Edit: As of the time of this review update, valve has banned the vast majority of bots and appears to be actively banning bot hosters, prominent cheaters, and new bot accounts. In light of this, I will be changing my review back to recommended. If the bots come back en masse and valve does nothing, I will change my review back to negative. I'll leave my previous review below for context.

FIX TF2

Tf2 is one of my favorite games of all time (as indicated by the number of hours I've sunk into it over the past decade), and in terms of core gameplay surpasses essentially every other multiplayer fps in existence. Tf2 can be considered the grandfather of current day team based multiplayer shooters, and arguable does a better job compared to any that have come after. The characters, lore, and side content are also incredible, and tf2 has impacted pop culture to an absurd degree. However, Valve has willfully neglected this game for over half a decade, even as malicious actors have trampled all over it. This includes even turning a blind eye as said malicious actors have utilized and continue to utilize valve's services for literal criminal acts.
I love this game, but until Valve actually does something to address the bot issue that has existed for over half a decade, I'll have to keep this review as negative. The split second Valve actually takes meaningful action, I'll change my review back to positive.

For many years valve's official tf2 severs have been beset by cheating "bots". These bots are entirely automated, and many dozens or even hundreds of them can be run on a single computer indefinitely using virtual machines without requiring any human input. With perfect aim and inhuman reaction time (due to being entirely automated), these bots (usually sniper bots) are able to instantly kill basically every player at any distance so long as there is line of sight. Bots often join in large parties, preventing votekicks from working on them, and they'll votekick legitimate players instead. These bots make the game borderline unplayable in many cases, completely preventing the game from being played on valve's official servers sometimes. Even when the number of bots in a server is manageable, players need to gradually kick the bots over the course of minutes, suffering through massive disruption, or simply requeue hoping for better luck in the next server. Since tf2 is free to play bots can be easily replaced in the unlikely event they ever get banned, and stolen accounts are also often used.

Bots are often used to spam profane, racist, sexist, sexual, and generally abhorrent content of various kinds. For example, in the voice chat they'll spam earrape music interspersed with the n-word and sexual content. As a side note, one of Valve's few attempts to "mitigate" the bot problem was preventing free to play accounts from using chat (voice or text), including the use of in-game voice commands. Bots continue to spam voice chat, just by using stolen accounts, while legitimate f2p players are left unable to communicate.

Bots are often used for doxxing, harassment, and impersonation. Their profile names and profile pictures are used to impersonate people who have gotten on the bot hoster's (bot hoster: noun; a script kiddie who downloaded some easily accessible open source code from the internet and runs it on the computer someone else payed for while they live in their parents basement) radar. In addition to impersonating the profile name and picture, the bots will spam deepfake (ai generated) audio of the person they're impersonating in the voicechat, using ai to impersonate their voice to spam racist obscenities. The creation and dissemination of these deepfakes are literal criminal acts in most places.
The bots are also used for doxxing, broadcasting the personal information (name, address, birthdate, etc.) of whoever the bot hoster targets towards all the players on valves servers. Doxxing and impersonation are considered criminal acts in the vast majority of countries, and valve's services are being used to facilitate these criminal acts. Said bot hosters have also been known to engage in a variety of other criminal acts, including swatting a prominent community member by calling in a bomb threat in that person's name (which caused a college to be evacuated, and literally put the targeted person's life at risk, there's an active criminal case involving that one).

The fact this has been occurring for many years without any meaningful effort on Valve's part to mitigate the issue is absolutely unacceptable. Vac (valve anti cheat) is entirely ineffective, and cheaters also run rampant in other immensely popular multiplayer valve games, such as counter strike. Even more laughably, most of the code to run all these bots and cheat in game is open source and freely available on the internet. Valve continues to actively monetize tf2, adding in new (community created) content to be used for a lootbox-based monetization system. Meanwhile, even as they make millions of dollars off of tf2 (which is pennies compared to steam, I know), they leave the game in a fundamentally broken state and simply let malicious actors have their way. Since Valve continues to actively monetize tf2, they have an obligation to their players and customers to maintain the game such that it is playable. Also, I think this should go without saying, they have an obligation to prevent others from using their services to perform criminal acts. It is incumbent upon valve to take action against the malicious actors who are actively abusing the services provided by valve, and I hope they will do so in the future. Ultimately, a functioning anti-cheat won't only benefit the tf2 community, it will benefit every single person who plays any multiplayer valve game whatsoever.

FIX TF2

Edit: As of the time of this review update, valve has banned the vast majority of bots and appears to be actively banning bot hosters, prominent cheaters, and new bot accounts. In light of this, I will be changing my review back to recommended. If the bots come back en masse and valve does nothing, I will change my review back to negative. I'll leave my previous review below for context. FIX TF2 Tf2 is one of my favorite games of all time (as indicated by the number of hours I've sunk into it over the past decade), and in terms of core gameplay surpasses essentially every other multiplayer fps in existence. Tf2 can be considered the grandfather of current day team based multiplayer shooters, and arguable does a better job compared to any that have come after. The characters, lore, and side content are also incredible, and tf2 has impacted pop culture to an absurd degree. However, Valve has willfully neglected this game for over half a decade, even as malicious actors have trampled all over it. This includes even turning a blind eye as said malicious actors have utilized and continue to utilize valve's services for literal criminal acts. I love this game, but until Valve actually does something to address the bot issue that has existed for over half a decade, I'll have to keep this review as negative. The split second Valve actually takes meaningful action, I'll change my review back to positive. For many years valve's official tf2 severs have been beset by cheating "bots". These bots are entirely automated, and many dozens or even hundreds of them can be run on a single computer indefinitely using virtual machines without requiring any human input. With perfect aim and inhuman reaction time (due to being entirely automated), these bots (usually sniper bots) are able to instantly kill basically every player at any distance so long as there is line of sight. Bots often join in large parties, preventing votekicks from working on them, and they'll votekick legitimate players instead. These bots make the game borderline unplayable in many cases, completely preventing the game from being played on valve's official servers sometimes. Even when the number of bots in a server is manageable, players need to gradually kick the bots over the course of minutes, suffering through massive disruption, or simply requeue hoping for better luck in the next server. Since tf2 is free to play bots can be easily replaced in the unlikely event they ever get banned, and stolen accounts are also often used. Bots are often used to spam profane, racist, sexist, sexual, and generally abhorrent content of various kinds. For example, in the voice chat they'll spam earrape music interspersed with the n-word and sexual content. As a side note, one of Valve's few attempts to "mitigate" the bot problem was preventing free to play accounts from using chat (voice or text), including the use of in-game voice commands. Bots continue to spam voice chat, just by using stolen accounts, while legitimate f2p players are left unable to communicate. Bots are often used for doxxing, harassment, and impersonation. Their profile names and profile pictures are used to impersonate people who have gotten on the bot hoster's (bot hoster: noun; a script kiddie who downloaded some easily accessible open source code from the internet and runs it on the computer someone else payed for while they live in their parents basement) radar. In addition to impersonating the profile name and picture, the bots will spam deepfake (ai generated) audio of the person they're impersonating in the voicechat, using ai to impersonate their voice to spam racist obscenities. The creation and dissemination of these deepfakes are literal criminal acts in most places. The bots are also used for doxxing, broadcasting the personal information (name, address, birthdate, etc.) of whoever the bot hoster targets towards all the players on valves servers. Doxxing and impersonation are considered criminal acts in the vast majority of countries, and valve's services are being used to facilitate these criminal acts. Said bot hosters have also been known to engage in a variety of other criminal acts, including swatting a prominent community member by calling in a bomb threat in that person's name (which caused a college to be evacuated, and literally put the targeted person's life at risk, there's an active criminal case involving that one). The fact this has been occurring for many years without any meaningful effort on Valve's part to mitigate the issue is absolutely unacceptable. Vac (valve anti cheat) is entirely ineffective, and cheaters also run rampant in other immensely popular multiplayer valve games, such as counter strike. Even more laughably, most of the code to run all these bots and cheat in game is open source and freely available on the internet. Valve continues to actively monetize tf2, adding in new (community created) content to be used for a lootbox-based monetization system. Meanwhile, even as they make millions of dollars off of tf2 (which is pennies compared to steam, I know), they leave the game in a fundamentally broken state and simply let malicious actors have their way. Since Valve continues to actively monetize tf2, they have an obligation to their players and customers to maintain the game such that it is playable. Also, I think this should go without saying, they have an obligation to prevent others from using their services to perform criminal acts. It is incumbent upon valve to take action against the malicious actors who are actively abusing the services provided by valve, and I hope they will do so in the future. Ultimately, a functioning anti-cheat won't only benefit the tf2 community, it will benefit every single person who plays any multiplayer valve game whatsoever. FIX TF2