Team Fortress 2 players drop review bomb on Valve for ignoring game's bot problem

Cal Jeffrey

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What just happened? Team Fortress 2 just got review-bombed so hard that its "recent review" ranking is now "mostly negative." Despite being 17 years old, the team shooter is still very popular, even more so with its recent update. It still ranks as one of the most-played games on Steam.

However, TF2 has suffered from a bot problem for at least the last five years. The situation has gotten so bad that the Team Fortress community rallied a review bomb to get Valve's attention, hoping it would take a break from counting its Steam dollars and address the problem. Almost 24,000 players chimed in with bad reviews starting as early as May 23.

"It's time Valve does something about the bots," one of the early reviews lamented. "The game has been overrun with people willing to doxx, DDOS, and SWAT anyone who takes action against the problem."

Many posts sport the hashtag "#SaveTF2" and note that they love the game but that Valve needs to do something about cheaters ruining the experience. Players who have invested thousands of hours in the game had the most useful feedback.

"The game itself is wonderful. Hands down one of the best games ever made in the history of gaming, and it still holds up to this very day," wrote TotalChaos, who has logged over 1,500 hours in Team Fortress 2. "But the aimbot problem is getting so bad that not only is Casual literally unplayable (and the fact that people still play it in its state baffles me), real-world crimes are being committed."

The crimes he refers to are the same as those mentioned by other players. While it's hard to nail down the validity of the allegations, multiple players claim that when confronted about cheating, the bad actors have resorted to doxxing, DDoS attacks, and calling in fake bomb threats to get accusers in trouble with the law.

Aside from the dubious anecdotal claims of criminal activity, there is no argument that rampant cheating is ruining a game that hundreds of thousands of players love.

"I am joining in on the review bomb but not out of hate but out of love for this game," wrote a superfan with over 3,000 recorded hours. "Please fix Team Fortress 2 and try to do something instead of tweeting about the problem and go back to doing nothing."

It's not all active aimbots, either. Players complain that hundreds or even thousands of idle bots sit on servers raking up item drops. Even more frustrating is that it's a known problem that Valve has seemingly ignored for years.

The House That Steam Built continues to run the game as a live service, hosting events and patching bugs, but so far, the company has remained silent about the issue and has done nothing to address it.

One fed-up player built a #SaveTF2 website that includes a petition demanding Valve take action against TF2 cheaters. As of this writing, it has gathered over 211,000 signatures. The community hopes that the review bomb and some media attention will be enough to spur the Team Fortress development team into constructive action.

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Valve should back up their talk about how much they love their community and put some actual developer hours into fixing this.

Also, review bombing a free to play game is roughly as effective as punching water.
 
So THAT’S why I never won at TF2!

Jokes aside, I remember when online shooters used to be fun… nowadays people are even getting SWATTED which is just unreal. I harken back mainly to Halo CE on PC (early Minecraft too!), but nowadays you need a PhD to understand the mechanics in newer games, which get changed every month or so with updates.
 
Obsolete graphics...by who's definition? It's a cartoon themed game. The graphics appear to be the least of anybody's worries who actively plays the game.

Buddy probably paid $2k+ to play pretty, overhyped, fad games for 2-3 years tops per title. Face it, most top 10 titles are ancient by today’s standards.
 
From my experience, the most efficient solution is unofficial managed by small communities.
But it is still sad. Competing with real people online is the most fun video gaming can offer.
Maybe, more people need to work together, and create next level anti cheats that are
as hard to avoid as Denuvo once was.
 
I still play TF2 every now and then on community servers only. Skial has good servers and admins monitoring for hackers.

What valve also needs to do is update the UI... parts of UI are so damn small on 2k monitor, it needs scaling ability.
 
This is what I don't understand - If the game is so bad, then why are people playing it then? I feel the issue with cheating won't ever go away.
 
Going by memory, the bots stick out like a sore thumb. If you are on a server that is a majority human players then everyone vote kicks it.

Then there are times you get on a server just filled with bots and they vote kick you.

I will be amazed if valve does something about it.
 
It would be nice if the article just mentioned what a bot problem was or what doxx meant or DDOS or SWAT.
So if I visit a news website dedicated to a subject, lets say farming, and they use well known acronyms like AEI or CAP. I should jump into the comment section complaining they haven't expained all the acronyms they used in their article?
 
So if I visit a news website dedicated to a subject, lets say farming, and they use well known acronyms like AEI or CAP. I should jump into the comment section complaining they haven't expained all the acronyms they used in their article?
If the site is dedicated to that subject then you're right, you'd hope the readers would know most of the acronyms used but the site should have a glossary page somewhere in case a new TLA comes up. If it's a general tech site like this, then I'd expect a simple definition of the acronyms used otherwise the story reads like alphabet soup.
 
On one hand, you'd think they would put in some effort to fix stuff in a game that, presumably, still makes a bit of money. Or set it up to be better managed by the community.

But on the other hand, this MP game is 15+ years old and it allows custom servers. I don't really see a point in complaining when they've supported it well past it's prime.


They've probably seen the actual active player numbers and see it's not worth trying to support it beyond doing so for a very small, loud, dedicated group.
 

There are at least 60,000 bot accounts on TF2.

The neglect is shameful from Valve.. either support the game, open source it so people can support it or take it down.

But of course that doesn't stop them adding in micro transactions in every year, it's disgusting
 
Going by memory, the bots stick out like a sore thumb. If you are on a server that is a majority human players then everyone vote kicks it.

Then there are times you get on a server just filled with bots and they vote kick you.

I will be amazed if valve does something about it.
The cynical part of me says Valve will respond by banning the complainers and go back to counting their money, then when people complain about that, say to them “Where else ya gonna go? GOG?” then ban some more people and get back to counting their money.
 
The cynical part of me says Valve will respond by banning the complainers and go back to counting their money, then when people complain about that, say to them “Where else ya gonna go? GOG?” then ban some more people and get back to counting their money.
Are Valve famous for banning critics?
 
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