Valve responds to TF2 bot issue, says it’s ‘working to make things better’

Valve has responded to a campaign by Team Fortress 2 players who want it to solve the game’s bone scourge that has made it nearly unplayable in recent years. “TF2 Community, we hear you!” the company tweeted of the official Team Fortress 2 Twitter account. “We love this game and know you do too. We see how big this problem has become and are working to improve things.”

Currently, Team Fortress 2 suffers from huge numbers of automated players on its public servers ruining the game for legitimate users. According to IGN† bots will post endless spam in chat, snipe other players with unshakable accuracy, and even completely crash servers. Last year, podcast Answer all an entire episode dedicated to the problems that plague the nearly 15-year-old game.

In response, frustrated fans have gathered around the #SaveTF2 hashtag in an effort to get a response from Valve. “TF2 is in an unplayable state”, a reddit post organizing the protest lectures. It currently has over 38,000 upvotes and 2,410 comments. The campaign advertises itself as ‘a peaceful protest’.

There have been several signs over the years that Valve is taking steps to address the issues. Eurogamer reported that the game was patched in mid-2020 to help with the issues, followed by: more measures next year† But the issues have persisted and there has been little official communication from Valve about the progress. For context: today’s tweet from the official Team Fortress 2 Twitter account was the first in nearly two years.

Despite the bone contamination, Team Fortress 2 is still one of the most popular games on Steam. At the moment it is the sixth most played game on Valve’s servicewith over 70,000 concurrent players, putting it above other popular titles such as Grand Theft Auto V† Lot 2and FIFA22.

Team Fortress 2 is far from the only online title that has had issues with people cheating and hacking the game. Titles including Call of Duty: Warzone and Halo Infinite have been forced to roll out increasingly strong anti-cheat measures themselves, in an effort to keep their games fun for legitimate players.