The fans of the Steam shooter Team Fortress 2 have had enough: Too many bots and no solutions have provoked a large protest.
For years, the shooter Team Fortress 2, released in 2007, has valiantly maintained its position in the Steam charts despite its age. Right now, it is ranked 10th, with about 79,644 players (via SteamCharts; as of May 28 at 1:30 PM).
This places Team Fortress 2 just below the new survival hit V Rising, but just ahead of Naraka Bladepoint and Elden Ring.
This is the problem: Unfortunately, not only real people are playing the game, but also numerous bots. And it is exactly these bots that make it difficult for passionate fans of Team Fortress 2 to enjoy the game.
This problem has been ongoing for years, yet satisfactory solutions in the form of updates have not come.
Therefore, the community initiated a large-scale call for help directed at developer Valve, which even drew responses from other games like Payday 2 and the voice actor Robin Atkin Downes involved with the game. The hashtag #SaveTF2 went viral, and fans on numerous platforms pleaded: Please, save our game.
Nothing came from Valve or the TF2 team themselves – until now.
The first tweet in almost 2 years addresses those seeking help
This is what TF2 says: The official Twitter account of Team Fortress 2 has reacted with a tweet regarding the current bot situation:
They write: “TF2 Community, we hear you! We love this game and know that you do too. We see how big this problem has become and are working to improve things.”
There isn’t much substance in it initially. Nevertheless, the tweet is something special. Because even those who follow the official TF2 account on Twitter haven’t heard anything for a long time: The last retweet from the account dates back to October 3, 2020, and the last original post was even from July 18, 2020.
Thus, there has been silence on the account for almost 2 years – until now. It’s no wonder that the tweet exploded with over 11,000 comments, more than 55,000 retweets, and over 200,000 likes.
This is how players react: Looking at the comments and the TF2 subreddit, there are basically two reactions.
- On one hand, fans are happy to finally hear something from an official source on the subject. The tweet fuels hope that the situation will now improve and that a solution to the bot problems will be found.
- On the other hand, there is also skepticism that after the tweet, nothing will happen again.
How the situation develops will be seen in the coming weeks and months.
Other games also have problems due to bots. One of these games is the MMORPG Lost Ark, which is also struggling with bots. In mid-May, Lost Ark then presented a plan on how they intended to solve it, and banned numerous bot accounts.
