On September 7th, the 340,000+ signatures of all of you who signed the petition were personally hand delivered to Valve HQ. The signatures were placed in an over 600 page book and it acts as a symbol of good will from the community, but also a reminder of the amount of people counting on Valve to uphold Team Fortress 2. Team Fortress 2 has been nearly free of all cheating bots for over 2 months, the longest period that’s ever been seen in the half-decade since bots were allowed to run rampant in casual servers.
We’d like to thank every single signer for helping us reach this point. Without your signatures we would never have been able to reach this point, and every sign mattered. We hope that with bots gone and the signatures delivered, Team Fortress 2 can remain bot free for the foreseeable future and everyone can enjoy the game we all care so much about!
For the past five years, Team Fortress 2 has become nearly unplayable. The game’s official servers have been overrun by hordes of cheating aimbots while Valve has remained steadfast in their refusal to adequately tackle the problem.
This lack of developer interference has thrown the game into a state of turmoil with seemingly no end in sight.
Despite being aware of the bot crisis, Valve has instead directed their focus towards other ventures, leaving TF2 with insufficient support in its grave time of need. From the outside, Valve appears to be more concerned with generating millions in revenue every month via in-game microtransactions, rather than maintaining a product that should work as expected.
There’s no putting it lightly, Team Fortress 2 is in an unacceptable state, and Valve’s apathy in dealing with the issue is nothing short of appalling.
The aimbots are programmed to join casual servers en-masse, insta-killing and kicking innocent players, intent on ruining their in-game experience. This behavior is where most of the community’s resentment stems from, however, many are unaware that the problem goes far beyond simply trolling and cheating.
The bot hosters are malicious actors, using their aimbots as a vessel to endlessly attack and harass community members. They abuse the in-game text and voice chats to spread the most vile hate speech imaginable, while simultaneously advertising their “bot immunity services” in an attempt to scam the players desperately looking for a solution. They’ve used these same means to dox people’s personal information and broadcast it to the player-base against their will. Bot hosters have even gone so far as to commit actual crimes, such as using AI voice-modifiers to impersonate and slander non-consenting parties, launching persistent DDoS attacks, and have even swatted one of their most ardent critics.
There should be a zero-tolerance policy relating to this kind of conduct, and Valve needs to be held accountable for persistently refusing to acknowledge it.
On June 3rd, we’re all going to collectively group together to take a stand against Valve’s inaction in dealing with the bots. We’re going to showcase the absolute magnitude of this issue to the online masses. Screenshots, videos, and personal stories surrounding the bots in action, all accompanied by the tag #FixTF2. Alongside this is our petition, which will serve to represent the sheer enormity of how many players Valve’s inaction has negatively affected. We plan on forwarding each and every signature to them at a later date. We hope to gain the attention of as many mainstream gaming news outlets as possible, further shining a spotlight on the issue at hand. TF2 is not dying, it is being intentionally killed.
Our mission statement for this campaign is to have Team Fortress 2 achieve a consistently playable state with updated anti-cheat measures that actually function. We’re also asking for an open line of communication with Valve as we work to address this problem.
Team Fortress 2 is a game that has stood the test of time for almost 17 years. It’s still beloved by millions as one of the greatest video games of all time. This makes it all the more shameful that Valve has refused to take substantive measures to eliminate this botting crisis.
It is wholly unacceptable to let such a beloved IP get ravaged by nefarious actors intent on destroying the game adored by so many.
TF2 doesn’t need new content updates, it doesn’t need new microtransactions, it doesn’t need new weapon additions. What TF2 needs is a solution to the bot crisis.
Enough is enough.
On June 3rd, please join our campaign to spread awareness of the bot crisis.You can help by spreading the petition above, promoting the #FixTF2 and #SaveTF2 hashtags, as well as sharing this Save.TF website across any social media you have access to. Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Youtube, TikTok, whatever you want, just let loose and inform as many people as we possibly can. You can share resources about the bot crisis across Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and wherever else you can to inform people.
Within your posts, please hyper-fixate on the bot problem as that is our main concern. Post videos, photos, memes, art, and/or personal anecdotes that best showcase your frustration with this issue. We’d like to transform this perceived petty drama into the massive, game-defining scandal that it is.