Over 200,000 players have now signed a petition for Valve to address the ‘Bot Crisis’. Additionally, players began reviewing the bombastic Team Fortress 2 on Steam, and the game’s Recent Reviews score dropped to “Mostly Negative”.
What do you need to know
- Team Fortress 2 (TF2), Valve’s 2007 class shooter that is still very popular today, was plagued by the “Bot Crisis” for five years.
- Bots equipped with aimbot cheats have been flooding TF2 Casual matchmaking servers for years, instantly killing other players with sniper shots, kicking them out of games, and spamming in-game text and voice chat.
- The people hosting these bots have even programmed them to leak personal information in some cases, and one TF2 content creator says the culprits have gone so far as to “beat” them with a fake emergency call to the police to get officers to investigate their home.
- In response to Valve’s radio silence on the issue, players organized the #FixTF2 movement and created a developer petition that has over 150,000 signatures. Below is a link where you can sign it.
- Update: The petition now has over 200,000 signatures. Additionally, players have started reviewing Team Fortress 2 as a bomb, with the game’s Recent Reviews score on Steam now being “Mostly Negative”.
Original article: Valve’s popular 2007 free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is one of the most popular multiplayer games and one of the best PC games ever made, but five whole years now it’s crippled by what fans call the “Bot Crisis” – an endless swarm of fake players equipped with aimbot cheats. These bots often overcome matches in TF2’s Casual matchmaking by popping up as the Sniper class and instantly killing anyone they come across with headshots, while simultaneously using their numbers and Steam’s name change system to resist being kicked by humans players.
Since the beginning of the bot crisis in late 2019, Valve has only commented on the matter once in 2022, promising to “work to improve things” after the #SaveTF2 hashtag trended in the gaming community. The problem then improved greatly for a time, but soon subsided and became as severe as before, if not worse. This is the state the game remains in today, with the culprits now also programming their bots to spam TF2’s in-game text and voice chat, impersonate other players, and even leak personal information from individuals critical of their actions (this video covers more details about this). One TF2 content creator even says that bot hosts have gone so far as to “beat” them or make fake 911 calls to the police to get officers sent to their home.
Once again, Valve has remained radio silent since 2022 despite these illegal actions and the continued proliferation of bots, all while continuing to profit from TF2’s microtransactions and item trading economy. This has angered and frustrated fans to the point that they have now come together under the new #FixTF2 movement and created a petition for Valve that has over 150,000 signatures and counting. If you would like to sign it yourself, you can do so on the Save.tf website.
This is the TF2 crisis. Most matches are like that. It’s been like this, FOR YEARS! Valve did nothing. #FixTF2 #SaveTF2 @valvesoftware pic.twitter.com/2GkenKamVnJune 3, 2024
NOT EVEN SECONDS AFTER JOINING THE GAME 💀💀💀#FixTF2 #SaveTF2 pic.twitter.com/DGyw3Z6O3AJune 3, 2024
Here’s a snippet of the current state of TF2#FixTF2 pic.twitter.com/nFKoVJA1nmJune 3, 2024
“On June 3rd we will all band together to stand up against Valve’s inaction in dealing with bots. We will demonstrate the absolute severity of this issue to the online masses. Screenshots, videos and personal stories around bots in action, all accompanied by the #FixTF2 tag,” the statement read about the mission of the movement.
“Additionally, our petition will serve to represent the sheer enormity of how many players have been negatively affected by Valve’s inaction. We plan to forward each signature to them later. We hope to get the attention of as many mainstream players as possible.” gaming news channels, further shedding light on this issue TF2 isn’t dying, it’s being killed on purpose.”
Originally organized at the end of May, #FixTF2 (as well as #SaveTF2) is already going strong on Twitter (X), with players sharing plenty of clips and screenshots showing just how serious the bot crisis is. Posts about the movement are also getting thousands of upvotes and views on the TF2 subreddit, as well as YouTube videos discussing him and his petition.
Speaking as someone who’s been a hardcore TF2 player for nearly 15 years, I hope some meaningful, positive, long-lasting change comes with #FixTF2, although I can’t help but feel a little skeptical after how little the original #SaveTF2 push was completed. Still, there’s no reason not to try, and this time it’s going to take more than one “we hear you” post to reassure players and get them to calm down.
Ultimately, I want one of my all-time favorite games to be truly replayable outside of player-moderated community servers, especially since despite the bot nonsense it maintains a healthy average concurrent player count of 80,000-100,000 (according to SteamDB) — very impressive for 17 year old game. Whether Valve will respond to this petition or take further action against cheaters remains to be seen; If so, I’ll update this article, but in the meantime, make sure you sign the petition and #FixTF2 on social media if you want to see an end to the bot crisis.