Frustrated Team Fortress 2 Players Push Score To Overwhelmingly Negative

A little over a week ago I made mention that Team Fortress 2 is not dying, but is being intentionally killed, in reference to how the game is currently in a stranglehold courtesy of bad actors and their malicious bot farms. Seriously, trying to play the game these days is futile – shockingly one in eight active players is an aimhacking bot, and once they join a game they will propagate and destroy the lobby.

This lead to another large scale movement by the long-suffering community of TF2, known as #fixtf2 (website: save.tf), to start another push to try and grab the attention Valve – by way of making a lot of noise about the problem. A battleplan was drawn up, a petition was established – and the feedback was published to the one place that Valve should have no issue seeing: Steam.

TF2 has been demoted to the lowest possible review score "Overwhelmingly Negative"

What a fall from grace, and Valve enabled it. #FixTF2 pic.twitter.com/He3Td8NZp1

— Weezy (@WeezyTF2) June 5, 2024

In my previous piece, I mentioned that Valve had stated that they are aware of the issue and taking steps to sort it out, with the sad ending being that nothing had happened since that statement was made all the way back in 2022.

Since then, the problem has become worse and many TF2 community creators have shifted from celebrating the game to instead investigating the rampant bot issues and making endless shocking discoveries – such as a recent revelation that up to 80% of Steam’s reported player numbers for the game could well be bots at any given time.

With the numbers that TF2 reports, that still somehow paints a healthy portion of humans who enjoy and play the game – numbers that would make many modern games jealous. So it’s understandable why the human voices are quite open to calling out in anguish.

And there it is. 200,000 people.
We will be at a quarter mil in no time. Spread the word.

LETS GIVE THE BOTS THE BOOT!#FixTF2 #SaveTF2 https://t.co/1IkaYGF2db pic.twitter.com/IL7W7kz87M

— shork (@ShorKtf2) June 4, 2024

With all this noise, many bystanders have started to question what the big deal is – Team Fortress 2 is an ancient game by many standards, so why aren’t people letting it die? Well, beyond the simple explanation that the game is still intensely fun to play – there is a far darker truth to why the bot issue needs to be addressed.

When people go poking around the root of the issue, looking into who runs these bot farms and what their purpose may be for doing so – the people responsible often retaliate. Doxxing, online harassment campaigns and even going so far as to stage real life bomb threats – leading to police intervention, or ‘SWATTING’ as the kids call it. Imagine joining a TF2 server to see over twenty players with your real life name, spamming the chat with information such as your address and school. Or go a step further, and imagine if those bots also were spamming voice chat with an AI-cloned version of your voice spouting hateful slurs.

In short, Valve doing nothing to solve this problem is just enabling it.

I know it's no longer June 3rd, but don't stop now! We need Valve to do something about the bots. These Bot hosts have DDos, dox, & even SWATTED people IRl—specifically Megascatterbomb. Fix your damn game, Valve. #FixTF2 #SaveTF2 pic.twitter.com/MPsgsxiedv

— Kin julien #fixtf2 (@kinjd1st) June 4, 2024

So of course players are making their thoughts known. And unlike other review bombing sessions, where most hope to return and update their words once a meaningful change is made – the TF2 community is sadly expecting their final, negative thoughts to remain quite accurate for the foreseeable future.

The game as people knew it is dying, thanks to an insidiously toxic rot that has been allowed to take place.

#fixtf2