Team Fortress 2 Has Been Suffering In Silence For Too Long

Team Fortress 2 is one of my favorite games. I have spent the better half of my entire youth on it, and I do not regret a single moment. So understand that this article comes from a place of passion and extreme concern. 

I love Team Fortress 2. I remember watching the “Meet the Team” videos on YouTube as a kid, and I was instantly hooked. I fell in love with the characters, the lore, the art style, and the competitive yet casual nature of the gameplay. I loved playing the game and having whacky shenanigans alongside friends. 

Rather I should say, I used to love all these things. I and many others haven’t been able to have fun in our “favorite” game for a while now.

The Bot Crisis

You see since approximately 5 years ago, the game’s official servers have been utterly overrun with cheater bots, that; use wallhacks & aimbots to instakill players, kick innocent players out of servers, and spam hate speech & other vulgarities on in-game chat & voice chat. 

There are even reports on the individuals that host these bots committing actual crimes such as; doxxing their opposition’s (usually regular individuals) information, slandering non-consenting parties, hate speech, and have recently been advertising and possibly distributing mature media involving minors.

Why Is This A Big Issue?

TF2 But If A Bot Kills Me I Uninstall The Game
byu/Bia_LaSheouf intf2

So you might be asking yourself? What’s the big deal, kick the bots and continue playing, soon the anti-cheat will permanently ban the accounts.

It’s not that simple, as the bots join in packs to overrun the legitimate player base in a server, after which they call reinforcements to take over the server completely. Lastly, any banned accounts are easily replaced with low costs, as Team Fortress 2 is free-to-play.

So what did Valve do to fix this growing virus? Besides disabling all-chat for new free-to-play accounts or minor adjustments to the voting system, Valve has done nothing of value to combat the bot crisis. This isn’t surprising considering the game hasn’t seen any major updates since 2018 after “The Jungle Inferno” update.

The problem with treadmill work…
byu/G_L_A_Z_E_D__H_A_M intf2

According to Valve, working on anti-cheats is treadmill work. Meaning, working on anti-cheats is useless as hackers can bypass it at a later date. Thus, creating an infinite chase of cat and mouse. 

The problem is that not doing anything about the bot problem and ignoring them is seriously messing up the game and Valve’s reputation in the long run. By the way, what they consider treadmill work is known as “routine maintenance” by the rest of the world.

Why #FixTF2 Should Matter To You?

Some people may be feeling Deja Vu reading this article and they’re not mistaken as there has been a similar FixTF2 movement before, called SaveTF2. After gaining Valve’s attention and response on Twitter, the movement failed as Valve never kept its promise, and the situation only worsened from there.

Why should this movement matter to you as the average gamer? If this kind of behavior isn’t spoken against soon, every long-term multiplayer game may be a victim of Valve’s maintenance philosophy. I mean Ubisoft wants gamers not to own games anymore, Blizzard is too busy “polishing” its games with lawsuits, EA is well … EA, and now Valve too?

I mean take a look at Counter-Strike 2, which is also facing the same problem as Team Fortress 2. Cheaters overrun that game as well, except it’s more detrimental since Counter-Strike matches have a longer duration and you can be penalized if you choose to leave a game due to frustration.

This document made by the YouTuber megascatterbomb, details how bad the bot crisis has gotten. He has resorted to taking matters into his own hands by attempting to create his own anti-cheat software for the game. Alongside this, he also made a public “Mega Cheater Database” to help document cheaters encountered in the game.

We Need Your Help To Defeat The Bots

So hopefully I’ve convinced at least some people to help this “Timeless Masterpiece” in dealing with these “Robotic Reprobates.” If you want to help, these are some things that you could do to help the cause.

1. Sign the petition to show Valve how much we all care about this game,
2. Raise awareness on Twitter(still not calling it X) by using #SaveTF2 or #FixTF2,
3. Raise awareness on other social media sites,
4. Team Fortress players, getting sentimental and trying to make Valve care about their creation won’t work now, instead;
   1. Negatively review the game on Steam to gather Valve’s attention to the issue,
   2. Do not negatively review any other of Valve’s games or any other games/mods in general,
5. Last but not least, do not stop pestering Valve about this issue even after they give out an official reply to us.

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!”

-Rick May voicing one of soldier’s iconic lines.

Gentlemen, I’ll see you in the field. Good day, and godspeed.