Over 200,000 players have now signed the petition for Valve to address the Bot Crisis. Additionally, players have started reviewing Team Fortress 2 bombing on Steam, dropping the game’s recent Reviews score to “Mostly Negative”.
What you need to know
- Team Fortress 2 (TF2), Valve’s 2007 class-based shooter that’s still wildly popular today, has been plagued with a “Bot Crisis” for five years.
- Worlds equipped with aimbot cheats have been flooding TF2’s random matchmaking servers for years, instantly killing other players with headshots, kicking them out of games, and spamming text and voice chat inside the game.
- The people who host these bots have even programmed them to leak personal information in some cases, and one TF2 content creator says the culprits even went so far as to “detect” them by making fake emergency calls to the police in order to for officers to search their home.
- In response to Valve’s radio silence on the matter, players have organized a #FixTF2 movement and created a petition for the developer that has over 150,000 signatures. Below you will find a link where you can sign it.
- Update: The petition now has over 200,000 signatures. Additionally, players have started reviewing Team Fortress 2 bomb, with the game’s latest Steam Reviews score now “Mostly Negative”.
Original article: Valve’s 2007 free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2 (TF2) stands as one of the most popular multiplayer games, as well as one of the best PC games ever made, but for five whole years now, it’s crippled by what fans call the “Crisis of the Worlds” – an endless horde of fake players equipped with aimbot gimmicks. These bots often outmatch matches in TF2 random matches by appearing as the Sniper class and instantly killing anyone they come across with headshots, while also taking advantage of their numbers and Steam’s renaming system to counter them voting by human players.
Since the bot crisis began in late 2019, Valve has only commented on the issue once in 2022, promising it was “working to make things better” after the game’s community got a #SaveTF2 hashtag trending. The problem then improved considerably for a time, but soon returned to become 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 extract personal information of individuals critical of the actions theirs (this video goes into more detail about this). One TF2 content creator even says the bot hosts went so far as to “detect” them, or make a fake emergency call to law enforcement so that officers would be sent to their home. .
Again, Valve has remained radio silent since 2022 despite these illegal actions and the continued proliferation of bots, all while continuing to benefit from TF2’s microtransactions and its item trading economy. This has angered and frustrated fans to the point where they have now united under the banner of a new #FixTF2 movement and created a petition for Valve that has over 150,000 signatures and counting. If you want to sign it yourself, you can do so on the Save.tf website.
This is TF2’s publishing crisis. Most matches are like that. It’s been that way, FOR YEARS! Valve has done nothing. #FixTF2 #SaveTF2 @valvesoftware pic.twitter.com/2GkenKamVnJune 3, 2024
NOT EVEN JUST SECONDS AFTER JOINING A 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 take a stand against Valve’s inaction in dealing with bots. We will showcase the sheer magnitude of this issue to the online masses. Screenshots, videos and personal stories surrounding bots in action, all accompanied by the hashtag #FixTF2,” the movement’s mission statement reads.
“In addition to this is our petition, which will serve to represent the large number of players who have been negatively affected by Valve’s inaction. We plan to forward any signatures to them at a later date. We hope to gain the attention of as many major players in the news gaming media as possible, further shining the spotlight on the issue at hand.
First organized in late May, #FixTF2 (as well as #SaveTF2) is already trending heavily on Twitter (X), with players sharing thousands 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 covering it and her petition.
Speaking as someone who has been a die-hard TF2 player for nearly 15 years, I’m hopeful that a significant, positive, long-lasting change will come from #FixTF2, though I can’t help but feel a little skeptical after a while. The original #SaveTF2 invasion is done. There’s no reason not to try, though, and this time, it’s going to take more than a single “we hear you” post to calm players down and get them to chill.
At the end of the day, I just want one of my all-time favorite games to be playable again outside of player-moderated community servers, especially since despite the bots’ nonsense, it maintains a healthy average number of concurrent players of 80,000-100,000 (according to SteamDB data) — very impressive for a 17-year-old game. Whether or not Valve will respond to this petition or take further action against cheaters remains to be seen; I will update this article if I do, but in the meantime, be sure to sign the petition and post on social media with #FixTF2 if you want to see an end to the bot crisis.