You may have heard about the botting crisis that has been plaguing Team Fortress 2 in the last few years. After 17 years, the game is still quite active. However, the extremely high number of bots in the game have made it unplayable for a large portion of the playerbase. The community has been asking Valve to do something about it, and finally, it happened. In this article we’ll dive into the #FixTF2 movement, the recent game update by Valve, and the state of the game and its community.

Still Alive

Like many other things created by Valve, Team Fortress 2 is still alive. It has been going strong, or at least going, since 2007. It defined a genre and ushered in a new era of online gaming. You could even say it revolutionized microtransactions in games, for better or worse. But in the last several years, it has been on a noticeable decline in quality. If you have joined any one of the many public servers still online, you may have noticed the game is inundated with bots. Some may seem harmless, posting memes or text spam, but even those are actively harming the experience by depriving a team of an active player. At the worst, they could be actively cheating and ruining entire matches for everyone involved.

Luckily, players have noticed and taken action. The #SaveTF2 or #FixTF2 movement has been picking up steam for a while now, and it is driven by fans who love the game and want to see it thrive. On June 3rd, there was a massive organized push by the community to raise awareness of the current state of TF2. As documented on the website Save.TF, users were urged to share the 2 aforementioned hashtags, as well as that website. In addition, the community was told to share videos, pictures, memes, art, and discussions about the bot problem in as many places as they could.

A Cautious Triumph

Spoiler alert: it worked. At least, it got the attention of Valve, which was the most important first step. The Save.TF website also had a petition in which community members could add their signature. That petition amassed 343,711 signatures, which is extremely impressive for the size of the community.

Around June 26th, Valve took action. The numbers aren’t exact, but from community estimates, around 16,000 accounts were banned. As referenced on this reddit post, user Thewhat on Twitter pointed out a sharp decline in active users around that time. Users also reported a general decrease in bots in casual matches in-game. The bots weren’t entirely gone, but it was a much better experience than it was before. I can personally attest to this, as I’ve played a bit since then and it was quite a smooth experience.

Later in July, Valve released the large Summer Update for TF2 featuring 10 new community maps, tons of cosmetics, and an extensive list of bug fixes and improvements. I have played most of these maps and they’re a blast. What was surprising was all of the fixes, more than they usually have in the average seasonal content update.

However, the community wasn’t going to give up that easily. On the Fix.TF website, the community was urged to keep an eye on the bot situation and make sure Valve keeps them in check. If not, the site says, they recommend withholding all monetary investment from TF2 until the issue has been resolved. It takes continuous effort to maintain a bot-free environment. A single ban wave won’t do it, and bots have an even bigger incentive to spread when the community is happiest and most active.

The Future of TF2

All is well and good now, and I’ve even started playing more. In fact, I haven’t seen TF2 this bot-free in years! However, it remains to be seen if Valve will keep up with the bots. I, personally, am optimistic. I’m going to keep playing in the future, and I hope you all do too.

If you don’t want to rely on Valve to keep the bots out, you do have another option. Spin up a server yourself! Even if casual matchmaking remains free of bad actors, there are plenty of other reasons to want your own server, like custom rules, custom maps, whitelists to allow for custom skirmishes, mods, and so much more. You can get yours up and running in no time right here with Akliz.