How much can the presence of bots that ruin the games of honest players damage an online game? A lot. Actually, a lot. To prove it, there is Team Fortress 2, which after Valve’s ferocious retaliation against users who used botswith thousands of bans, has seen practically double (or almost) the number of players on the servers.
The Grosso approves
In short, the pressure from the game’s fans on Valve to take action against bots it did good for the company’s business itself. As you can see from the graph below, taken from SteamDB, after an initial contraction in the number of players due to bans, the growth of Team Fortress 2 has been enormous, going from peaks of around 90,000 players to the current ones of almost 150,000. Furthermore, the average number of users on the servers is much higher than in the recent past.
In short, It seems that many people didn’t play it anymore because it had become too frustrating to do so. and not because it was seventeen. Valve had let bots run wild, producing a flight of honest players who no longer enjoyed being killed on sight by aimbots and the like.
It must be said that Valve took a long time to act, considering that the problem became particularly serious around 2020 and there were several campaigns by players, many of which went unheard. The situation came to a head this year with a new collective effort, merged into the #FixTF2 campaignwhich saw players launch petitions, urge Valve on social media and use the extreme weapon of negative reviews, with a targeted bombardment to get a response from the company.
Valve has finally taken matters into its own hands and has started to blanket ban bots, responding brutally to those who ask for a review of the decision. After all, you can read on the support site that: “Team Fortress 2 game bans are permanent, non-negotiable, and are not removed from Steam support.” The right treatment to reserve for cheaters.
