Team Fortress 2: Is It Dead?

Yes, I know this is a common topic among certain Youtubers and players, but I wanted to talk about my own opinions on the game and rant quite a bit. First of all, while I didn't actually play the game at the beginning of the Meet Your Match update that started most of the controversy, I do want to express my thoughts on what I think my experience would have been. I personally only play TF2 casually, I never really intended to play it competitively. For me it's more of a game that I can pick up and play a few rounds when I have the free time and interest, just like over 90% of the TF2 community. I only ever used the valve servers to play games. So when I first heard that valve had completely removed that quick play option in favor of competitive, I was worried. Would this mean that I couldn't play casual games and had to play on a ranked scale similar to that of CSGO or Dota? I felt like some of the best and most entertaining games included people from all skill levels. And let's not mention how much the system was broken from the start. Wait time of over an hour to play a match that might last 15? Seriously? And no penalty for abandoning matches? You can't join a match in the middle? Really? When I heard all about this, I was wondering what had happened to the game that I had enjoyed. Who at Valve was working on this and trying to fix it? Whoever they were, they really failed the community. Who decided that competitive was the next step in TF2? What about casual play for the 90% of the players who just wanna play for fun? Is it the fact that TF2 doesn't get Valve much money? Is it just not of interest to the company anymore? It almost seems like the people in charge of the game currently don't even play it anymore. I feel like the only way the game is going to stay alive is if the community shows interest in the game and helping it proceed to become the game we want. I'm personally excited to see if Valve will incorporate something community made, like the Frontline or Mayan community-created projects. But knowing Valve, we can only wait and see.