MR_SLIN
The original DOTA "languished in obscurity" but it spawned two huge mobas in LoL and Dota 2.
CS:GO was terrible when it first came out and then they made some big competitive updates to it and it really grew.
Dota was not "languished in obscurity". The game had a gigantic audience in asian countries and it was by far the most popular warcraft 3 mod. Counter strike had international LANs before CSGO, the only thing that ever really threatened counter strike's stability as an esport was the players rejecting every version after 1.6.
It's naive to compare TF2 to these games when the origins and circumstances for each game is so wildly different. Lets not forget that for every success story in esports, there are tons of failures. Enemy Territory? Tribes? L4d? These games all had sizeable competitive scenes at one point, where are they now? How about quake or any RTS other than starcraft? Hell even starcraft is on life support these days.
It's been stated so many times in the past, but everything valve is trying to do is 5 years too late.