TF2 asset leak reveals 60gbs of unused maps, modes, mechs and witches

A huge Valve leak from last week already gave us a peek at the Counter-Strike Source map that lead to Left 4 Dead, but there are plenty more old-school Valve assets where those came from. Fans are currently sorting through 60 gbs of unused Team Fortress 2 assets, including 20 maps, 40 man vs machine maps, and assorted intriguing models. I do kind of wish we'd got to play the version of TF2 with mechs that resemble three-footed Star Wars Walkers.

Here's a video from notorious Valve snooper Tyler McVicker, where he pores over the 20 unreleased maps. A lot of them are just small tweaks of maps that did see the light of day, but there are some bigger treats like Nightfall, a five capture point map that would have taken place at night. The mirrored version of Degroot's Keep with two castles reminds of how wild a melee-only mode felt at the time, and just how much fun I had using it as an arena to practice trick stabs.

There's some good lore in there, too, giving context to this first look at the original version of Dustbowl 2. It's neat seeing McVicker get excited about a peek at the "early early" days of the game, when capture the flag mode worked like TF2 classic and you had to take a briefcase to the enemy's base. Apparently there was also a mode called VIP where one team had to protect a weakened player, which turned into Payload.

There's loads more! An early version of Hightower had teams racing to fuel rockets by capturing three flags, while on another map you needed to nab a key to unlock a jail cell, for some reason. There also five fully art-passed tutorial maps designed for the Soldier, and an early prototype of a map set on a zeppelin that the blue team would have had to crash.

McVicker says he'll keep digging into the rest of the leak. In the meantime, here are some even more prototype-y assets from Twitterer Richter Overtime.

🚨!!The ENTIRE TF2 asset repo just leaked!!🚨

Tons of never before seen maps, models, PSDs & VMFs, everything.

Once the community finishes digesting this(61gb), there will be nothing else to talk about

This is the last official TF2 content drop you or I will ever see. pic.twitter.com/0pGjnMQoOB

— Richter Overtime (@richterovertime) January 12, 2023

I'm sad they never included that souped-up Engineer turret, later down in the thread. It might have meant even more Engineer players for me to stab.