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Discussion What’s everyone’s thoughts on the current issues with team fortress 2 and the rampant bot issue.

Steve

Steve

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I’m curious everyone’s takes, since TF2 is currently facing issues when it comes to bots and hackers, also would you prefer if they either shut down the servers or making let the fanbase create their own ones, since Valve has basically stopped supporting the game, also should a game that’s no longer supported by the developers keep microtransactions in it?



 
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Also this is the last update from Valve to promising to fix the game.
 
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Sadly Valve has moved on. The problems that you mentioned are a big reason as to why I haven't touched the game for the better part of 5 years.

I understand that games can't be supported forever, but when you have an active fanbase that is still bringing in revenue thanks to your product, it should still get the bare minimum support.
 
Valve rarely make games anymore, yet they can't even keep supporting their older games despite making a ton of money.
 
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scares-me-i-fear-no-man.gif


(I don't play TF2, but this gif felt appropriate.)
 
Valve has far more important issues they need to fix and intentionally aren't than this.
 
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This is an extremely unfriendly reminder to video game fans that, to the companies making games, you are nothing but a data point on a chart and a means to make money. If 200,000 people say “please fix this game,” it is not a question of ethics, morals, or goodwill for Valve, but a question of money. Will the time, money and effort that fixing the game would require be the most profitable use of those resources, or would they make more money putting those resources into something else?

Valve crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion: it’s not worth it.

It’s sad. I haven’t touched TF2 in a decade or more but I have extremely fond memories of the game and I think the game deserves to get fixed. Clearly Valve disagrees.
 
Derachi said:
This is an extremely unfriendly reminder to video game fans that, to the companies making games, you are nothing but a data point on a chart and a means to make money. If 200,000 people say “please fix this game,” it is not a question of ethics, morals, or goodwill for Valve, but a question of money. Will the time, money and effort that fixing the game would require be the most profitable use of those resources, or would they make more money putting those resources into something else?

Valve crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion: it’s not worth it.

It’s sad. I haven’t touched TF2 in a decade or more but I have extremely fond memories of the game and I think the game deserves to get fixed. Clearly Valve disagrees.
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The fact that they said they will improve it, which gained massive impression and still haven't is not a good look tho. They promised the community a fix, they shouldn't just ditch like that. Money is important to them, yes, but reputation is also just as important for the long term.
 
I mean, the game is almost 20 years old now. I can't really blame Valve for not giving a damn anymore, the codebase for TF2 was utter shite on release and its only gotten worse since then.

At some point you kinda have to accept that they're not interested anymore in the games overall health. Official matchmaking also has been bad for years, but community servers generally have been able to handle the bot issue on their own so my main opinion is "...eh".

The only thing this game needed as a fix for the future was 64 bit support and to their credit, Valve did do that.

Like I'm not sending angry emails to Id Software because the multiplayer Doom from the aughties has a cheating problem in it. I just set up or join a LAN party with my friends instead. At some point you kinda have to accept that the community takes over and with TF2 that arguably happened years ago.

So am I disappointed in Valve? Not really. The game's servers still work, that's more than I can say for most other multiplayer games that are the age TF2 is.
 
I think it's totally devastating. Team Fortress 2 is one of the greatest video games of all time, let alone one of the best multiplayer ones, and its influence is clear and still very relevant today. There is still no game out there with anything even closely resembling TF2 in its prime. It's like a multiplayer improv comedy game mixed with a sublime level of skill variance that is wild to look at at a top level. It's an important game that is still very good today, and I think Valve allowing it to languish because it's making them some money instead of all the money is very saddening, yet unsurprising.

That being said, this video goes into why it may not be as simple as we hope.



I can personally attest to the fact that these bots are not being overblown. I got back into the game last year for several months (after a long, long absence), and finding a match that wasn't completely filled to the gills with aimbot Snipers was both challenging and very annoying. When you could get a match in, it was still very excellent. You can play on private servers, but many of those are only populated during certain times of day, have additional server mods that you may not want to interact with, or are full of the absolute top-of-the-line TF2 players that are just way better than you.

So, my thoughts? I think Valve should fix it. They are actively still adding new cosmetics and loot boxes to the game, so it's not like it's some completely dead video game, even if support is small. If the game is still receiving official support, I think they have a duty to present it in a more functional state. Do I think they will? Probably not. I think they will pool their video game resources into their upcoming hero shooter/MOBA and be done with it.
 
Koti said:
The fact that they said they will improve it, which gained massive impression and still haven't is not a good look tho. They promised the community a fix, they shouldn't just ditch like that. Money is important to them, yes, but reputation is also just as important for the long term.
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If it mattered to them, they’d fix it. They’re not stupid.
 
Koti said:
The fact that they said they will improve it, which gained massive impression and still haven't is not a good look tho. They promised the community a fix, they shouldn't just ditch like that. Money is important to them, yes, but reputation is also just as important for the long term.
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Respectfully, their reputation absolutely will not suffer. They've built up so much good will amongst their player base over the last 10 or so years that Valve has gotten a free pass for a ton of bullshit over the years. Pioneering lootboxes/crates with TF2 and CS:GO, making in game purchases required to use a basic feature like voice chat (TF2), taking a 30% cut from devs on Steam, not curating Steam's store content at all and just letting shovelware run rampant, among other things.

Any other company would be raked over the coals, yet Valve is thriving. If all of that wasn't enough to hurt Valve's reputation, neglecting the bot problem in TF2 won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
 
lattjeful said:
Respectfully, their reputation absolutely will not suffer. They've built up so much good will amongst their player base over the last 10 or so years that Valve has gotten a free pass for a ton of bullshit over the years. Pioneering lootboxes/crates with TF2 and CS:GO, making in game purchases required to use a basic feature like voice chat (TF2), taking a 30% cut from devs on Steam, not curating Steam's store content at all and just letting shovelware run rampant, among other things.

Any other company would be raked over the coals, yet Valve is thriving. If all of that wasn't enough to hurt Valve's reputation, neglecting the bot problem in TF2 won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
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Yeah, Valve got to be the most protected company and Steam the most protected brand in the gaming industry. It's crazy how much they get away with. Since Steam is basically the only powerhouse on PC, there's really no competition compared to consoles or AAA where people argue for every small thing.
 
TF2 was at one point a top tier game. Early era TF2 is a top 5 game for me.

However, I've just viewed the game as an actual biohazard that will spread disease to me and my family if I touch it. It's nothing but bots or assholes. Good luck finding a decent game that isn't that or some annoying kids yelling about skibidi this or that.

It was a legend. It's legacy has been tarnished
 
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Derachi said:
This is an extremely unfriendly reminder to video game fans that, to the companies making games, you are nothing but a data point on a chart and a means to make money. If 200,000 people say “please fix this game,” it is not a question of ethics, morals, or goodwill for Valve, but a question of money. Will the time, money and effort that fixing the game would require be the most profitable use of those resources, or would they make more money putting those resources into something else?

Valve crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion: it’s not worth it.

It’s sad. I haven’t touched TF2 in a decade or more but I have extremely fond memories of the game and I think the game deserves to get fixed. Clearly Valve disagrees.
Click to expand...

While this is true, the 200,000 people saying that would be a noninsignificant data point when it comes to making the decision. People making noise can change things, simply because noise signals to corporations that there's a potential market to something (or that continued inaction can potentially lead to negative press that can affect a bottom line). Look at Sony's decision to keep the PS3 and Vita stores up after enough people complained about the initial announcement there.

In general I don't like rhetoric that pacifies the general public when it comes to this sort of thing, because even if it's true that something is so far gone that corporate reversing a decision or taking action is unlikely, making noise about and complaining about this sort of thing harms no one, except I guess for people who don't care but also refuse to ignore it on social media for whatever reason.
 
my opinion on it is that, there is literally nothing valve could do because the bot makers are literal no lifes with all the time in the world who will do literally everything they can to break through anything to ruin the game for everyone else
 
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It's a real shame. I had a lot of fun with TF2 back in the day, and while I haven't touched it in years, it sucks to see the game in such a state.
 
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Derachi said:
They’re not stupid.
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I'm not convinced that this is the case

www.pcgamer.com

Valve's unusual corporate structure causes its problems, report suggests

Employees interviewed by People Make Games blame Valve's lack of diversity and poor record shipping games on its flat structure.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com

Valve's flat corporate structure means that, as its own New Employee Handbook reads, "we don’t have any management, and nobody 'reports to' anybody else. We do have a founder/president, but even he isn't your manager." The symbol of this freedom is the office's wheeled desks, which allow employees to form ad hoc teams by moving together when someone—anyone—proposes a project that interests others, then wheeling away once they decide to move on.
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Raccoon said:
I'm not convinced that this is the case

www.pcgamer.com

Valve's unusual corporate structure causes its problems, report suggests

Employees interviewed by People Make Games blame Valve's lack of diversity and poor record shipping games on its flat structure.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
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It's perhaps also worthwhile to note that Valve does tend to preselect its employees to work well in that kinda structure. They're the only massively profitable US tech company I know of that flat out refuses to hire interns or juniors because they don't work well in that kinda setup.

PMG for some reason considered that a negative though, which always struck me as odd. Like, if they were hiring juniors into a flat structure then it'd be a massive problem (since that's when you get a complete clownshow of people getting muscled out of the door and trying to appease to informal managers/cool kids on the block; juniors and interns need the corporate structure the most since they're still heavily learning from their peers and risk being taken advantage of if they don't have someone to report to), but... they aren't.

Outside of that, Valves internal situation being a complete shitshow isn't anything new. Their support used to be legendarily horrendous; they'd request purchase receipts that were over 6 years old for account recovery, required you to memorise all your steam keys for identification and so on and so forth. That one is better these days from what I've heard though.

The entire reason why Half Life 3 got delayed into basically being shelved is because of an ego clash between Half Life developers and the Source 2 engine team; HL3 was only to be released when the Source 2 SDK did for the general public, and the latter just never happened. That's also the reason why there's no "official" Source Filmmaker 2 release unless you start digging into the beta section of Half Life Alyx (...for some weird fucking reason), which is the main reason everyone is still sticking with SFM1.

They're making absurd amounts of cash and their actual core focus afaik is just them paying other people to keep up on the technical side of things (their support for Linux mostly is dumping ungodly amounts of cash onto the wine developers, which is good at least), so they won't go under from this mismanagement, but Valves management is a crapshoot.
 
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I just find the fact Valve continuing to monetize and add new hats to a game they won't even bother to fix incredibly scummy. I haven't and won't be giving Valve a single cent because of this. I don't care if their products are supposed to be the best things to ever grace the earth, I won't budge because I'm petty like that.
 
Forks said:
I just find the fact Valve continuing to monetize and add new hats to a game they won't even bother to fix incredibly scummy. I haven't and won't be giving Valve a single cent because of this. I don't care if their products are supposed to be the best things to ever grace the earth, I won't budge because I'm petty like that.
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The hats have been community additions since forever for whatever it counts. People submit cosmetics to the Steam workshop and Valve adds the most popular ones. The creators of those hats get money for each hat sold.
 
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Valve has been one of the worst major gaming companies for years, and if this the start of more people realizing this, I would be so happy.

Fuck Valve and fuck Gabe Newell.
 
robertman2 said:
Valve has been one of the worst major gaming companies for years, and if this the start of more people realizing this, I would be so happy.

Fuck Valve and fuck Gabe Newell.
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Are they! At least they released one outstanding game in the past few years (Alyx) that's one more than Ubisoft, EA and Activision.

The only thing I blame Valve for (and that is a big thing) is all the Nazi and pedo shit on steam, that just rarely gets banned.
 
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On one hand, every time I played TF2 these past few years it's been on an uncletopia server, which is usually bot free, has no random crits and usually has a good amount of players. Its probably the only reason I still play occasionally thanks to the bots on valve's servers.

On the other hand, while I understand this game is 15 years old and some may find it unrealistic for a game this old to still get support, Valve still offers this game on their platform and still makes money from it. So unless they decide to shut down their game servers or close the Mann Co. store, they should absolutely fix the bot issue.

There is still tons of people playing this game and not everyone wants to go through the hastle of finding a decent community server group to play in and just want to hop in, click casual match and be able to play the game.
 
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