Don't call this a comeback: Team Fortress 2 has broken its all-time record for concurrent players, peaking at 253,997 as of this writing. This significant increase was prompted by the release of a major summer update assembled by Valve but consisting almost entirely of community content, most notably the TF2 community and a rather plump seal's love at first sight.

The seal appeared on a map called Selbyen, created by longtime TF2 mapmakers Rhamkin and Zythe, textured by Blaholtzen, modeled by FGD5, and animated by Nanoco1000. The wonderful Fisherman was voiced by MegaPieManPHD. The seal starts the map in a van, and when "Release the seal" is declared, he begins waddling in a straight line toward the sea. Players can increase their speed by collecting and feeding mackerel on the map.

nanoco was already familiar with the map maker and was "overjoyed to have the opportunity to work on the animation of the map props!" As for the reaction that followed, he said, "It's great to see how quickly everyone in the community likes it! Every time someone tags me in a post about seals, I feel like pure free serotonin. I think this is my favorite meme about seals I've ever seen"

During the creation of the map, the seal did not have an official name, so Nonoko started calling it Selby, Lamkin started calling it Sylvia, and it stuck; the TF2 community has a very tasteful name, Clubsy (in the game, Clubsy already fits in an engineer's pocket ), even though there is a seal named "Clubsy" in the game, and several other alternatives. But we're sticking with Sylvia.

In any case, the TF2 community is overjoyed with this seal. IHateDeepStuff opines, "Give them a seal and they'll forget the last six years of no major updates." It will be worth the wait.

"Everyone playing on the new player-busting map in the TF2 update has stopped fighting to see the seals. Reds and blues seem to be able to take a truce if only to dance beside the seals as they waddle toward the sea.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, there are so many "I love TF2 seals" posts, fan art galore, and thank yous:

"I'm applauding. But it doesn't matter, because they've added seals to TF2."

"Bottom line on the new TF2 update: this seal is the best damn thing ever added to the game," said HeavyFortres. Indeed, it seems that this update has had an unparalleled impact on people and has been endorsed by many. As of this writing, Team Fortress 2 has once again broken the all-time concurrent player record, forcing us to change our top number.

Team Fortress 2 now has a Seal update that will forever be known:

Finally, for those of you who thought this seal summer couldn't get any cuter, we turn to our waddle friend Nanoco's animator Let's get back to it." The team will be donating a portion of the proceeds from this map to the Skegness Seal Sanctuary!"