Over 200,000 People Sign The Petition To Fix 'Team Fortress 2' Bot Problem Following The '#FixTF2' Protest
The petition organized by the Team Fortress 2 community to get video game publisher Valve to fix the lasting problem with bots in the game has reached 200,000 signatures, and fans are review-bombing TF2 and posting artwork while waiting for Valve's response.
Two years ago, the #SaveTF2 campaign went viral on social media as Team Fortress 2's dedicated fan base shared posters, artwork, videos and other content with the hashtag in an attempt to bring Valve's attention to the bot infestation in the game. While Valve did react to the protest and promised to implement changes, everything that's been done since proved to be not enough.
Just like in 2021, the 17-year-old game has been suffering from bots who not only insta-kill players and spam hateful messages, but they are also used to scam money out of players and dox them, and players are once again trying to get Valve to do something about the issue.
This time, several prominent community members organized a new protest, inviting Team Fortress 2 fans to share artwork, memes, videos and other content with the old #SaveTF2 and new #FixTF2 hashtags, as well as to sign a petition to Valve.
The campaign was partly inspired by World of Warcraft players successfully managing to convince Blizzard to launch vanilla servers for World of Warcraft a few years back.
The online protest took place yesterday, June 3rd, with "Team Fortress 2" and both hashtags trending on social media as players posted art and made posts and videos demonstrating the current issues with the game.
On Steam, players wrote negative reviews (or changed their existing ones), as the game's rating dipped into the negative zone for the first time in its history.
And Valve's 2022 promise to fix the game even got a Community Note saying that Valve didn't do anything to resolve the issue. The note was later removed as Valve did in fact implement a few changes, they just weren't effective in putting an end to the lasting problem.
Now fans are hoping to push the petition above 270,000 signatures — the number the World of Warcraft fans managed to reach back when Blizzard was skeptical about launching the ultimately very successful World of Warcraft Classic.
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Saber THE Totodile
As a few of the YTers have said, its better to make this racket rather then continue to do nothing and be upset. To those who are saying 'they should accept this is a dead game already'; you do realize that they STILL add content for this game right? And it's more then just cosmetics, there are still bugfixes, they added an entirely new map and an entire game-mode just a year ago (and to counter other comments about it being a community map, the point still stands; its new content THEY'VE added to an old game), and just as pointed out-it is still making them money.
The movement before, SaveTF2, DID do something. It got them a tweet, a blog post and a the summer update. It was small, but you are off your rock if you're saying this 'wont do anything'. This one is more coordinated and focused on what the community at large wants: An Anti-Cheat that actually works. They are quite literally not asking for more content, but a solution to the bot problem.
Lev
And then, nothing will change. Valve will just continue to ignore the same exact thing they've heard for years, churn out loot boxes for the sheep to buy and the playerbase'll just be mildly sad about it and keep the playercount up, letting Valve milk them for negative effort. The negative review bomb will be glossed over as "off-topic review activity" and be forgotten in a few months.
It's so funny how much cope the TF2 community can generate considering how clearly they've been left on maintenance mode. The only reason the game isn't shut down is because it's still profitable to milk the delirious playerbase.
Timey16
I think TF2 is overall doomed because the real origin of all the cheaters and bots is because of it's ingame economy: trade items for "real" money, while the game itself is F2P so little to no barrier of entry. A dream for bots.
If they wanted to end bots right now all they'd have to do is to end trading (at least end trading for every new items past a certain date). With the end of trading (especially for money) most of the reason for these bots to exist would die with it. But it would also piss a lot of the regular fan base off because "all the value (that I'd never trade for anyways) is now just GONE!"
Anything else requires too much manpower, too many resources, not just now but for a LONG time. And that just doesn't vibe with Valve's "work on whatever you wanna work" policy. Who wants to support a 15+ year old game FOR YEARS when all you do are bugfixes and cheater hunts on an aging engine when you could actually develop new features for steam or even a new game?
Valve's internal structure is bad for running a "forever game" Like the community wants TF2 to be.
For all intents and purposes TF2 should be considered "end of service". And it would help a lot if Valve finally officially announced that it's in fact: a dead game (development wise) and will receive no further updates. Then at least the community can finally stop being delusional about the state of the game and that it will ever get "fixed".
RWallace514
It seems they're making moves towards that. The 64-bit update, the VScript addition, the already-automated content addition system – seems like future-proofing to allow it to go into EoS mode gracefully.
Pep_dorito
you know what would be funny?
bots voting on the petition to remove bots
Knight Terror
In palpatine's voice: "Ironic"
Bungus Fungus
Bots be like
Nkil