Team Fortress 2 Players Speak Out Against Two Year Botting Crisis

thegamer.com:

Team Fortress 2 might still be experiencing incredible success for a game that's 15 (!) years old, but that doesn't mean everything is going smoothly. According to dedicated players, the game has been taken over by bots for a full two years now - and Valve hasn't even acknowledged it.

As outlined in a report from IGN, players have now been dealing with aimbotting, and even racism and homophobia from these bots since around mid-2020. And after two years of silence, fans have had enough. Players have started a coordinated publicity campaign to get Valve's attention, and finally make the much-loved FPS playable once again.

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IGN reports that they received more than 100 messages from TF2 fans this week, pleading with them to cover the state of the game. Many appear to come from YouTuber After Breakfast with SquimJim's channel, who is one of many players raising awareness of the situation.

SquimJim is incredibly critical of Valve's inaction, calling the company out for being "totally okay just putting out community made stuff every few months for some quick money, while the bots spam all sort of terrible stuff in chat". In the video, he continues, "After two years of bots controlling TF2 and making it literally unplayable at times, I think maybe we're at a point where we need to make a big deal out of this. At this point, what do we have to lose?"

"Literally unplayable" certainly isn't an understatement. Anyone who has tried to play TF2 recently will tell you that the game is full of sniper bots, making absolutely no effort to hide that they're cheating. Even if legitimate players team up to get them kicked, they can just join another game as there