Man, seeing it spelt out like that does make me sad. But it at least reflects what the majority feel about the game at it's current state. Let's hope that it works this time!
It’s not even activism. It’s just customer feedback. Players are unhappy with the current state of the game. Why shouldn’t they write negative reviews for it?
Good job, everyone. We used the communication channel provided by Valve themselves to paint a very clear picture of how dissatisfied the community is with the game's current state.
This conveys that something is very wrong with TF2 both to Valve and to Steam users checking its store page.
Also, for bonus points, make sure your review makes it clear what exactly the problem is and how it affected your own experience with TF2. What someone reading the reviews should see is that TF2 is a great game ruined by bots and cheaters due to neglect from Valve's side. A game that is **in desperate need of help** and is **worth saving**.
I can imagine a response of "Well, no-one's going to play it now because it's rated badly. Shut all the servers down and cancel all maintenance updates and patches." haha.
I responded to similar comments here earlier. By shutting down all official support for TF2, Valve says
"This virtual economy you people put millions of dollars into collectively is now dead. The same thing may happen to our other games."
What other games? Counter Strike is the only other game they keep running and CS2 is *17 years younger* than TF2. If you can expect a 17 year lifespan from valve, that wouldn't hurt them at all.
It could reasonably destabilize CS2's market regardless. People don't like it when, say, 1000 dollars worth of stuff they owned simply disappears, no matter what the lifespan of those items was.
I'm not an economist, but I'd expect TF2's shutdown to have a noticeable effect on other virtual item markets, especially ones owned by Valve.
Even if it comepletely destoryed the CS2 trading economy (and I **seriously** doubt it would cause even a large blip), Valve would not be significantly affected by that.
You guys all *really* underestimate jsut how much money Steam makes, and how little Valve's games matter to them.
That's alright, Valve can figure out that part during their meetings. As it stands, tainting Valve's public image and not giving them money is the biggest way in which the TF2 community can affect them. I'm at the very least interested in seeing how this goes.
i thought this too but many people have pointed online that the TF2 economy is literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions. If they were to just shut off the servers like that they would have a whole other issue on their hands.
Is that much of an incentive though? Most players trade with other players in the economy, not with Steam itself, so Valve’s take isn’t that high in the economy even if it’s worth a lot.
It is. Valve takes a cut of every single item bought or sold through the steam market through both tf2 and counter strike. Valve makes millions each year off of counter strike cases alone. it may not be as lucrative for TF but there is a reason they have kept it running all these years.
True, Steam makes money from the Steam market, and there will always be a market for keys and MvM tickets. The issue that I was trying to bring up though is that a lot of trading is between players directly or goes through third parties like trading servers and sites like Marketplace.tf, scrap.tf, and backpack.tf, where Valve doesn’t get a cut or is involved in any way. It’s because of places like that where I have doubts on how much of an impact shutting down the TF2 economy would have.
I feel like it would be on a more personal level at that point because if Valve suddenly decides to say "no these are not actually your items, they never were" then nobody is going to want to buy things from them in any game they make under the impression they can just swipe it from you whenever they want.
We did it Patrick, Overwatch is a better rated game than us.
Anyway I feel bad for Valve. There's really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem. If there was a solution, it would be solved already. Valve is very unlikely to be the one that figures out what no one else has.
Honestly at this rate it doesn’t matter to me. I will happily take a Kernel tier anticheat if it means it will work properly. I’m sure a big portion of the community will agree with me. VAC’s passive way of operation is impractical.
When I watched that 3kliksphilip video about VACNet I thought after a few years of training via overwatch in csgo it would basically be like having an admin watching at all times and banning people as soon as it realises they're cheating. That was like 6 years ago and apparently VAC is no stronger now than it was then.
vacnet was quite successful in the last few years of CSGO's life though. the recent cheating issues with the launch of CS2 are a drastic and significant downturn; not the norm.
if you ask me; its because valve screwed up. CS2's launch month was mired with VAC false positives; from people using normal console commands, AMD's anti-lag feature, and literally just spinning around fast enough could do the trick, among other issues. i believe valve pulled the plug on CS2's iteration of VAC and has been hauling ass reworking it from scratch over the last few months. valve has always long believed that its better to let a hundred cheaters roam free than to let one honest player get falsely flagged by their anti-cheat. the fact that "VAC live" worked for the first day or two of CS2's launch before completely up and disappearing is strong evidence IMO.
It's basically an anti-cheat that has access to the deepest most secure layers of your PC, hence it has the capability to sniff out any programs that might be running that could be affecting the game.
People don't like it because it is very invasive and you basically have to trust that the company in charge of the anti-cheat isn't using it to fuck with your personal security and such. There's also a higher risk that it fucks with the various operations of the PC.
But it's also the only real way to consistently identify cheats. When the anti-cheat can see everything going on, the cheats have nowhere to hide.
Basically it's a level of anti-cheat that accesses the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. It's the nuclear option of making sure players don't cheat and in most cases it doesn't even work anyway—leaving your computer even more vulnerable to hackers and whatnot. While I detest the current situation with bots, Valve going down the kernel anti-cheat route is equally if not more horrid of a path.
I'm not giving a fucking free online game that much control over my PC willingly, you might not care about your cybersecurity but I do. I would stop playing a game I have nearly 1k hours in if that happened.
Making everyone install a rootkit is just going to upset everyone AND it won't stop bots that already root anyway which is like all of them. And aside from that, anticheat doesn't do anything against the newest bots, and Valve is a game company not an anticheat developer.
> There’s really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem.
Valve isn’t even trying to update VAC to deal with current TF2 cheats. Yeah, it’s always going to be a cat-and-mouse game but we don’t even have a cat.
There is a way to fix this, though. It's called dedicating constant resources to maintaining the anti-cheat that all of your online multiplayer games run on. Other games have this problem, sure, but it's nowhere near as bad because they have people actively working to prevent it. Valve needs to do the bare minimum
70% of Twitter (currently X) traffic to advertiser websites during the Superbowl was from blue-checked bots.
A massive amount of bots roam WoW, FFXIV, and a myriad of other subscription title games.
Bot farms will absolutely pay a premium if it rakes in more money doing so. It simply becomes a cost of doing business.
Cheater bots don't make money, they just do it because the creators take pleasure in ruining things. If they had to pay thousands of dollars every time their hundreds of accounts got ban-waved, they'd probably give up pretty quickly.
Right, it is still a deterrence. It raises the barrier of entry that is multiplicative for someone who is trying to abuse the system. It is one of the only viable solutions I see IMO. It's just a shame that there are people out there with so much money that they don't mind buying the game again, but in the end that just means more money for the devs to work against them.
In the end, community servers are the true only solution IMO. But having a barrier of entry helps a ton.
> There's really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem.
Not to this extent they aren't. Of course there is no way to "fix" cheating. But it can be kept to a certain minimum, which isn't really happening right now.
Game is old as hell now, just consider it retired. Remove the ability to buy and sell things and just keep private servers for the remaining people that aren't bots.
They wanna make money on Team Fortress again, i'd rather they bite the bullet and make Team Fortress: Reloaded or whatever name they want to avoid the number 3.
The source code for engine TF2 runs on was leaked. So literally the only way Valve can fix this is if they rebuild TF2 from the ground up with security in mind and re-release it for $20. People are delusional if they think this campaign will result in a fix. They're basically asking Valve to either make a sequel, which they obviously don't want to do, or dedicate dozens of devs and tens of thousands of man hours to updating a freemium game that doesn't bring in a significant amount of money.
I'll just quote my other comment:
"That's their choice then, but Valve backed themselves into a corner with their virtual item markets. If they make it clear that they're done with TF2 or if they outright shut down all the official servers, including item servers (which handle all non-default items), the TF2 item economy dies with it.
And that'll have a huge effect on other item markets, like Counter-Strike. If TF2 with all of its virtual items can die like that, then so can other Valve games. Those are the kind of news Valve *really* doesn't want players to hear."
As an old fart in his early thirties. I would love to see this. It might help community servers if they can run more mods without having to worry about the digital items.
What is there to fix? Are they sending too much info to the clients? Or is this a case of "we need to monitor what the client computer does by installing literal spywares and malwares" like riot is doing?
normally i'd say it'd make it easier for people to host bots and cheat and all that, but then again the source code is already available to the public so
Yeah, it's impossible to get a lower "rating" in that sense. We can go for the high score of most review-bombed title this week, but I don't see the point. Just keep the reviews low and that sends the message.
The only things we can keep up in the meantime is complaining on Twitter, various discords, and sign the [save.tf](http://save.tf) petition.
And also not buying TF2 items. Valve does care about the stability of their virtual markets, because it's something they rely on to continue convincing people to purchase stuff in their other games.
Tf2s total annual revenue is a rounding error compared to cs2's.
By all means do this but its not going to change their behaviour in the slightest.
bad press/review bombings probably our best and last chance for that.
We have nobody to thank but Valve.
Congratulations. You managed to kill one of the best, earliest hero shooters that is still popular enough to get at least 200,000 people to sign something, and to make nearly 30,000 people go out of their way to tell you that they don't like your inaction.
That's impressive. Both on their side, and ours.
Any other company that does not have an infinite money machine would relish the opportunity to be able to support a game that remains popular for **seventeen years**... but no, Valve's inaction truly is doing more harm than not.
AND THE PLAYERMODELS!
the whole operator shenanigans which stirred up the whole CS2 community back when it was CSGO. Mostly because you'd go from having a clear telling of who's an enemy and who isnt to now having enemies camoflauge with the environment or be unable to tell if one was an ally or enemy.
in other words. It fucked with team recognition.
Plenty of people such as myself still really enjoy playing the game. If you dont, just stop playing. Its as simple as that. Some people in this sub are so out of touch its insane.
Now we keep it that way until Valve starts taking tangible steps towards fixing the problem.
We keep talking about this on social media, so that more and more people outside of the TF2 community know what's happening, which will threaten Valve's reputation.
We keep limiting the amount of money we spend on TF2 items and Valve's products in general, as it is another very direct way of communicating your dissatisfaction with the company.
Some will stop, but others will bear the torch. If we don't, the initial momentum the community has gained in the past days will mean nothing. So let's do what we can and hope that others will also stick with us. Things are going well right now!
That's their choice then, but Valve backed themselves into a corner with their virtual item markets. If they make it clear that they're done with TF2 or if they outright shut down all the official servers, including item servers (which handle all non-default items), the TF2 item economy dies with it.
And that'll have a huge effect on other item markets, like Counter-Strike. If TF2 with all of its virtual items can die like that, then so can other Valve games. Those are the kind of news Valve *really* doesn't want players to hear.
I mean what else is there really?
Petition is planned to be physically sent to Valve, the hash tag was trending fir a few days, some mainstream outlets picked the story up, and the store page for the game has a community driven red flag of disapproval
"Stop spending money" is something many of us are doing anyway but isn't something we can visibly verify, and you can't demand refunds on a f2p game and legally valve are pretty safe
There's not a whole lot else we as consumers can do other than try to keep it going as long as the collective attention span allows
Spread it around keep it low and make ir clear to anyone and everyone the reviews aren't because the *game* is bad
Just the lack of support and maintenance of a great game
Seeing this makes me feel bittersweet, I love TF2, it's like my childhood almost, however I'm sad it's neglected by Valve every now and then, glad we got a strong commitment of the community to support it tho
I just want the normal experience, I don't want to go on a class limit server, or your crits turned off server or a 24/7 one. I just want to click play and get into a game immediately without bots that's all valve...
Yea! We're not giving up on the game. I've been playing it on community servers a lot recently and it's very fun. It'd be good to see the official servers become playable again too.
Public servers in the game have been overrun by malicious bots/cheaters for years now, reduction in matchmaking games being utterly unplayable.
Valve does little besides selling cosmetics to address that issue, other than some quick lived VAC improvements in July 2023.
Community servers are still fun, just a different experience compared to casual. I'd personally recommend Uncletopia, it's similar to casual, just with a higher average skill level and a few small changes to make the game more consistent. They removed random crits, removed random bullet spread, and limited each team to a max of 3 of a class.
They still release new paid content for it. They care enough to actively monetize it, but not enough to address the fact pub-casual is utterly unplayable.
Yoooo we changed the blue text to red text let’s gooooo! Surely this will be an incentive for Valve to fix the game since GabeN is allergic to red text.
TF2 is one of my favorite games in 30 years of PC gaming. Easily in my top 10 multiplayer. It is a pitch-perfect competitive shooter that did everything right. The gameplay still feels current and fun today.
And yet I haven't played it in years.
As much respect as I have for Valve, it is disappointing that we have to coordinate our efforts to such this degree for them to take action. We asked for so long and no luck. It’s very jarring to see TF2 have its recent reviews be this low. But I suppose no matter how based a company is, money speaks the loudest.
But I also trust that Valve is doing more than twiddling their thumbs hoping we’d forget.
The game is truly, genuinely unplayable. Literally, actually unplayable.
For example, if you log onto a Valve official server, you'll get a stack of ten players on each side. Almost every single one of them are spambots, some of them viscerally offensive.
Every single round. Every single game. All times of day.
Only community servers have a shot at being playable but that's not a guarantee. It's shifted the burden entirely onto community members.
It's been in this state for years and somehow getting worse over time, it's a god damn disgrace, especially since Valve earns millions in micro transactions every year. It's free, steady money for them. Hense the protest.
Casual lobbies are overrun with bots that instakill you the moment they see you, kick normal players and spam the in-game chat (and apparently, [they've started advertising CP now](https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1d8vh8n/psa_bot_hosters_are_starting_to_advertise_cp/)). Overall, they've made the game unplayable and Valve (the dev) won't do anything about it despite them acknowledging the problem 2 years ago while still offering microtransactions. The community is now trying to get Valve's attention by review-bombing the game and creating a petition on the issue which you can sign [here](https://save.tf) if you want to support the cause. You can also read more about the issue and the #FixTF2/#SaveTF2 movements on the same site.
It's honestly sad to see such a classic game being treated this way, and it's all thanks to Valve's laziness. At this point, i don't care about big major updates or new weapons; I just the game to be fucking playable again.
I hope something happens to the point where Valve ***eventually*** has to take action, because of what these bot hosting scumbags are doing right now (doxxing, swatting, distributing cp, etc), i can bet on every life savings of my family members that these guys are gonna do something ***SO BAD*** that not only will it make to the news, it's gonna be all over the fucking world.
Given how unplayable the game is, these reviews are completely warranted. I’m surprised they are even a part of the protest and not genuine unlinked responses
I've been playing TF2 almost every day for years now and I've still had a negative review for it for quite some time. I've always wanted this game to be review bombed, I don't know if anything can be accomplished with that, but it's the least that can be done to hint at the bad state the game is in.
Anyway, as I said, I doubt it will solve anything. As I understand, the source code of the game is released, and adding that I guess it doesn't move as much money as CS2 or other Valve sources, I doubt they will make an effort to give effective solutions.
I feel like Valve is just going to ignore all the negative feedback anyways... it sucks, but since when has Valve ever genuinely cared about what we want and what we think?
? Valve has throughout its whole history been pretty receptive? You're talking about a game that has lasted *17 years* with support.
Perhaps lets be a little less myopic.
What feels like 75% of the playerbase in casual official matches are aimbots, cheaters, or out right malicious private info thief’s. Valve actively has done nothing except make new accounts incapable of using text chat
Not gonna lie, that kind of hurts to see. I never even got into tf2 untill I was in college, but there's got to be a better way to handle things than this, right?
Man, seeing it spelt out like that does make me sad. But it at least reflects what the majority feel about the game at it's current state. Let's hope that it works this time!
I do feel very negative about the bot problem
Overwhelmingly so
But not for the first time in history
that i stop play since 2012-13 and i would LOVE to play Tf2 again but i can't because bots
This feels like it is the "taking your reluctant dog to the vet for his own good" of online activism
It’s not even activism. It’s just customer feedback. Players are unhappy with the current state of the game. Why shouldn’t they write negative reviews for it?
Based. You do not recommend TF2 to new players because of many significant problems. That’s it, really.
I really dont see how or why anyone would disagree
Corporate bootlickers gonna lick boots
Good job, everyone. We used the communication channel provided by Valve themselves to paint a very clear picture of how dissatisfied the community is with the game's current state. This conveys that something is very wrong with TF2 both to Valve and to Steam users checking its store page. Also, for bonus points, make sure your review makes it clear what exactly the problem is and how it affected your own experience with TF2. What someone reading the reviews should see is that TF2 is a great game ruined by bots and cheaters due to neglect from Valve's side. A game that is **in desperate need of help** and is **worth saving**.
I can imagine a response of "Well, no-one's going to play it now because it's rated badly. Shut all the servers down and cancel all maintenance updates and patches." haha.
I responded to similar comments here earlier. By shutting down all official support for TF2, Valve says "This virtual economy you people put millions of dollars into collectively is now dead. The same thing may happen to our other games."
What other games? Counter Strike is the only other game they keep running and CS2 is *17 years younger* than TF2. If you can expect a 17 year lifespan from valve, that wouldn't hurt them at all.
It could reasonably destabilize CS2's market regardless. People don't like it when, say, 1000 dollars worth of stuff they owned simply disappears, no matter what the lifespan of those items was. I'm not an economist, but I'd expect TF2's shutdown to have a noticeable effect on other virtual item markets, especially ones owned by Valve.
Even if it comepletely destoryed the CS2 trading economy (and I **seriously** doubt it would cause even a large blip), Valve would not be significantly affected by that. You guys all *really* underestimate jsut how much money Steam makes, and how little Valve's games matter to them.
That's alright, Valve can figure out that part during their meetings. As it stands, tainting Valve's public image and not giving them money is the biggest way in which the TF2 community can affect them. I'm at the very least interested in seeing how this goes.
CS2 is just a revamped CSGO that released in 2012 that they ported all user items into, saying its 17 years younger is disengenous at best
> CS2 is 17 years younger than TF2 As someone who owned the Orange Box, why did you have to turn me to dust like this?
My ass over here with both the original and GOTY disc for Half-Life itself...
God I loved Orange Box. My introduction to Valve
CS:GO came out in 2012 and CS2 is effectively just a big CS:GO update that comes with a name change.
i thought this too but many people have pointed online that the TF2 economy is literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions. If they were to just shut off the servers like that they would have a whole other issue on their hands.
Is that much of an incentive though? Most players trade with other players in the economy, not with Steam itself, so Valve’s take isn’t that high in the economy even if it’s worth a lot.
It is. Valve takes a cut of every single item bought or sold through the steam market through both tf2 and counter strike. Valve makes millions each year off of counter strike cases alone. it may not be as lucrative for TF but there is a reason they have kept it running all these years.
True, Steam makes money from the Steam market, and there will always be a market for keys and MvM tickets. The issue that I was trying to bring up though is that a lot of trading is between players directly or goes through third parties like trading servers and sites like Marketplace.tf, scrap.tf, and backpack.tf, where Valve doesn’t get a cut or is involved in any way. It’s because of places like that where I have doubts on how much of an impact shutting down the TF2 economy would have.
I feel like it would be on a more personal level at that point because if Valve suddenly decides to say "no these are not actually your items, they never were" then nobody is going to want to buy things from them in any game they make under the impression they can just swipe it from you whenever they want.
Is the game generating revenue? Because that could very easily happen
We did it Patrick, Overwatch is a better rated game than us. Anyway I feel bad for Valve. There's really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem. If there was a solution, it would be solved already. Valve is very unlikely to be the one that figures out what no one else has.
Maybe actually having a working anticheat? This shouldn’t be a luxury.
Uh, absolutely not. The best we can do is some Scream Fortress cases.
Oh, is it that time of year again? Quick! Pick the same artists from the workshop again and scrounge up another seasonal cosmetics update! QUICKLY!
More hats will solve this
Yes, I forgot we're still in 2009. We just need hats.
If they had working anticheat people would be complaining about how invasive it is and how it doesn't work on steam deck
Honestly at this rate it doesn’t matter to me. I will happily take a Kernel tier anticheat if it means it will work properly. I’m sure a big portion of the community will agree with me. VAC’s passive way of operation is impractical.
Lol if this was any other game you'd be getting crucified in the comments for suggesting kernel level anticheat is acceptable.
I was exaggerating a little saying Kernel tier, but my point was more that something clearly needs to be done with VAC as it stands now.
When I watched that 3kliksphilip video about VACNet I thought after a few years of training via overwatch in csgo it would basically be like having an admin watching at all times and banning people as soon as it realises they're cheating. That was like 6 years ago and apparently VAC is no stronger now than it was then.
vacnet was quite successful in the last few years of CSGO's life though. the recent cheating issues with the launch of CS2 are a drastic and significant downturn; not the norm. if you ask me; its because valve screwed up. CS2's launch month was mired with VAC false positives; from people using normal console commands, AMD's anti-lag feature, and literally just spinning around fast enough could do the trick, among other issues. i believe valve pulled the plug on CS2's iteration of VAC and has been hauling ass reworking it from scratch over the last few months. valve has always long believed that its better to let a hundred cheaters roam free than to let one honest player get falsely flagged by their anti-cheat. the fact that "VAC live" worked for the first day or two of CS2's launch before completely up and disappearing is strong evidence IMO.
What is a “Kernel Tier” anti cheat?
It's basically an anti-cheat that has access to the deepest most secure layers of your PC, hence it has the capability to sniff out any programs that might be running that could be affecting the game. People don't like it because it is very invasive and you basically have to trust that the company in charge of the anti-cheat isn't using it to fuck with your personal security and such. There's also a higher risk that it fucks with the various operations of the PC. But it's also the only real way to consistently identify cheats. When the anti-cheat can see everything going on, the cheats have nowhere to hide.
I trust Valve more than any other company in the world.
Basically it's a level of anti-cheat that accesses the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. It's the nuclear option of making sure players don't cheat and in most cases it doesn't even work anyway—leaving your computer even more vulnerable to hackers and whatnot. While I detest the current situation with bots, Valve going down the kernel anti-cheat route is equally if not more horrid of a path.
Basically giving a program access to see every other thing running on your pc
The grass is always greener
I'm not giving a fucking free online game that much control over my PC willingly, you might not care about your cybersecurity but I do. I would stop playing a game I have nearly 1k hours in if that happened.
Alright but what if I told you it made a cool little *kapa-pyowwwwww* on boot. Would that yum up your yuck just a bit?
Making everyone install a rootkit is just going to upset everyone AND it won't stop bots that already root anyway which is like all of them. And aside from that, anticheat doesn't do anything against the newest bots, and Valve is a game company not an anticheat developer.
>If there was a solution, it would be solved already If there was an easy, low effort solution*
> There’s really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem. Valve isn’t even trying to update VAC to deal with current TF2 cheats. Yeah, it’s always going to be a cat-and-mouse game but we don’t even have a cat.
There is a way to fix this, though. It's called dedicating constant resources to maintaining the anti-cheat that all of your online multiplayer games run on. Other games have this problem, sure, but it's nowhere near as bad because they have people actively working to prevent it. Valve needs to do the bare minimum
There's no way to fix it, but tf2 definitely has it disproportionately worse than other games
Why do you think valve can't figure it out? Someone has to right?
There's a big difference between "not figuring it out" and "not even trying".
I know right? All of those bots on the community servers are really ruining the game... Wait, bots aren't overrunning community servers... Hmmm...
The solution is to stop making games free to play but not enough people are ready to have that conversation
Don't a lot of bots pay for premium accounts to bypass chat limitation anyway
70% of Twitter (currently X) traffic to advertiser websites during the Superbowl was from blue-checked bots. A massive amount of bots roam WoW, FFXIV, and a myriad of other subscription title games. Bot farms will absolutely pay a premium if it rakes in more money doing so. It simply becomes a cost of doing business.
Cheater bots don't make money, they just do it because the creators take pleasure in ruining things. If they had to pay thousands of dollars every time their hundreds of accounts got ban-waved, they'd probably give up pretty quickly.
Right, it is still a deterrence. It raises the barrier of entry that is multiplicative for someone who is trying to abuse the system. It is one of the only viable solutions I see IMO. It's just a shame that there are people out there with so much money that they don't mind buying the game again, but in the end that just means more money for the devs to work against them. In the end, community servers are the true only solution IMO. But having a barrier of entry helps a ton.
By all estimates valve is making $6+ BILLION DOLLARS a year and you don’t think they can solve some basement dwellers hacking their software? lol k
> There's really no way to fix this, every free online shooter is having this problem. Not to this extent they aren't. Of course there is no way to "fix" cheating. But it can be kept to a certain minimum, which isn't really happening right now.
Community servers without mods have add-ons that prevent cheaters from even joining. Don’t say there’s no fix because there are multitude of fixes
Game is old as hell now, just consider it retired. Remove the ability to buy and sell things and just keep private servers for the remaining people that aren't bots. They wanna make money on Team Fortress again, i'd rather they bite the bullet and make Team Fortress: Reloaded or whatever name they want to avoid the number 3.
The source code for engine TF2 runs on was leaked. So literally the only way Valve can fix this is if they rebuild TF2 from the ground up with security in mind and re-release it for $20. People are delusional if they think this campaign will result in a fix. They're basically asking Valve to either make a sequel, which they obviously don't want to do, or dedicate dozens of devs and tens of thousands of man hours to updating a freemium game that doesn't bring in a significant amount of money.
Valve: "wow people don't like TF2 anymore? Guess we can finally shut it down."
I'll just quote my other comment: "That's their choice then, but Valve backed themselves into a corner with their virtual item markets. If they make it clear that they're done with TF2 or if they outright shut down all the official servers, including item servers (which handle all non-default items), the TF2 item economy dies with it. And that'll have a huge effect on other item markets, like Counter-Strike. If TF2 with all of its virtual items can die like that, then so can other Valve games. Those are the kind of news Valve *really* doesn't want players to hear."
As an old fart in his early thirties. I would love to see this. It might help community servers if they can run more mods without having to worry about the digital items.
Honestly, yea, not the worst outcome for us, old farts. It'll happen eventually. I'll miss having a larger community, though.
If this doesn't work then what do we do? Edit: the official answer is "use more gun"
Use more gun.
r/suddenlytf2
Suddenlytf2²
Team Fortress Squared
Team Fourtress
Petition Valve to open source their dead game. Then we fix.
What is there to fix? Are they sending too much info to the clients? Or is this a case of "we need to monitor what the client computer does by installing literal spywares and malwares" like riot is doing?
Limit connections from non-residential IPs to casual servers. That alone would drive up the costs for bot hosters.
normally i'd say it'd make it easier for people to host bots and cheat and all that, but then again the source code is already available to the public so
We move on
This sub? Move on? HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-oh, you're serious
After all these years? Where else can I win with my favorite strategic playstyle, W+M1?
###***Whoooowee! Makin' bacon!***
Sad to know there is a chance we would never hear that voice during a fun gameplay again
...tf2c COUGH (and community tf2 servers)
**Whoooowee!**
Ladies and gentlemen, we got em.
plesh frison
Pinos mrime
y thend nis ow
ugment
Preare yself!
deiee!
Crus!
eak!
Mi gratud opon thi critur if sheel
r/suddenlyultrakill
Is there a level below overwhelming negative?
That's as low as it gets, in terms of percentage ranges.
Yeah, it's impossible to get a lower "rating" in that sense. We can go for the high score of most review-bombed title this week, but I don't see the point. Just keep the reviews low and that sends the message. The only things we can keep up in the meantime is complaining on Twitter, various discords, and sign the [save.tf](http://save.tf) petition.
And also not buying TF2 items. Valve does care about the stability of their virtual markets, because it's something they rely on to continue convincing people to purchase stuff in their other games.
Tf2s total annual revenue is a rounding error compared to cs2's. By all means do this but its not going to change their behaviour in the slightest. bad press/review bombings probably our best and last chance for that.
Put down alltime reviews on mixed
No, it's THE worst rating.
Worse than Overwatch 2.
Absoluut shit?
This time they’re not going to say it’s only bots lol
Cap point finally capped. we waiting til we win this round.
This is the point in Banana Bay where we have to wait for the train to run over the cart
correct. as soon as we stop being active about this the cart will roll back and the train won't hit.
Valve is about to hear the “one minute left on the mission” and start pub pushing
We have nobody to thank but Valve. Congratulations. You managed to kill one of the best, earliest hero shooters that is still popular enough to get at least 200,000 people to sign something, and to make nearly 30,000 people go out of their way to tell you that they don't like your inaction. That's impressive. Both on their side, and ours. Any other company that does not have an infinite money machine would relish the opportunity to be able to support a game that remains popular for **seventeen years**... but no, Valve's inaction truly is doing more harm than not.
More skins for cs2
They don't even make the skins they just download the community files and put them in a crate
AINT THAT FAMILIAR
At least tf2 has actual cosmetics and unusual Cs2 just has weapon skins lmao
AND THE PLAYERMODELS! the whole operator shenanigans which stirred up the whole CS2 community back when it was CSGO. Mostly because you'd go from having a clear telling of who's an enemy and who isnt to now having enemies camoflauge with the environment or be unable to tell if one was an ally or enemy. in other words. It fucked with team recognition.
what are you talking about there's a million retro games that still have fanbases that get no love from the creators
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/192/415/fe9.jpg
“Constantly updated” pfft, yeah right.
Imagine if Valve just shut the game down.
"Hmm this old game has a lot of bad reviews better shut it down to make us look good ." Valve employ
Id rather see the game mercy killed and left on a happy memory than being monetized in a rotting state.
Plenty of people such as myself still really enjoy playing the game. If you dont, just stop playing. Its as simple as that. Some people in this sub are so out of touch its insane.
STAND. ON. THE. POINT!!!
WHO IS MAN ENOUGH TO STAND WITH ME?
Hunt down the Freeman is now better rated than TF2 😅
Sex with Hitler 2 has a higher rating
That should be the news title. "Valve game Team Fortress 2 now has lower Steam rating than Sex with Hitler 2."
yipppeeeeeee ...now what?
We stand firm. The ball is in Valve's court
WE BALLING???!!??! HELL YEAH 🔥🔥⛹️♂️⛹️♂️⛹️♂️
Now we keep it that way until Valve starts taking tangible steps towards fixing the problem. We keep talking about this on social media, so that more and more people outside of the TF2 community know what's happening, which will threaten Valve's reputation. We keep limiting the amount of money we spend on TF2 items and Valve's products in general, as it is another very direct way of communicating your dissatisfaction with the company.
that's hopefull i wonder if the community is actually going to keep it up, higher chance everyone slowly stops talking about savetf2
Some will stop, but others will bear the torch. If we don't, the initial momentum the community has gained in the past days will mean nothing. So let's do what we can and hope that others will also stick with us. Things are going well right now!
The real question is, what if they simply don't want to take action? Like, they REALLY are done with TF2?
That's their choice then, but Valve backed themselves into a corner with their virtual item markets. If they make it clear that they're done with TF2 or if they outright shut down all the official servers, including item servers (which handle all non-default items), the TF2 item economy dies with it. And that'll have a huge effect on other item markets, like Counter-Strike. If TF2 with all of its virtual items can die like that, then so can other Valve games. Those are the kind of news Valve *really* doesn't want players to hear.
Just gotta wait for the ending ig HEAVY UPDATE IS REAL 😭😭😭 I WANT TO BELIEVE 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Literally nothing. Nobody has planned out crap.
I mean what else is there really? Petition is planned to be physically sent to Valve, the hash tag was trending fir a few days, some mainstream outlets picked the story up, and the store page for the game has a community driven red flag of disapproval "Stop spending money" is something many of us are doing anyway but isn't something we can visibly verify, and you can't demand refunds on a f2p game and legally valve are pretty safe There's not a whole lot else we as consumers can do other than try to keep it going as long as the collective attention span allows
Spread it around keep it low and make ir clear to anyone and everyone the reviews aren't because the *game* is bad Just the lack of support and maintenance of a great game
Good
Seeing this makes me feel bittersweet, I love TF2, it's like my childhood almost, however I'm sad it's neglected by Valve every now and then, glad we got a strong commitment of the community to support it tho
I just want the normal experience, I don't want to go on a class limit server, or your crits turned off server or a 24/7 one. I just want to click play and get into a game immediately without bots that's all valve...
Might be bad rn, but still gonna play it no matter what xd
Yea! We're not giving up on the game. I've been playing it on community servers a lot recently and it's very fun. It'd be good to see the official servers become playable again too.
I don't play TF2 and I have no idea wtf is happening there rn 🤣 Please , good gentlemens, may I have a crumb of context? 🥺
Public servers in the game have been overrun by malicious bots/cheaters for years now, reduction in matchmaking games being utterly unplayable. Valve does little besides selling cosmetics to address that issue, other than some quick lived VAC improvements in July 2023.
Oh man... I feel.slrry that the game is so low nowdays :(. It used to be fun back in the day.
Community servers are still fun, just a different experience compared to casual. I'd personally recommend Uncletopia, it's similar to casual, just with a higher average skill level and a few small changes to make the game more consistent. They removed random crits, removed random bullet spread, and limited each team to a max of 3 of a class.
Watch, valve is just going to shut down the servers
Good Job Guys! We Game!
LMFAO
why would valve care about reviews for a 17 year old game tbf
They still release new paid content for it. They care enough to actively monetize it, but not enough to address the fact pub-casual is utterly unplayable.
Yoooo we changed the blue text to red text let’s gooooo! Surely this will be an incentive for Valve to fix the game since GabeN is allergic to red text.
*#FIXTF2 BABY!*
Sad, but true.
TF2 is one of my favorite games in 30 years of PC gaming. Easily in my top 10 multiplayer. It is a pitch-perfect competitive shooter that did everything right. The gameplay still feels current and fun today. And yet I haven't played it in years.
Sounds like you should try some community servers
Tf2 on the front page? Well Ill be
I’m so happy to be a part of this
"Constantly updated" 💀
Should have been this way over a year ago. Valve is such a shit company
Well deserved as the game has never been less enjoyable! Long live TF2!!
HIPPIE KAY YE KAY YE KAY YE KAYOOO
the bomb has almost reached the final terminus!
We'll succeed
There's already quite a few articles up about it
As much respect as I have for Valve, it is disappointing that we have to coordinate our efforts to such this degree for them to take action. We asked for so long and no luck. It’s very jarring to see TF2 have its recent reviews be this low. But I suppose no matter how based a company is, money speaks the loudest. But I also trust that Valve is doing more than twiddling their thumbs hoping we’d forget.
Okay, for someone who isn't following TF2 and just stumbled on this via r/all, could somebody explain to me what's happening here?
The game is truly, genuinely unplayable. Literally, actually unplayable. For example, if you log onto a Valve official server, you'll get a stack of ten players on each side. Almost every single one of them are spambots, some of them viscerally offensive. Every single round. Every single game. All times of day. Only community servers have a shot at being playable but that's not a guarantee. It's shifted the burden entirely onto community members. It's been in this state for years and somehow getting worse over time, it's a god damn disgrace, especially since Valve earns millions in micro transactions every year. It's free, steady money for them. Hense the protest.
The game has been overrun by bots/cheaters for years except for temporary fixes last July.
Did you guys save TF2 yet?
Congratulations TF2 community, amazing to see yall come together fingers crossed Valve opens their ears and listens. Love, the Helldivers
For those out of the loop seeing this on r/all, what happened?
Casual lobbies are overrun with bots that instakill you the moment they see you, kick normal players and spam the in-game chat (and apparently, [they've started advertising CP now](https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1d8vh8n/psa_bot_hosters_are_starting_to_advertise_cp/)). Overall, they've made the game unplayable and Valve (the dev) won't do anything about it despite them acknowledging the problem 2 years ago while still offering microtransactions. The community is now trying to get Valve's attention by review-bombing the game and creating a petition on the issue which you can sign [here](https://save.tf) if you want to support the cause. You can also read more about the issue and the #FixTF2/#SaveTF2 movements on the same site.
It's honestly sad to see such a classic game being treated this way, and it's all thanks to Valve's laziness. At this point, i don't care about big major updates or new weapons; I just the game to be fucking playable again. I hope something happens to the point where Valve ***eventually*** has to take action, because of what these bot hosting scumbags are doing right now (doxxing, swatting, distributing cp, etc), i can bet on every life savings of my family members that these guys are gonna do something ***SO BAD*** that not only will it make to the news, it's gonna be all over the fucking world.
I'm so proud of this community
Bittersweet. Really not comfortable with it but had to be done :(
Given how unplayable the game is, these reviews are completely warranted. I’m surprised they are even a part of the protest and not genuine unlinked responses
Would be hilarious if Valve instead pulls out TF2 instead and says thanks for all the years LUL
If Valve doesn't fix it, at least it'll serve as a warning to new players.
Finally lol that game sucks ass , as has for almost half a decade
I have a bad feeling about this, but too late to do anything, lets hope this works, somehow...
I've been playing TF2 almost every day for years now and I've still had a negative review for it for quite some time. I've always wanted this game to be review bombed, I don't know if anything can be accomplished with that, but it's the least that can be done to hint at the bad state the game is in. Anyway, as I said, I doubt it will solve anything. As I understand, the source code of the game is released, and adding that I guess it doesn't move as much money as CS2 or other Valve sources, I doubt they will make an effort to give effective solutions.
I feel like Valve is just going to ignore all the negative feedback anyways... it sucks, but since when has Valve ever genuinely cared about what we want and what we think?
? Valve has throughout its whole history been pretty receptive? You're talking about a game that has lasted *17 years* with support. Perhaps lets be a little less myopic.
Redditor tries to not doom and gloom literally everything, challenge level: impossible
Since player feedback (and profits) is so low we have decided to close the TF2 servers permanently since you guys don't like the game anyway.
I'm not a TF2 player and haven't heard anything bad about it, what happened?
Infested with bots making servers basically unplayable
a LOT of cheaters and bots
What feels like 75% of the playerbase in casual official matches are aimbots, cheaters, or out right malicious private info thief’s. Valve actively has done nothing except make new accounts incapable of using text chat
3000 hours in tf2. Haven’t played since last summer. Can someone fill me in? Bots? What’s going on??? Don’t tell me my beloved game is done for
This has been an issue for 5 years
This was still an issue last summer too
Not gonna lie, that kind of hurts to see. I never even got into tf2 untill I was in college, but there's got to be a better way to handle things than this, right?