Valve’s free-to-play class-based shooter, Team Fortress 2, is over 16 years old and yet continues to be one of the most-played games on Steam. However, TF2’s large fanbase is fed up with Valve’s inability or unwillingness to fix the game’s bot issues and has started up a new, large-scale campaign to pressure the developer into doing something.
Stray Almost Feels Like A Modern Valve Game
For years now, Team Fortress 2—originally released in October 2007—has had a serious bot problem. We reported on racist spam bots in 2020 that were filling TF2’s chat with horrible messages. Then, in 2022, we again reported on TF2’s ongoing bot problems. This time, the robots were filling up servers and using their AI skills to destroy human players, making the game almost impossible to play, according to many longtime TF2 fans. Players sent thousands of emails to Valve and outlets like Kotaku and IGN, trying to get attention on the issue. And it worked! Valve, the company behind Steam and Half-Life, acknowledged the bot problem and said it was working on fixing things. That was about two years ago and uh…well, the bots are still here and still making the game hard to play.
Fans want Valve to save Team Fortress 2
On June 3, a new fan campaign started up. And like last time, players are trying to get Valve to step in and do something about all the annoying bots. This time, the “Fix TF2″ campaign is asking for player signatures, which will be delivered to Valve in the future. So far the site has collected over 210,000 signatures and the number keeps climbing.
“There’s no putting it lightly, Team Fortress 2 is in an unacceptable state, and Valve’s apathy in dealing with the issue is nothing short of appalling,” claims a message on the “Fix TF2″ site.
The campaign’s mission statement asks Valve to implement updated anti-cheat measures for the aging TF2, which still makes money every year via microtransactions. The fans also want an open line of communication with Valve about the state of the game and the bot problem.
As someone who has spent years emailing Valve for comments and answers as part of my job and received very few responses, I wish you all good luck with getting them to communicate more. Speaking of which, Kotaku has contacted Valve about TF2’s bots.
To help get Valve’s attention, the website is asking fans to share stories, screenshots, and clips of bots in TF2 on social media. It is also asking fans to share the campaign’s website, too. Nowhere on the site does it ask fans to review-bomb TF2, but that’s also happening right now as well, likely as a result of angry players wanting to get Valve to do something.
Valve has yet to officially respond to the campaign as of June 4, 2024. The official TF2 Twitter account’s last tweet was… the last time Valve replied to fans complaining about bots in 2022. So we shall see if TF2’s second tweet in nearly two years is yet another promise that fixes are coming. Last time that worked to calm fans down. This time…I’m not sure.
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