quite literally with the muting of free to play players on valve servers as a way to address the bot problem even if it's temporarily).

So yeah the future doesn't seem very promising for the Badlands when it comes to new content and fixing issues like cheating. I used to be the guy that talked positively about TF2's future, this game helped me out so many times through so many difficult situations and it pains me to see the state that is in with such potential wasted. Back then I loved Valve for realizing their visions in revolutionary games, nowadays I kinda hate them for their inability to keep those visions alive (and for keeping so much beta and broken content on their games I mean come on it's just lazy at this point).

At the time of writing this Valve employees are still working from home due to the pandemic but I don't think it is safe to assume that they will pick up the pace once it is over but we'll have to see since the player count is still going strong. But who knows just like Half-Life there might be a light in the end of the tunnel that we still cannot see. Only time will tell if that light isn't the train coming.