Valve has responded to a growing Community Fortress 2 community move to protect the game’s big boting problem and is assuring players that it is “working to make things better.”
In a tweet today from the official account of Team Fortress 2, Valve said: “Community TF2, we listen to you! We love this game and we know that too. We see how big this problem has become and we are working to to make things better. ” This is the first tweet of the account since July 2020 (not counting a single retweet of an official Valve tweet from October 2020).
TF2 community, we listen to you! We love this game and know you too. We see how big this problem has become and we work to make it better.
– Team Fortress 2 (@TeamFortress) May 26, 2022
This responds to the hashtag # SaveTF2, which the Team Fortress 2 community has adopted in recent days to draw attention to a massive boting issue that has been occurring in the game since 2020. The tag has been adopted by a large number. of Team Fortress 2 streamers and is described as a “peaceful” protest over the state of the game. Robot infestation has caused Team Fortress 2’s casual servers to be saturated with spam, flawless snipers, and more recently robots that can block entire games or orchestrate a coordinated human player. Earlier, community leaders organized an email campaign to contact Valve and the media to shed light on the issue.
While people using the # SaveTF2 tag may have different motives, in large part the group was simply expecting a certain level of recognition from Valve, ideally along with a solution. Others hope that renewed attention to Team Fortress 2 can bring the game back to regular updates, as the large community is still clearly interested. Despite being over a decade old, Team Fortress 2 is still incredibly popular and has had a steady average of 70,000 to 90,000 players simultaneously each month over the past year.
At the moment, it’s not clear what improvements Valve has up its sleeve, but hopefully they can bring Team Fortress 2 to a more stable state.
Rebekah Valentine is an IGN news reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.