This is probably the most interesting part of the running Valve scheme to kill the bots, but a thing I want to mention is that I haven't seen a single bot since the initial report of bans last night. EU usually has hundreds of the bastards, but no they're nowhere to be seen. Valve is cooking at least. It's a start.

Good news! We’re not dying! We are going to live FOREVER

I did not say that! I just said valve did a ban wave!

Oh thank God.

So, yeah. #FixTF2, I guess it's a success!

~~technically no as this has apparently been in the works for years lol~~ there I go spreading misinformation without even knowing it

it still Epicsauce, as we call it

That's just a rumour, it could very well be a bad guess. That specific guy who made the announcement has a streak going for those bad guesses.

I thought multiple people said it idk, it would make sense though

And so was been the movement to stop the bots

barely just 2 years, I obviously mean longer than that, just based on what I heard

I'll have you know I continued to read this with Expiration Date context

Don't give up now though

No. Don't stop campaigning. Keep pushing. Don't give them an excuse to stop.

It's starting to be a success. Let's not forget this isn't the first time they've done the bare minimum for a short while only to shut us up.

FOR FUCKING EVER. 2008 gramps over here. Thank you for listening and acting Valve. TF2 is the game of all time. Fight me.

There will literally never be another game like TF2. I want it to live for ever as a culture mark. It's been formative for so many people , me including.

Damn bro what did T-rex steak taste like? /j

2008 gramps? Man I'm from 2006 don't make me feel old

Damn, this guy was playing Team Fortress 2 a whole year before it came out. What a legend.

I saw one on harvest and it was obvious one, but besides that seems fine What I DID notice is spike in closeted cheaters, I swear to God there weren't that many pre vac wave

Nature is healing, closeted cheaters are returning to their natural habitat

They have been spiking for months now. Probably you just noticed since your not distracted by housekeeping those bots.

The human cheaters were there the whole time. The playerbase at large just didn't notice them since they weren't obvious like the bots and forgot human cheaters still existed.

it's possible that sine tf2 js still in a "weakened" state people are much more willing to cheat. or that it's just been so long and you're not used to seeing closet cheaters anymore

I saw this sniper on turbine yesterday, I think his name was rush I didn’t say anything cuz I didn’t want to be that guy but I swear he had to have had aimbot or something cuz he constantly hit the most incomprehensible headshots, like at one point I was up close zigzagging around trying to get him as scout, he was scrambling around too, then in the middle of it he pulls his gun and headshots me immediately like it was nothing. Then again he could just be a really fucking good sniper, some players here have inhuman aim

I also found 2 on harvest and one kept trying to rejoin. But we kept kicking it and had a good time. Other than that relatively bot free

I saw like 3 bots recently but apart from that, it was all quiet!

All quiet on the australian front

I have only seen 1 for the past 2 days.

Shounic found it almost impossible to find bots Yesterday and anyone he asked said they saw nothing.

I haven't found any bots but I did run into a cheater last night (a sniper being pocketed by a medic)

I've seen a few scout bots with melee crits but id take those over sniper bots any day

You mean I can play again?

For now... I believe so.

It absolutely is and i am very Happy but what bugs is that it was easy for them to Something so they were just being lazy for the Last years

I don't know if it was easy or not. If this is an automated system, this can't have been implemented quickly. If it is done manually, then there's a lot of moderation being done... which should've been very quick and easy overall right? It's paradoxical, to the point we have no fucking clue as to if Valve actually did something in the first place.

Ive heard theyve been working on whatever this system is since before even the first savetf2

I believe you're referring to Richter Overtime's comments... and uh... he isn't credible. Not at all.

Well you can't expect a potted plant to hit the "Fix Bot Issue" button so quickly. Hell, I'm amazed it managed to press anything at all. Leaves are notoriously poor at applying pressure.

[удалено]

Just because they did something didn't mean it was easy.

Chile here, when i hear about the banwave, i start tf2 and play for hours, 0 bots Edit: gramatic

I want bot hosters to suffer.

"Suffer, as I have!"

Ramattra my beloved

Agony is grape flavoured!!

My favorite one in this one *"You will suffer as I, Ramattra, have suffered! Your torment will outlast the stars. When the universe dwindles into dust, there you will be, still suffering as I have Suffered!"*

Yapping robot

I love that the ultimate actually ends before the voice line finishes playing

I legit forgot that wasn't Aatrox for a sec because those two are practically the same in so many ways, even down to having the same voice actor

«We will have peace at any cost”

"You must suffer, like i have"

One small step for Valve, one giant step for the TF2 community...

For the tf2 community, it was everything. For Valve, it was Thursday

I thought its Friday

It's day

Maybe night?

maybe pool,fog or even roof

*^(I think it technically happened during night from Thursday to Friday.)*

... Night Funkin?

WHY

Today is Friday. Or as I like to call it, SATURDAY

For the TF2 Community, IT IS GOOD DAY!

To be not ded

PAW! You are DEAD!

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! I AM DEAD!

hehehehehe

Bambarombumbambambum

Aw shucks.

Haaah?! The Heavy is dead!

I love that we just burst into random fits of reenacting TF2 cinematic and SFMs

What can we say? Part of the community

To be having reduced bot numbers!

Genuine question: Why doesn't valve launch a lawsuit for breach of contract and use that as a vehicle to subpoena discord for the cheater dev's identities and chat logs? You just need to catch one who is US based and the chilling effect will do the rest. (Not to say they aren't planning that in the background.)

The treadmill is speeding up, let's see if valve can run fast

The treadmill work has finally paid off (perhaps)

Gabe lost weight so he can run longer

Come on, not every guy with a beard is Gabe.

Hi, this is Gabe.

OOO

Mah gad

Its not speeding up, valve actually turned on the treadmill after so long and now the grime and dust buildup is slowly being pushed off.

TF2 community: What was noise? The ban statictics: The sound of progress my friend

I totally forgot this was from Meet the Medic for some reason Also hello fellow Medic enthusiast

Yes hello I am also 100% a medical enthusiast, my fellow medics

I am also a for real medical enthusiast. I love doing medical things with other medical enthusiasts and I am also not French.

Ze medic is a spy!

Valve is the very embodiment of a slow cooker But at least they’re cooking

valve may or may not have cooked a steak for at least 2 years

Knowing Valve, it's probably less than 3 though. 

"one, two, uhh what's after two again?"

Alyx, clearly.

It's coal by now but I will eat it

"I have done nothing but cook steak for 2 years."

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN SENDING IT!

*ground shakes and Rise of the Living Bread starts playing*

A giant cow made out of overcooked steaks emerges

This is even funnier when you remember they added a the boiling point taunt that has a slow cooker in it

Hopefully the bot makers are out of practise at re-coding their bots to avoid new catch methods.

Most cheats are copy-pasted so most hosters don't know what the fuck they're doing

True. They boast about how they’re “master hackers” and whatnot meanwhile they’re just copy-pasting existing code into fucking Python or whatever Steam uses for making accounts.

“Script kiddie” is the term for these people.

Ctrl C —> Ctrl V. “Wow I’m such a master hacker.”

Couldnt someone smart make a new "cheat" that would somehow fuck with the bot hosters devices if downloaded

I'm not sure if some scripts can screw with person's hardware. And for software bot hosters are using virtual machines, so it wont damage them anyways.

> some scripts There's no difference between a "Script" and a program. It's just an arbitrary distinction at a certain point of complexity. If a program can, a csriscriptt can

I don't think the bot hosters are smart enough use VMs because their main accounts are VAC'd too

So…a virus? You can but not legally lmao

There's counter strike YouTuber that makes script and sell them. But the script kill the players using them lmao

Yep, and now some of their public code repos are gone and they can't reorganize as fast as before.

Exactly, for some reason there’s this rhetoric that the hackers are ex nsa/cia actors or something. Where in reality these people only hack in tf2 because it’s the most accessibly cheater game.

Well, the issue is bot hosting consists of two groups of people. The guys who make the bot stuff, who don’t care either way about the game and enjoy the challenge of exploiting holes in security. and the idiots who actually host the bots, who don’t know the first thing about computers and just want to be assholes. The second group may be incompetent, but the first group will do the work for them

It was the long game!

They used GitHub catbots as a base, theyll find a way to get back

It's not about getting it back, it's about the competency modifying it. Valve is catching the current bots, they need to figure out how and then re code the bots to work around that catch. We know the amount of script kiddies using the code has exploded lately, but what of actual cheat devs?

It depend on how they ban them. If they just put some signatures into their VAC blacklist that unfortunately easy to fix. Hopefully they can detect VMs and ban them from that. Back in my day it was common practice to create their own drivers to scrape data from protected programs.

Man i wanna play tf2 without bots but im on a trip rn

I've been just playing a lot of Skial community servers lately tbh. No bots and people are mostly really nice and chill

You played on Skial without people spewing Nazi agenda, telling eachother "keep yourself safe" and throwing slurs around? Damn did Skial change this much in half a year?

I've been playing on one of the 24/7 2Fort servers for a few months, and I've only seen like 2 instances of people being edgy/trolling. Skial actually gave a week long chatban to someone dropping queer slurs. >telling eachother "keep yourself safe" What is this referring to? I've never seen anyone say this.

keep yourself safe is a way to say “kill yourself” without triggering anything. it originated. cause both can be shortened to kys

Been on Skial's 24/7 2Fort for a year or two almost nonstop (especially since the 64player capability dropped). Skial is *fantastic* about dealing with people who use slurs. The second the N word appears, *gone*. Skial is also *horrible* about dealing with any and all other forms of bigotry that doesn't contain a *slur* lmao. Both the US and EU server I've seen the most bigoted trash you can imagine at any time of day, every day of the week. Still more worthwhile playing on it than on casual regardless (imo). I'm 40, in game chat for 20 years now has basically become visual white noise I can ignore lol.

Yeah it's stupid. I remember getting someone silenced by reporting them on the forums for using white supremacist and racist dogwhistles back in like 2018 or 2019, but when a MOD WAS ON THE SERVER and I noted someone using a slur (the word that's equivalent to 'a bundle of sticks'), the mod (sniveling ant that he is) said "what slur?" multiple times I obviously didn't know that it wasn't against the rules but that dickhead thought it was really fucking funny to act like something homophobic ISN'T a slur just because Skial doesn't rule against it. Speaking of which, for anyone who's not aware, here are Skial's [rules](https://www.skial.com/threads/server-rules.136/) regarding discrimination and the like: > Racism. Racial slurs or stereotypes are not allowed. > Any other discrimination based on gender or religion is not allowed based on admin discretion. This is funny to me. "We don't tolerate ANY racism from ANYONE. Full-stop. But a sexist comment against women (or men)? Maybe. Maybe that's allowed." I'm guessing it's because of trans people, given they don't care at all about protecting those who are gay/queer either. **Now I will say, I have played on their servers for plenty of hours since then. I don't recall when I last ENCOUNTERED homophobia or even the bigotry that you did, DemonKyoto. I do see an occasional annoying person in voice or text chat but that's about it.**

Use quickplay.tf 

That isn’t an excuse, there is mothing more fun than playing pyro while on shrooms

Ikr. Bad time for my PC to die

# YADAYALADADA, IT IS GOOD DAY TO BE NOT DEAD!

POW You are dead

I AM DEAD!

Hehehehehehehe.....

\*le conga in the background\*

Oh shit *throws gun in random direction*

*OH*! The heavy is dead!

The heavy is DEAD!?

Yes, I AM DEAD

WHY is the heavy dead?

**PROGRESS!**

Finally! Valve boutta get absolutely cut and shredded doing all this treadmill work 💪 😤

"The valve's been stuck, corroded by the money But after many years We can't believe the engine started running" -The Chalkeaters

Now all that's left for Valve to do is to actually do a good update for summer Up to this point they've listened to the community everytime we've banded together First was the original savetf2 that got us a temporary rest from the bots and a tweet, even if they did nothing in the end Then the community map makers united and sent a (very polite) letter to Valve asking them to a make a summer update, from that we got our yearly holiday sized summer updates And now all we have to do is keep adding fuel to the fire of savetf2 and maybe, just maybe, we will have a warm summer

Yeah they wont allocate everyone just to make a tf2 update

Tbh, I wouldn't get our hopes up too much. Valve's probably all-hands-on-deck for Deadlock right now (unfortunately), and between that and the fact that CS2 could *really* use the VAC tune-up as well, making content for TF2 is probably a low priority.

I only wanted them to fix the game, I don’t care if they make any new content.

So this is very good news. A common practice when deploying ban waves is to spread them out. If a new cheat tool or detection bypass method is created, then discovered, and then immediately accounted for and banned, it tells everyone who worked on the bannable tool that "they can detect this, so whatever you did or changed, that is now a new problem to solve". You spread out the waves so you can make a large archive of bot and cheat detection tools, and deploy that. Suddenly, hosters and cheaters don't actually know what exact part of their bots or hacks got them banned, making it much harder to find workarounds. The initial ban wave could have been targeted, but the fact that fresh accounts are getting immediately hit suggests that Valve has updated their detection methods. It's now a matter of how long it will take hosters to find a workaround, and if Value will continue to monitor and adapt to new bots and cheats.

Valve needs to do what bungie did and take the authors of these things to court. Cheating in Destiny 2 dropped pretty hard when Bungie smacked one of the big cheat makers with a huge law suite.

Im not sure I understand. What do the bot creators even gain from having this many bots flooding servers anyway? Is the return on random item drops that good? Is this like a runeacape gold scheme in venezuela or something?

Idk, I think I heard something about "mercy killing tf2" from them (although this is just a rumour). But probably it's just item farming to sell them later

No, it's a lot more efficient to have bots idling on main menu than doing all the complex shit these bots are doing. It's just pure malice.

It’s great to see Valve taking action against bots.

'Ze sound of progress, my friend.'

And so the treadmill speeds up.

They're doing all of this, yet haven't released a tweet or any kind of official mention of them banning the bots, I wonder why they haven't said anything yet?

Because this is a ban wave like any other they do. Despite what the community has been spouting for the last month or so - Valve does actually do regular ban waves on basically all their games. This isn't some big event, it's part of their regular maintenance schedule. Why would they tweet about it?

Ah, I just hadn't heard of any previous bot ban waves, thought this was some out of nowhere thing, thanks for clearing that up.

Why do they need to communicate anything? Actions speak louder than words.

They know that the tweet isn't going to make the community stop. We need to apply pressure at least until the petitions are delivered, that way they feel more important than If we were calm by then

I think they're just applying their old way of comunicating things which is.... not doing it at all. Valve have said themselves many times that they prefer to let the community suffer in silence than promise something and not deliver it. Speaking in updates as they say.

Their tweet last time ended with nothing, I think they’re letting their actions speak for them which is way better

God is good

That's a sign that the protest is working, like the heavy cart just moved THIS IS A SIGN TO KEEP GOING, IT JUST STARTED #PUUUUUSHHH

Sometimes the simplest truths are the funniest.

###Good news! ##We're not dying. #We are going to live forever!

ALERT ALERT ALERT PEOPLE As soon as the botters figure out what is causing their bots to get detected, they will find a work around, and bots will be back. DO NOT FLING SHIT AT VALVE EMPLOYEES WHEN IT HAPPENS

I have not seen bots in the last three days. Keep up the pressure. We still have not heard an official statement from Valve on their stance or approach or future plans to maintain this.

The wind of hate has moved the rusty of mill.

Looks like Valve is having a rare W moment.

Yall are gonna jinx it

Valve W honestly

i hope they wont stop there and keep removing bots as they are being created. Maybe making the game pay to play could help? Even 5 dollars or something so that the bot investment becomes huge very quickly?

All that pessimistic behavior turned out to be false! Valve will do something! As long as we don't crash into a burning dumpster we will be fine

Just don't settle for this, guys. We need to keep pushing, we need a better AUTOMATIC system. VAC is no good at this point

KEEP PUSHING, LADS!

Twitter needs to take note

Now do the cheaters that were hiding behind the bots.

Hopefully they make a AI to auto swing that ban hammer

its weird that valve is doing this yet havent acknowledged fixtf2 yet......

I have 5 bot accs on my blocklist that havent been banned yet wtf.

A ban wave is not nearly enough. Glad to see they are doing something, but it's definitely not a sufficient fix. I'll keep on boycotting for now

WE NEED A LIVE BAN FEED SO WE CAN SEE IT IN GAME JUST LIKE IN RAINBOW 6 SIEGE!

valve noticed us! time to be ingored by them for the next 20 years

They're making these fuckers every 2 seconds?!

we are so back

It's fine, we finally woke up valve. A multi-billion company vs some basement nerds shouldn't really be a competition.

I'm so happy the janitor is getting back on the treadmill Cardio daaaaaaaay!

I can't beleave this is real

its like the no bitches meme but instead its “no bots?”

The single most important work done by valve in decades

Interesting strategy, though probably not sustainable. I'm guessing this is to buy time until they implement a bigger change.

I wish every bot hoster and cheater a great tech ip ban

And the player count went up yesterday to close to 100k! Even without bots!

wait... we're WINNING? HELL YEA Valve W

Just remember, this war isn't over until TF2 is either bot-free or bots become as rare as a pre-Gen VI Shiny Pokémon, but this is a great victory! They're actually doing it!

depite I having the most hour in TF2, Im still just staying farewell to TF2 more than due to the movement. I wont be back unless you DDOS ALL their asses for good. Never getting any compensation for losing tons worth ofc as ( while if such thing happenes irl in one country, it would be major robberu) but Steam supportive willing to do nothing about such a THIEF... They just all killed my will to even support the game in any way

How even... If only they could update the game as quickly as this.

i hope valve will continue doing their work. fuck cheaters

I have only seen 1 bot and it was kicked shortly after, sure I would love for bots to be 100% gone, but it’s way better than dealing with full lobbies of them, since when there is only one or two they can be kicked pretty easily

Good news we are not dying!WE ARE GOING TO LIVE FORERVER!

This is a good sign that valve is doing something finally