Team Fortress 2 fans push Valve into releasing another beefy update

pcgamer.com:

Team Fortress 2 got another substantial update(opens in new tab) on July 7, less than a month after Valve's most recent attempt(opens in new tab) to address the game's bot problem. The patch consists of bug fixes alongside some new server settings, listed in full at the bottom of this article.

The more granular server options are certainly nice. The processing time limiter in particular seems like it could help with malicious users. Otherwise, a large amount of bug fixes is always welcome, and it seems to be helping community morale to see Valve take a more active role in the game again. The nearly 800-comment thread for the update is mostly positive, even if there are a few jokes about how minute some of the tweaks are.

Team Fortress 2 is one of Steam's top ten games by concurrents; its daily peak when I checked was over 130,000. For years, the game's been in somewhat of a maintenance mode, with few new content updates, and at the same time there was an uptick in malicious bots joining servers and griefing players with machine-perfect aim. It's not clear why this problem developed in TF2 of all games, but anecdotally, I can confirm it has been a big annoyance, even if it doesn't exactly render the game unplayable.

TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things.May 26, 2022

A boisterous fan campaign seems to have had its intended effect of bringing Valve's attention back on TF2(opens in new tab), with the company directly acknowledging those efforts and putting out more substantial updates than anything we've seen in recent years. It remains to be seen how sustained this newfound support will be, and whether it will adequately