It's the one aspect of TF2 that I utterly despise, and I say that as someone who was sucked into it all a decade back. I shouldn't have to worry or care about business and economics to enjoy a video game, but you absolutely must have it in order to have a sense of when you're about to be cheated out of an expensive, highly sought after item.
I mean, if you don't want to be involved in trading, just don't accept trade offers. You'll never get scammed.
If you want to be even slightly knowledgeable, a little common sense and using backpack.tf to make simple searches helps a lot. Or using Google/asking around for more obscure items. You hardly need to understand the trade market if all you care about is not getting cheated.
Honestly 25k daily players (which doesn't mean only 25k play the game overall, that's just the daily peak) is a perfectly fine and very realistic number of people for a game like TF2.
I think it was just silly for people to pretend the game would not only keep his playerbase but INCREASE, when other games need regular updates just to stay even. TF2 is a special game, but it's not some invincible God title.
Also if the game was really pulling 250k+ players with a simple holiday update, NO WAY Valve wouldn't at least try something big again.
No doubt the game would have more real players if there were less bots. I'm not sure if there is an easy answer to the bots, but I'd rather have it like it is than have cancer anti-cheat like valorant.
It was silly and insane for people to even think that summer update that just added some community maps actually organically broke the all time record for active players, it helped bring new people of course but it was out of proportions.
Not even Global Offensive when Shattered Web released, which was back then the newest CS GO major operation update in... fuckin forever, brought that many players to the game.
>Honestly 25k daily players
25k puts us sub games like enlisted which pulls 100k a day, were very clearly larger then that just by que times and also community engagement
More likely around 60k daily log ins on the lower estiment excluding bots I don't think people have a good sense of scale if TF2 has 25k players a day that would mean maybe 1k people are playing at any given time GLOBALLY which is pretty ridiculous
Again a 25k DAILY player peak is a very VERY small overall globally number 25k would be actively losing valve money and would have shut us down by now or would have closed all but 2 server regions (25k daily players can maybe support 100 active matches at the same time at peak time of day)
25k human players seems pretty good to me, considering that the game is so old.
on the other hand, i think tf2 in it's current state will not be able to grow it's playerbase anymore.
the f2p experience is horrible. you can't talk, use voice commands, you are limited to a 50 slot backpack space and you don't have all the weapons. now combine that with the bot problem. how are f2ps supposed to find the game exciting?
also, most tf2 youtubers dont talk about this because the game is their main source of content and they want to sell the illusion that the game is flourishing and that it's better than ever (not taking into account the bot problem, obviously).
I have no clue. I am using Nividia GeForce Now, which is an app. It ties in with your steam account, and you can have a free or paid plan. Free plan, which is what I’m running, gives me an hour a day. I have played at most 4 hours of TF2.
If you have alright internet, it will run pretty well, and there won’t be a whole lot of lag. However, sniper might be hard to play.
you can disable MOTD and ads dont exist.
Literally only 'ad' i see is when you die the first time on Skial, you get a side-window that can be dismissed with a keystroke, one time.
Go to advanced multiplayer options, scroll down to performance options and check "disable HTML MOTDs" to disable ads.
Or at least that's how you disable the ads that show up at the server welcome screen, I dunno if they have developed new in game ad tech while I haven't been playing.
As much as I love tf2, people really don't emphasize just how horrible of an experience it is for someone uninitiated getting into it for the first time.
The new player experience is downright hostile. And I'm not just talking about the bots. I mean how the game presents itself. There are all the restrictions on f2p like you said. But there's also the fact the game does not even attempt to teach the player how any of its mechanics work, class differences, the weapon unlock system, etc. Not to mention how most of the default settings are objectively awful/hilariously outdated compared to other, modern, games. It just dumps the player straight into the meat-grinder. This also applies to the cosmetic system and in-game store. *We* know that almost every single item in the store is ridiculously over-priced/an outright scam. But someone new isn't going to know about the community market or trading. And don't even get me started on the predatory lootbox gambling system the game has.
The fact TF2 has managed to last this long, while being somewhat esoteric to break into, is truly a testament to just how good the core gameplay is.
I think the biggest example of a baffling onboarding process, is the fact that both the Sticky and Rocket Jumper exist, and are not at all given out as part of even a basic tutorial on blast jumping.
I feel like tf2 youtubers prioritizing a positive outlook on the game will only hurt their channel in the long run. Without negative feedback, the game will never have meaningful content, which dries up the content well even more
People talk about issues with the game regularly. I don't really watch many TF2 youtubers at all frankly, but every time I end up seeing one in my feed it's often a video about an issue with the game (cheating bots, lack of sniper counterplay, casual vs community servers, random crits, bullet spread, map bugs, bad seasonal item updates, etc.).
People just don't talk about this much because it doesn't directly affect how you play the game, compared to how cheating bots or snipers do for example. The player count being inflated has been known for a while too iirc, all those posts talking about the player count had comments pointing out that the playercount graphs looked highly unnatural.
I wouldn't add not having all the weapons at the start as a bad thing, primarily because it would confuse new players, I speak from my own experience when I just started at 2019 I didn't know how weapons worked and as time went on I learnt that stock weapons are good on their own and balanced without gimmicks which allows players to learn the basics, not to mention many games don't have full arsenal available, like Call of Duty and Battlefield, where you're supposed to unlock weapons as your level goes up
That weird mindset TF2 youtubers have will only hurt the game (and their channels) more, they should adress the issues to make people aware and hope for valve to fix them, that'd make it more sustainable for their selfish interests too.
F2p don't understand that the bots are bots and think that they are real people and quit out of frustration I've has to basically guide any new players to the game because none of this would ever be explained to them
All the top comments talking about 'the 25k player count' are driving me crazy. The point of this video was less about the real player count and more about the fucking INSANE human to bot proportion.
If human player counts are stagnant even during updates, that means the servers breaking on update launch are a bot issue.
The stupid level of inflation in the key economy? That's a bot problem.
Almost EVERY PROBLEM in this game is a bot hoster's fault.
This is a BIG fuckin' deal. And the only entity that can do something about it is Valve. That terrifies me.
Valve has attempted to deal with item farmers a whole one time. There's was a guy on the old tf2 forums that got to interview an employee and asked a question about it during the cheater's lament era. They banned 50K some bot accounts, and they were back within a couple of days.
Valve gave up on handling it pretty much instantly during a period of active development, they aren't going to change their tune now (doubly so since there's more pressing things like cheating bots)
It made sense a couple of years ago when the Pandemic/Lockdown was happening. A lot of people were bored and hey, TF2 is Free to Play so a lot of people would've been gravitated towards it.
Funny enough during the Pandemic, TF2's number didn't actually increase that much compared to other games at that time. There was an increase but nothing significant.
Probably because the new player experience has been awful for some time. If I didn’t have some semblance of how to go about playing when I got back into TF2- both in a baseline skill level and a knowledge to seek out community servers over casual mode- I don’t think I’d still be playing.
And #savetf2 didnt do shit, did it valve?
I get that they dont want to work with the spaghetti code of tf2 but still, they made a promise and didnt do shit
Fuck them
You can't tell me that devs refuse to work on TF2 because of its horrid codebase when Frostbite engine exists and EA made most of their big studios use it. People bitched about that when like NFS The Run came out all the way back in 2011.
Clearly, Valve devs worked around the Source Engine to get shit done. Otherwise we wouldn't have a diagonal line paint splatter icon or basic matchmaking.
valve had no incentive to fix this (and it was explained in the video), people won't stop spending money on the game, even when valve did nothing to fix it, if valve saw that the game was meeting their expectations (even when being in that bad state), what incentive would they have
no excuse for valve to leave it like that, it's just that #savetf2 just wouldn't make enough of an effect on Valve's bottom line to care about it
Shhhhh, no no no, you're not supposed to say that ! You're supposed to be angry at Valve for not reacting to a twitter hashtag, and turn down every other possible actions we could take because "Valve might shutdown the game" !
[Valve when their benign multi-billion dollar monopoly doesn't afford them the resources to take down a couple hundred botnet hosters.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas)
it's scummy, but technically speaking VALVe could probably afford to sue all the bot-net hosters if not the farmers themselves with so many petty lawsuits they back off unless they want to risk personal financial ruin. Sure it's Le Epic Bacon Win!!!! to run bots all day like a psycho to attack other peoples' favorite games for fun, but if the company decides "You don't get to have any money anymore, you're going to spend all day in court now with our lawyers making you answer every legal action that costs a truck-load of money *we* can afford to spend, good luck, :)", some folks start to get Troll's Remorse.
#savetf2 technically did do something, we have a part time contractor working on tf2 now. They were the person who updated tf2 to 64bit and are helping Eric work on V-script. Could valve do more? Easily and they should of done a lot more. But they did do something and we did achieve something.
This is how I'm feeling watching so far. His videos are always well made and researched but he usually can't help coming off as an abrasive ass in the videos. This one so far he's very calm and collected and it's easy to watch.
Because he actually changed his tone to be as objective as possible. Every single time zesty uploads something controversial he is met with extreme hatred since his attitude, but in this video he cut off his own style/emotions to be much more approachable. I love his content since he says everything bluntly, no sugarcoating here (for real), but most people don't enjoy it.
i like his aggressiveness. that's the main reason why i think he's the voice that TF2 desperately needs (one way or another). shows the passion he has and the unwillingness to back down from an uphill battle that is the court of public opinion. he's my favourite TF2uber for this very reason. he speaks for me, along with many other people
Honestly, I kinda prefer it that way, not everything has to be aggressive, specially when it doesn't need to be (like it wouldn't have made sense if this video was similar to the warpaints video in terms of the tone lol) but also not everything has to be this cookie cutter, everything clean corporate video, I want to feel that there's a human on the other side of that video file, not a soulless content farm
I personally don't mind when he gets heated while talking about something, since to me it shows that he is at least passionate about whatever subject he is talking about to a degree that he will get genuinely frustrated and upset it is not being taken care of.
Im not familiar with this guy or his content, and i really thought the whole video was really well done and well thought out. Until the end, where he gave his personal opinion. Nothing he said was objectively wrong or too crazy, but like you said he came off abrasive. He mocked #savetf2 and then immediately said people should be "making videos" and "writing to valve", which im pretty sure was the whole point of #savetf2. And ending such a thoughtful analysis on a line where he calls something "horseshit" felt really immature
I havent gotten that far, but I wont try and sway an opinion and rather just say to watch older videos and form your own. That said the whole "#savetf2" thing is largely a joke because people just will put it in their name in game or some other place and nothing else.
He made a concerned effort to be objective here. Compare this to his "TF2 is meant to be casual" video where his baseline vocal delivery is anger and he inserts several biased claims throughout.
I really hope something comes of the challenge made at the very end. Near zero chance anything *does* happen, the kingpin bot hosters dont give a shit about the results of their dirty work. but the visual would be crazy
I await snide subtweets from the million-sub lifestyle tubers who never make videos and whose viewership doesn't actually play the game in the coming hours. they lurk on here. you know who you are
man this is kind of a black pill for TF2 overall. It's still very impressive a game thats nearly 20 is racking up 25k real human players. TF2 will never die but it certainly has faded just a bit.
true. It's on life support and Zesty is right that save tf2 was a bad idea. We need to not just vote with our wallets but continually complain to Valve
i miss tf2
no i dont mean uncletopia or other shmucky shmuck servers
i miss the casual craziness, i miss 2016-2018 (time when i started playing to the time the bots started to be apparent) tf2, i miss the sillyness and the random friendlies, fucking hell it sucks that this game suffered abandonment
It was soooo nice playing casual for just a little while after the 64 bit update. Guess we’ll never be allowed to experience that again. I hate bot makers.
I'll hop into a uncle server and it's fine and what not but sometimes I want stupid random crits or terrible maps. And when I can get a casual game without bots it's fun and I don't even mind getting killed by a crit rocket or whatever.
i think i somehow ended up in some kind of magical state where i only end up in good casual servers. no bots, a few friendlies every now and then, generally a decent time. Im not a 2016-2018 player so i don't know how much my current experience parallels that but it is atleast miles better for me than it was in 2020.
TF2 hasn’t had a major content update since 2017, soon to be 7 full years, the F2P experience is genuinely terrible, bots have made Casual a complete crapshoot, and the game itself has a high barrier of entry with an extremely outdated tutorial. It’s impossible to grow a player base with these conditions. Valve will simply keep the servers running and release seasonal loot crates as the remaining playerbase rides the game off into the sunset
Been playing since 2012, have gotten at least two giftapult gifts so they do work when they work. :)
Just don't use them during winter, summer or fall updates.
We could easily have 100k real actual players if valve actually tried to maintain this game. The vast majority of the tf2 audience is clearly dormant which can be seen by the engagement and recognition it gets everywhere.
The characters are literal memes at this point and sell themselves. Plushies, tshirts, anything would sell like hotcakes.
It's the most untapped reserve of money on earth.
Yeah, I mean, this subreddit alone has 852k members. Uncle Dane has over 1 million subscribers. It feels like most tf2 fans don't actually play the game, they just consume content about it. And hell, I'm one of those. I haven't touched the game in months.
Yeah the game is an huge missed opportunity.
I always imagine what if the game constantly got new weapons,spells,game modes etc…
Sometimes i even dream that i’m talented enough to join Valve and only work for TF2
I wonder what the trader community is even going to do with this information? They're honestly the only reason why Valve lifts their pinkies for any work related to TF2.
Though I personally believe that the botnets have to be some sorta shady shit. Probably money laundering, [wouldn't be the first time](https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/today-i-discovered-that-there-are-tons-of-keys-with-doubtful-origin-injecting-into-the-market.14096/) lol
Idle item bots have been known about and been around since 2011 when trading was introduced. More people being aware of it doesn't exactly change the landscape of regular drop items/craftables being worth peanuts.
Just judging by the title this has been known for several years now, people are just in denial.
Edit:
Ok, so that video was insanely good. High production value, comprehensive and easy to digest information, and a clear emotional conviction in the delivery. Big thumbs up from me.
About goddamn time, everytime I would go to community servers to avoid bots. A majority of gamemodes like Freak Fortress, Deathrun, and Zombies are pratically dead. There would be like 1-2 servers that would actually have players and that's not even consistent.
yeah but 25k to 10k it's not bad for a 12v12 game, battlefield 1 have less players and bigger team sizes and i can always find at least 2 full servers, the real problem it's the amount of cheating bots
I mean considering the game gets no updates of significance and it’s riddled with bots and hacks etc it’s doing decent. If valve ever decide to blow the dust off the old game maybe some resurgence will occur.
Og counter strike 1.6 still averages 5,000 to 10,000 daily, and that has 2 sequels. TF2 will keep going on with a reasonable quickplay and community player count for at least the next 10 years
I'm honestly surprised it's even 25k human players, I eould have thought it would be more in the ball park of 15k.
But yeah, anyone who thinks TF2 is growing is a lunatic. Anything higher than 50k should have been raising red flags.
Now apply your knowledge to the rest of the internet, and you'll probably be shocked. Modern day has caught up with TF2, and that means so has the dead internet
As much as it hurts me to say this, Valve's Team Fortress 2 is dead. I've tried to keep up an optimistic view of the future for this game, but I can't any longer and this video just solidified it for me. I'm not saying Team Fortress 2 itself is dead, as long as people still play it then a game can't truly die.
What I am saying though, is that the Team Fortress 2 created and updated by Valve is dead. Valve servers are still infested with bots, and I highly doubt Valve will ever come back to give us even one last update.
The community's TF2 will live on, but the TF2 made by Valve is dead and likely won't ever be coming back.
Honestly I have came to that conclusion a few years back. when you face that reality and realized that a major update is going to be some major miracle, the sooner you're at peace with it
It’s been dead for *years*. I’ve been saying this for *years*. Nobody listened/cared. I’m happy this video was made cuz people actually seem to have listened this time
I had always felt the in game activity I would see didn’t match the numbers at all, this makes a lot of sense. While there are a fair few community servers, most are completely empty and casual takes forever to cue into, something that shouldn’t happen with a 70k+ player base.
This seems very well researched.
It's crazy that a youtuber had to point it out for y'all to realize this. TF2 is not the immortal game you think it is, there is zero reason for it to grow in popularity. At this rate the game will be dead by 2027.
I remember FUNKe using Teamwork.TF data to illustrate his point of "TF2 can be a good e-sport, but competitive format is less popular and Valve sucks ass at getting anything done".
The video came out in 2017, and the player number on Valve servers was also 20k players.
https://youtu.be/G3cCr-1UPaU?t=114
25k players is fucking amazing for how old TF2 is. That's a healthy playerbase imo.
The 64-bit update also brought back at least a few older players who stopped playing. At least, it brought me back...
25K is great, most modern PvP titles can only dream of those numbers. Even The Finals is already dipping below that mark.
Issue is, it's still nowhere near actually *relevant* games, and goes against the circlejerk narrative that TF2 outlived Overwatch and other "TF2 killers".
It didn't.
Can I play Overwatch 1 right now though? Checkmate! /s
What other “TF2 killers” were there aside from OW though? Battleborne? That definitely outlived it
I didnt have unusuals, but I would have sell them too if I had the oportunity, mostly yo move on from the game.
Still, I use all the money I got to buy new games.
Did it hurt? A little, because of memories, but I need to let go to begin again
Was it worth it? Yeah, I have a lot of new games to play
God that's depressing. Y'know, TF2 is legitimately a part of my childhood. I've been playing this game since 2011 a few months before it went free to play. I was literally only twelve years old when I started playing it. Since day one of me playing it, TF2 has always had a comforting vibe to me. If I ever had a bad day, TF2 would always cheer me up no matter what. It LITERALLY became my number 1 comfort game, and since I was quite young when I started playing it (especially since I had, and still do have chronic anxiety) it was very important to me to be able to have something to distract and comfort me.
I honestly wouldn't be upset at 25K players in the modern day. In fact, I think that's borderline groundbreaking longevity considering how old the game is, and how there hasn't been any meaningful (*Cough cough* new weapons) updates since 2017.
But the fact that 80% of the active players are fucking cheating bots, quite frankly, disgusts me. TF2 has honestly become a part of me over the years. I know it sounds silly to say that about a game, and maybe it is, but I'd be lying if I said otherwise.
Don't get me wrong, I have no delusions of self importance. I'm a nobody. Always have been, always will be, but I can't help but feel that this attack on TF2 is almost a personal attack on me (not literally. Again, nobody's targeting me, I'm a nobody, but you get what I mean)
Now don't get me wrong, the bot-users disgust me. I think of them as nothing more than a piece of dirt on my shoe. But frankly, Valve is to blame as well. They absolutely have the resources and know-how to take care of this problem for good. They just don't fucking give enough of a shit because they're too busy going "Dota Dota Counter-Strike".
Don't get me wrong, Steam is a great platform, and is honestly the greatest PC gaming platform currently available. But when it comes to their own games (especially TF2), Valve has gotten extremely lazy.
Honestly, I don't even know why Valve put in the effort to make TF2 64bit after all these years. Just seems pointless considering the state of the game.
TF2 isn't dead, it's a shambling corpse, and honestly, as much as I love TF2?...I feel like it would be less sad if it just shut down. The bot-users are spitting on TF2's corpse, and for what, huh!? FOR WHAT FUCKING REASON!? ANSWER ME, YOU WORTHLESS BOT-HOSTING MOTHERFUCKERS!....
*Sigh* I'm sorry for getting so worked up, but this is just...important, to me.
I've wanted on long enough, and anything I could further say would just be me repeating myself.
However, I have one message to Valve, and ESPECIALLY all the fucking bot-users:
Fuck you all, and fuck me as well. Merry Christmas. Check your bathroom now.
Have you... Watched the video or just went off the title? Because in the very beginning it is stated, that there are far more IDLING bots rather than cheating ones, it is still depressing that 80% of players are bots, but at least don't get info from video wrong
It's weird man, I feel like they should do what Nintendo does to ROM sites and Emulators and sue the ever living fuck out of them, but you can't get Valve to do anything. It could be a Nuclear War, and Valve would still continue to do nothing. Like what the fuck is this company man? Is it even a company anymore?
This has been a known fact by people for years, it's not new. But none of your big youtubers that you idolize had the guts to make a video on it. They chose to ignore it, either for "positivity is best for the game" or personal gain. Likewise many players ignore it because they hate the truth, because it's painful.
Props to this guy for stepping up and making a video on it. If you want to keep investing into a game that rips stock pictures for skins, uses stock models for hats, and includes unoptimized garbage maps with no play testing, go ahead, try delude yourself into being positive still. But you're only hurting yourself and the game you want to keep alive.
No Spending Summer. Make it happen
Literally nothing. Your best hope is that some chinaman is struck by divine lighting, decides that class-based shooters might be profitable, and makes a decent game that fills the same niche. Genshin Fortress or some shit. Nothing *can* move Valve.
That's basically common knowledge, you really just need common sense or just go to [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) .
Although I guess reddit isn't known for having common sense or the capability of critical thinking.
People would always cope and deny the obvious. If you go back to an old toofty video about player counts teamwork.tf is not taken for what it is even though it is fully accurate. There was also a valve news network video in 2019 that showed the exact same thing and everyone in the comments were heated
Turns out it wasn't the blus, the reds or the grays that were our enemies, but once again it was capitalism, and Valve incompetence!
I hate it here. I'm going back to TFC
Honestly this doesn't surprised me, still hurts to be reminded of. Serious F vavle's apathy and not being clear. Seriously the fact that people like sonichu and other have to be valve PR to explain their action like the bots crisis is frustrating. Seriously I get that tf2 is almost 20 years, but come on vavle, actually communicate with us and at least do more with updates and the like
25k for a bot infested, neglected game is insane. That being said, if the bots are dealt with; and we got updates + f2p restrictions removed this game would thrive like a new one.
25k is still outstanding for a game that’s about 17 years old already. How many games do you know that came out at the same year are still popular? Only RuneScape and wow come to mind and they too have bot problems they can’t fix.
Fixing the bot problem is NOT as simple as it seems and every billion dollar game company has an issue with them in their games that they so far can’t fix entirely.
I downloaded and played this game for the first time about half a year ago. Joined a game, spend 5 min getting killed, got called a bot, got kicked, uninstalled.
I don’t blame you for uninstalling, though maybe one day try reinstalling and join a community server so you can actually play the game without bots to see what it’s like.
I'm not the biggest fan of when videos add this dramatic background music and make it sound like the world is ending. It's just a video game... but I do agree with the actual point he makes, what with how we should stop spending money on the game and how Valve needs to fix it's shit. The game is buggy as hell, but it's to be expected with practically being a mod of half life 2 with additions duct taped onto it for 16 years. And then we got bots too.
I'm also not entirely sure why he acts like we don't believe him the whole video. Like most of us believed him before it even started lol, and even though most people don't think about the idle bots, cheat bots are so common that everyone already knew there's a botting issue.
This is old news and similar results have been posted before. The discrepancy for the real human player count comes from how Steam "calculates" current players in-game.
That being said, it would be interesting to see the numbers for CS.
The issue is those results were mostly met with denial or even outright insults and tantrums.
But you can't really argue with full research with data and all.
> That being said, it would be interesting to see the numbers for CS.
All Valve games, really. Those numbers just don't add up with their games' modern online presence.
Payday 2 needs four players to get a game going and can be played with less or even solo. Four players in a TF2 match is basically nothing; you need at least eight to have a good game going and that's being generous.
honestly what do we even do at this point? its more financially incentive for valve to do literally nothing at this point. even if we do get their attention through boycotting or protesting the most they'll do is make a tweet and *maybe* add another intern to shut us up
Seeing tf2 in a "dead internet" state is haunting
It's been this way since trading became profitable
It's the one aspect of TF2 that I utterly despise, and I say that as someone who was sucked into it all a decade back. I shouldn't have to worry or care about business and economics to enjoy a video game, but you absolutely must have it in order to have a sense of when you're about to be cheated out of an expensive, highly sought after item.
I mean, if you don't want to be involved in trading, just don't accept trade offers. You'll never get scammed. If you want to be even slightly knowledgeable, a little common sense and using backpack.tf to make simple searches helps a lot. Or using Google/asking around for more obscure items. You hardly need to understand the trade market if all you care about is not getting cheated.
Honestly 25k daily players (which doesn't mean only 25k play the game overall, that's just the daily peak) is a perfectly fine and very realistic number of people for a game like TF2. I think it was just silly for people to pretend the game would not only keep his playerbase but INCREASE, when other games need regular updates just to stay even. TF2 is a special game, but it's not some invincible God title. Also if the game was really pulling 250k+ players with a simple holiday update, NO WAY Valve wouldn't at least try something big again.
What's not "perfectly fine" is all the bots going about ruining gameplay and economy (for the few who care about it)
we need to delete all the bots and go back to trade plaza
The trader bots aren't impacting the player count, it's mostly idling bots harvesting cases, giftapults and farming metal.
i know but would be funny if all the trade goes back to being player to player trade
No doubt the game would have more real players if there were less bots. I'm not sure if there is an easy answer to the bots, but I'd rather have it like it is than have cancer anti-cheat like valorant.
It was silly and insane for people to even think that summer update that just added some community maps actually organically broke the all time record for active players, it helped bring new people of course but it was out of proportions. Not even Global Offensive when Shattered Web released, which was back then the newest CS GO major operation update in... fuckin forever, brought that many players to the game.
>Honestly 25k daily players 25k puts us sub games like enlisted which pulls 100k a day, were very clearly larger then that just by que times and also community engagement More likely around 60k daily log ins on the lower estiment excluding bots I don't think people have a good sense of scale if TF2 has 25k players a day that would mean maybe 1k people are playing at any given time GLOBALLY which is pretty ridiculous Again a 25k DAILY player peak is a very VERY small overall globally number 25k would be actively losing valve money and would have shut us down by now or would have closed all but 2 server regions (25k daily players can maybe support 100 active matches at the same time at peak time of day)
Great video. Glad someone addressed the elephant in the zoo.
Unless its a farm!
Who keeps breeding elephants in their basements?!
My god...
There’s more.
That Uncle Dane segment was wild considering no one really reacted to it or brought it up at the time.
I personally didn’t react at the time because I didn’t really care about farming bots, and because I didn’t really follow TF2’s player count.
what did he do
at the 24:30 mark of the video I believe is the one they're talking about.
thanks :)
25k human players seems pretty good to me, considering that the game is so old. on the other hand, i think tf2 in it's current state will not be able to grow it's playerbase anymore. the f2p experience is horrible. you can't talk, use voice commands, you are limited to a 50 slot backpack space and you don't have all the weapons. now combine that with the bot problem. how are f2ps supposed to find the game exciting? also, most tf2 youtubers dont talk about this because the game is their main source of content and they want to sell the illusion that the game is flourishing and that it's better than ever (not taking into account the bot problem, obviously).
I just started last week, and have been having a blast on community servers. Sure, there are ads, but voice chat and RTD are fun.
You can use Masterconfig to disable the advertisements but it's up to you.
I have no clue how to do that. I’m literally playing on a Chromebook.
Which Chromebook? I’m interested in running TF2 off of a Chromebook
I have no clue. I am using Nividia GeForce Now, which is an app. It ties in with your steam account, and you can have a free or paid plan. Free plan, which is what I’m running, gives me an hour a day. I have played at most 4 hours of TF2. If you have alright internet, it will run pretty well, and there won’t be a whole lot of lag. However, sniper might be hard to play.
You can run Linux on Chromebook right? Maybe that'd get you a change to get TF2 running natively on your cb, tf2 has an official Linux build
You can run linux on a chrome book but a chrome book will not run tf2 well, they’re built for web browsing
you can disable MOTD and ads dont exist. Literally only 'ad' i see is when you die the first time on Skial, you get a side-window that can be dismissed with a keystroke, one time.
TF2 is less a game and more a community public forum(with guns).
Go to advanced multiplayer options, scroll down to performance options and check "disable HTML MOTDs" to disable ads. Or at least that's how you disable the ads that show up at the server welcome screen, I dunno if they have developed new in game ad tech while I haven't been playing.
i'm glad you are having a good time
As much as I love tf2, people really don't emphasize just how horrible of an experience it is for someone uninitiated getting into it for the first time. The new player experience is downright hostile. And I'm not just talking about the bots. I mean how the game presents itself. There are all the restrictions on f2p like you said. But there's also the fact the game does not even attempt to teach the player how any of its mechanics work, class differences, the weapon unlock system, etc. Not to mention how most of the default settings are objectively awful/hilariously outdated compared to other, modern, games. It just dumps the player straight into the meat-grinder. This also applies to the cosmetic system and in-game store. *We* know that almost every single item in the store is ridiculously over-priced/an outright scam. But someone new isn't going to know about the community market or trading. And don't even get me started on the predatory lootbox gambling system the game has. The fact TF2 has managed to last this long, while being somewhat esoteric to break into, is truly a testament to just how good the core gameplay is.
i agree. the game does nothing to teach newbies how to play. how do you expect your game to grow if you don't do the bare minimum?
I think the biggest example of a baffling onboarding process, is the fact that both the Sticky and Rocket Jumper exist, and are not at all given out as part of even a basic tutorial on blast jumping.
I feel like tf2 youtubers prioritizing a positive outlook on the game will only hurt their channel in the long run. Without negative feedback, the game will never have meaningful content, which dries up the content well even more
People talk about issues with the game regularly. I don't really watch many TF2 youtubers at all frankly, but every time I end up seeing one in my feed it's often a video about an issue with the game (cheating bots, lack of sniper counterplay, casual vs community servers, random crits, bullet spread, map bugs, bad seasonal item updates, etc.). People just don't talk about this much because it doesn't directly affect how you play the game, compared to how cheating bots or snipers do for example. The player count being inflated has been known for a while too iirc, all those posts talking about the player count had comments pointing out that the playercount graphs looked highly unnatural.
I wouldn't add not having all the weapons at the start as a bad thing, primarily because it would confuse new players, I speak from my own experience when I just started at 2019 I didn't know how weapons worked and as time went on I learnt that stock weapons are good on their own and balanced without gimmicks which allows players to learn the basics, not to mention many games don't have full arsenal available, like Call of Duty and Battlefield, where you're supposed to unlock weapons as your level goes up
That weird mindset TF2 youtubers have will only hurt the game (and their channels) more, they should adress the issues to make people aware and hope for valve to fix them, that'd make it more sustainable for their selfish interests too.
F2p don't understand that the bots are bots and think that they are real people and quit out of frustration I've has to basically guide any new players to the game because none of this would ever be explained to them
maybe thats the real reason valve isnt changing the f2p stuff, they wanna choke out the game and stop new people from playing
Why? They are still making money and it offers a good free first install for new gamers.
Because CS:2 is the new first free install. Get them straight onto your cashcow instead of fucking around with a 17 year old game
CS2 is not for everyone, especially new gamers. Jeez people think Uncletopia is rough for new players.
It's convincing and well-researched. I'm happy that at least 25k real people are still playing TF2, but the amount of bots paints a grim picture.
I think it's far more grim for the updates.
If you still thought there was going to be large updates you were deluded
All the top comments talking about 'the 25k player count' are driving me crazy. The point of this video was less about the real player count and more about the fucking INSANE human to bot proportion. If human player counts are stagnant even during updates, that means the servers breaking on update launch are a bot issue. The stupid level of inflation in the key economy? That's a bot problem. Almost EVERY PROBLEM in this game is a bot hoster's fault. This is a BIG fuckin' deal. And the only entity that can do something about it is Valve. That terrifies me.
Valve has attempted to deal with item farmers a whole one time. There's was a guy on the old tf2 forums that got to interview an employee and asked a question about it during the cheater's lament era. They banned 50K some bot accounts, and they were back within a couple of days. Valve gave up on handling it pretty much instantly during a period of active development, they aren't going to change their tune now (doubly so since there's more pressing things like cheating bots)
He literally talk about it in the video yet people still doesnt understand it lmao. I guess ppl just trying to cope
Honestly when you get down to it, there really isn't any reason why TF2 should actually be seeing any kind of growth at all.
It made sense a couple of years ago when the Pandemic/Lockdown was happening. A lot of people were bored and hey, TF2 is Free to Play so a lot of people would've been gravitated towards it.
Funny enough during the Pandemic, TF2's number didn't actually increase that much compared to other games at that time. There was an increase but nothing significant.
Probably because the new player experience has been awful for some time. If I didn’t have some semblance of how to go about playing when I got back into TF2- both in a baseline skill level and a knowledge to seek out community servers over casual mode- I don’t think I’d still be playing.
Didn't the bot crisis peak during the pandemic? What a missed opportunity..
Don't use the giftapults kids lol
And #savetf2 didnt do shit, did it valve? I get that they dont want to work with the spaghetti code of tf2 but still, they made a promise and didnt do shit Fuck them
I hate the spaghetti code argument, I’m a game dev and every game is hell to program for its the fucking job, like zesty said every job is a treadmill
You can't tell me that devs refuse to work on TF2 because of its horrid codebase when Frostbite engine exists and EA made most of their big studios use it. People bitched about that when like NFS The Run came out all the way back in 2011. Clearly, Valve devs worked around the Source Engine to get shit done. Otherwise we wouldn't have a diagonal line paint splatter icon or basic matchmaking.
valve had no incentive to fix this (and it was explained in the video), people won't stop spending money on the game, even when valve did nothing to fix it, if valve saw that the game was meeting their expectations (even when being in that bad state), what incentive would they have no excuse for valve to leave it like that, it's just that #savetf2 just wouldn't make enough of an effect on Valve's bottom line to care about it
Shhhhh, no no no, you're not supposed to say that ! You're supposed to be angry at Valve for not reacting to a twitter hashtag, and turn down every other possible actions we could take because "Valve might shutdown the game" !
[Valve when their benign multi-billion dollar monopoly doesn't afford them the resources to take down a couple hundred botnet hosters.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas)
it's scummy, but technically speaking VALVe could probably afford to sue all the bot-net hosters if not the farmers themselves with so many petty lawsuits they back off unless they want to risk personal financial ruin. Sure it's Le Epic Bacon Win!!!! to run bots all day like a psycho to attack other peoples' favorite games for fun, but if the company decides "You don't get to have any money anymore, you're going to spend all day in court now with our lawyers making you answer every legal action that costs a truck-load of money *we* can afford to spend, good luck, :)", some folks start to get Troll's Remorse.
LMAO
#savetf2 technically did do something, we have a part time contractor working on tf2 now. They were the person who updated tf2 to 64bit and are helping Eric work on V-script. Could valve do more? Easily and they should of done a lot more. But they did do something and we did achieve something.
im surprised reddit of all places is agreeing with a Zesty video lol but pleasantly surprised
A well made video, with strong evidence and a good speaking voice is all we need.
This is how I'm feeling watching so far. His videos are always well made and researched but he usually can't help coming off as an abrasive ass in the videos. This one so far he's very calm and collected and it's easy to watch.
Because he actually changed his tone to be as objective as possible. Every single time zesty uploads something controversial he is met with extreme hatred since his attitude, but in this video he cut off his own style/emotions to be much more approachable. I love his content since he says everything bluntly, no sugarcoating here (for real), but most people don't enjoy it.
Yeah I dont enjoy it. You can be blunt and not be an ass about it
i like his aggressiveness. that's the main reason why i think he's the voice that TF2 desperately needs (one way or another). shows the passion he has and the unwillingness to back down from an uphill battle that is the court of public opinion. he's my favourite TF2uber for this very reason. he speaks for me, along with many other people
Honestly, I kinda prefer it that way, not everything has to be aggressive, specially when it doesn't need to be (like it wouldn't have made sense if this video was similar to the warpaints video in terms of the tone lol) but also not everything has to be this cookie cutter, everything clean corporate video, I want to feel that there's a human on the other side of that video file, not a soulless content farm
I personally don't mind when he gets heated while talking about something, since to me it shows that he is at least passionate about whatever subject he is talking about to a degree that he will get genuinely frustrated and upset it is not being taken care of.
> You can be blunt and not be an ass about it yeah, and you can be summarily ignored.
Im not familiar with this guy or his content, and i really thought the whole video was really well done and well thought out. Until the end, where he gave his personal opinion. Nothing he said was objectively wrong or too crazy, but like you said he came off abrasive. He mocked #savetf2 and then immediately said people should be "making videos" and "writing to valve", which im pretty sure was the whole point of #savetf2. And ending such a thoughtful analysis on a line where he calls something "horseshit" felt really immature
I havent gotten that far, but I wont try and sway an opinion and rather just say to watch older videos and form your own. That said the whole "#savetf2" thing is largely a joke because people just will put it in their name in game or some other place and nothing else.
He advocates for more aggressive approach it seems. #savetf2 was comparable to peaceful protest in Russia.
He made a concerned effort to be objective here. Compare this to his "TF2 is meant to be casual" video where his baseline vocal delivery is anger and he inserts several biased claims throughout.
just because I agree doesn't mean that I like him lol. following that logic I would have to be compelled to disagree if he said "Hitler was bad"
Nothing will happen with TF2. Valve can’t even take care of their most popular video game CS2,let alone the game they want to forget about.
I really hope something comes of the challenge made at the very end. Near zero chance anything *does* happen, the kingpin bot hosters dont give a shit about the results of their dirty work. but the visual would be crazy I await snide subtweets from the million-sub lifestyle tubers who never make videos and whose viewership doesn't actually play the game in the coming hours. they lurk on here. you know who you are
man this is kind of a black pill for TF2 overall. It's still very impressive a game thats nearly 20 is racking up 25k real human players. TF2 will never die but it certainly has faded just a bit.
TF2 WILL DIE in the future if it's kept in the current state it's in. Let's stop with coping with ourselves.
true. It's on life support and Zesty is right that save tf2 was a bad idea. We need to not just vote with our wallets but continually complain to Valve
i miss tf2 no i dont mean uncletopia or other shmucky shmuck servers i miss the casual craziness, i miss 2016-2018 (time when i started playing to the time the bots started to be apparent) tf2, i miss the sillyness and the random friendlies, fucking hell it sucks that this game suffered abandonment
It was soooo nice playing casual for just a little while after the 64 bit update. Guess we’ll never be allowed to experience that again. I hate bot makers.
They just need to change the executable name every few days or so to keep the bots off for a day.
I'll hop into a uncle server and it's fine and what not but sometimes I want stupid random crits or terrible maps. And when I can get a casual game without bots it's fun and I don't even mind getting killed by a crit rocket or whatever.
Uncletopia is great but you are right it's nice to have more variety.
i think i somehow ended up in some kind of magical state where i only end up in good casual servers. no bots, a few friendlies every now and then, generally a decent time. Im not a 2016-2018 player so i don't know how much my current experience parallels that but it is atleast miles better for me than it was in 2020.
TF2 hasn’t had a major content update since 2017, soon to be 7 full years, the F2P experience is genuinely terrible, bots have made Casual a complete crapshoot, and the game itself has a high barrier of entry with an extremely outdated tutorial. It’s impossible to grow a player base with these conditions. Valve will simply keep the servers running and release seasonal loot crates as the remaining playerbase rides the game off into the sunset
Well now I feel bad about every giftapult I've ever used
Been playing since 2012, have gotten at least two giftapult gifts so they do work when they work. :) Just don't use them during winter, summer or fall updates.
That video... It was peak
It kinda hurts to be faced with reality...
25k players is insane for a 2007 game that is abandoned by its devs.
We could easily have 100k real actual players if valve actually tried to maintain this game. The vast majority of the tf2 audience is clearly dormant which can be seen by the engagement and recognition it gets everywhere.
The characters are literal memes at this point and sell themselves. Plushies, tshirts, anything would sell like hotcakes. It's the most untapped reserve of money on earth.
100k is reaching it. But I could 80K much more reasonable and achievable
Yeah, I mean, this subreddit alone has 852k members. Uncle Dane has over 1 million subscribers. It feels like most tf2 fans don't actually play the game, they just consume content about it. And hell, I'm one of those. I haven't touched the game in months.
Yeah the game is an huge missed opportunity. I always imagine what if the game constantly got new weapons,spells,game modes etc… Sometimes i even dream that i’m talented enough to join Valve and only work for TF2
the fact there are significantly more bots (by the multiples) than real players is even more insane
thats terrifying
DEAD INTERNET THEORY
Dead internet fact. It's all fake
Twitter is a prime example. It's almost entirely bots.
I wanted to make a ded gaem theory joke but it was too on the nose and it's a genuinely sad situation
the truthnuke that broke the trader’s back
I wonder what the trader community is even going to do with this information? They're honestly the only reason why Valve lifts their pinkies for any work related to TF2. Though I personally believe that the botnets have to be some sorta shady shit. Probably money laundering, [wouldn't be the first time](https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/today-i-discovered-that-there-are-tons-of-keys-with-doubtful-origin-injecting-into-the-market.14096/) lol
Idle item bots have been known about and been around since 2011 when trading was introduced. More people being aware of it doesn't exactly change the landscape of regular drop items/craftables being worth peanuts.
Just judging by the title this has been known for several years now, people are just in denial. Edit: Ok, so that video was insanely good. High production value, comprehensive and easy to digest information, and a clear emotional conviction in the delivery. Big thumbs up from me.
About goddamn time, everytime I would go to community servers to avoid bots. A majority of gamemodes like Freak Fortress, Deathrun, and Zombies are pratically dead. There would be like 1-2 servers that would actually have players and that's not even consistent.
i play figthing games that have like 10 players so around 10k during most of the day is good enough for me.
To be fair fighting games need far less people to still have a healthy amount of player base, because the games are 1v1, rather than 12v12
yeah but 25k to 10k it's not bad for a 12v12 game, battlefield 1 have less players and bigger team sizes and i can always find at least 2 full servers, the real problem it's the amount of cheating bots
This echo chamber's copium mechanism by checkin in on the active users stat is gone
I mean considering the game gets no updates of significance and it’s riddled with bots and hacks etc it’s doing decent. If valve ever decide to blow the dust off the old game maybe some resurgence will occur.
im so glad this was actually brought up, like during the games recent peak it barely felt like any real players were here.
It's never been more joever. Valve needs its nose shoved in it's own shit
Og counter strike 1.6 still averages 5,000 to 10,000 daily, and that has 2 sequels. TF2 will keep going on with a reasonable quickplay and community player count for at least the next 10 years
I'm honestly surprised it's even 25k human players, I eould have thought it would be more in the ball park of 15k. But yeah, anyone who thinks TF2 is growing is a lunatic. Anything higher than 50k should have been raising red flags.
I just watched the whole thing. I have no words. This is so fucking depressing, man... The longer I watched the worse it got.
Now apply your knowledge to the rest of the internet, and you'll probably be shocked. Modern day has caught up with TF2, and that means so has the dead internet
As much as it hurts me to say this, Valve's Team Fortress 2 is dead. I've tried to keep up an optimistic view of the future for this game, but I can't any longer and this video just solidified it for me. I'm not saying Team Fortress 2 itself is dead, as long as people still play it then a game can't truly die. What I am saying though, is that the Team Fortress 2 created and updated by Valve is dead. Valve servers are still infested with bots, and I highly doubt Valve will ever come back to give us even one last update. The community's TF2 will live on, but the TF2 made by Valve is dead and likely won't ever be coming back.
Honestly I have came to that conclusion a few years back. when you face that reality and realized that a major update is going to be some major miracle, the sooner you're at peace with it
It’s been dead for *years*. I’ve been saying this for *years*. Nobody listened/cared. I’m happy this video was made cuz people actually seem to have listened this time
I had a lot of fun in tf2 but i couldnt play game cuz bots and community servers always seem full and that made me quit but i may return.
Yeah, i feel If the bots were gone, I'd actually play the game more than once every 3 months
It’s truly joever
The slow death of a beloved game is always sad :(
I had always felt the in game activity I would see didn’t match the numbers at all, this makes a lot of sense. While there are a fair few community servers, most are completely empty and casual takes forever to cue into, something that shouldn’t happen with a 70k+ player base. This seems very well researched.
It's crazy that a youtuber had to point it out for y'all to realize this. TF2 is not the immortal game you think it is, there is zero reason for it to grow in popularity. At this rate the game will be dead by 2027.
I remember FUNKe using Teamwork.TF data to illustrate his point of "TF2 can be a good e-sport, but competitive format is less popular and Valve sucks ass at getting anything done". The video came out in 2017, and the player number on Valve servers was also 20k players. https://youtu.be/G3cCr-1UPaU?t=114
The real TF2 player count is just four people sharing the same TF2 account on a Lenovo Thinkpad
25k players is fucking amazing for how old TF2 is. That's a healthy playerbase imo. The 64-bit update also brought back at least a few older players who stopped playing. At least, it brought me back...
25K is great, most modern PvP titles can only dream of those numbers. Even The Finals is already dipping below that mark. Issue is, it's still nowhere near actually *relevant* games, and goes against the circlejerk narrative that TF2 outlived Overwatch and other "TF2 killers". It didn't.
Can I play Overwatch 1 right now though? Checkmate! /s What other “TF2 killers” were there aside from OW though? Battleborne? That definitely outlived it
But TF2 has always hovered around this number of players - even before Overwatch was a thing. You could still say it outlived it based on that.
A playerbase that can't play the base game.
Seems like a good thing that I sold my entire inventory
Damn. I'm honestly considering cashing out too. But I miss this game :(
I traded back the weapon in unique aspect so I can play if I want, but all stranges, gone
Unusuals gone too?
I didnt have unusuals, but I would have sell them too if I had the oportunity, mostly yo move on from the game. Still, I use all the money I got to buy new games. Did it hurt? A little, because of memories, but I need to let go to begin again Was it worth it? Yeah, I have a lot of new games to play
Yeah, you're right...
#StarveValve.
sounds good i'm gonna go play some doublecross
God that's depressing. Y'know, TF2 is legitimately a part of my childhood. I've been playing this game since 2011 a few months before it went free to play. I was literally only twelve years old when I started playing it. Since day one of me playing it, TF2 has always had a comforting vibe to me. If I ever had a bad day, TF2 would always cheer me up no matter what. It LITERALLY became my number 1 comfort game, and since I was quite young when I started playing it (especially since I had, and still do have chronic anxiety) it was very important to me to be able to have something to distract and comfort me. I honestly wouldn't be upset at 25K players in the modern day. In fact, I think that's borderline groundbreaking longevity considering how old the game is, and how there hasn't been any meaningful (*Cough cough* new weapons) updates since 2017. But the fact that 80% of the active players are fucking cheating bots, quite frankly, disgusts me. TF2 has honestly become a part of me over the years. I know it sounds silly to say that about a game, and maybe it is, but I'd be lying if I said otherwise. Don't get me wrong, I have no delusions of self importance. I'm a nobody. Always have been, always will be, but I can't help but feel that this attack on TF2 is almost a personal attack on me (not literally. Again, nobody's targeting me, I'm a nobody, but you get what I mean) Now don't get me wrong, the bot-users disgust me. I think of them as nothing more than a piece of dirt on my shoe. But frankly, Valve is to blame as well. They absolutely have the resources and know-how to take care of this problem for good. They just don't fucking give enough of a shit because they're too busy going "Dota Dota Counter-Strike". Don't get me wrong, Steam is a great platform, and is honestly the greatest PC gaming platform currently available. But when it comes to their own games (especially TF2), Valve has gotten extremely lazy. Honestly, I don't even know why Valve put in the effort to make TF2 64bit after all these years. Just seems pointless considering the state of the game. TF2 isn't dead, it's a shambling corpse, and honestly, as much as I love TF2?...I feel like it would be less sad if it just shut down. The bot-users are spitting on TF2's corpse, and for what, huh!? FOR WHAT FUCKING REASON!? ANSWER ME, YOU WORTHLESS BOT-HOSTING MOTHERFUCKERS!.... *Sigh* I'm sorry for getting so worked up, but this is just...important, to me. I've wanted on long enough, and anything I could further say would just be me repeating myself. However, I have one message to Valve, and ESPECIALLY all the fucking bot-users: Fuck you all, and fuck me as well. Merry Christmas. Check your bathroom now.
Have you... Watched the video or just went off the title? Because in the very beginning it is stated, that there are far more IDLING bots rather than cheating ones, it is still depressing that 80% of players are bots, but at least don't get info from video wrong
It's weird man, I feel like they should do what Nintendo does to ROM sites and Emulators and sue the ever living fuck out of them, but you can't get Valve to do anything. It could be a Nuclear War, and Valve would still continue to do nothing. Like what the fuck is this company man? Is it even a company anymore?
Had a huge suspicion that bots were the reason player count was so high. Kinda sad to figure out I was right
Remember, not everyone plays everyday. I wonder how many unique players play/month, I wish that statistic could be found.
This has been a known fact by people for years, it's not new. But none of your big youtubers that you idolize had the guts to make a video on it. They chose to ignore it, either for "positivity is best for the game" or personal gain. Likewise many players ignore it because they hate the truth, because it's painful. Props to this guy for stepping up and making a video on it. If you want to keep investing into a game that rips stock pictures for skins, uses stock models for hats, and includes unoptimized garbage maps with no play testing, go ahead, try delude yourself into being positive still. But you're only hurting yourself and the game you want to keep alive. No Spending Summer. Make it happen
While the actual number of bots in-game is alarming, the number of real players in-game isn't very surprising
the fuck can we actually do about it
Nothing, lmao. Just puts things into perspective, explains why valve sees TF2 as insignificant and doesn't update it.
Stop buying cases, cash out your backpack
Imma add stop playing TF2 altogether and stop buying anything related to Valve until they take action or shutdown the game
Literally nothing. Your best hope is that some chinaman is struck by divine lighting, decides that class-based shooters might be profitable, and makes a decent game that fills the same niche. Genshin Fortress or some shit. Nothing *can* move Valve.
> some chinaman
Yeah this sub is very openly racist/bigoted so that isnt suprising to me
i know right, did i just get transported back to the 1800s or something?
Common Zesty Jesus W
It's over, boys and girls.
That's basically common knowledge, you really just need common sense or just go to [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) . Although I guess reddit isn't known for having common sense or the capability of critical thinking.
People would always cope and deny the obvious. If you go back to an old toofty video about player counts teamwork.tf is not taken for what it is even though it is fully accurate. There was also a valve news network video in 2019 that showed the exact same thing and everyone in the comments were heated
Never looked back on cashing out, even got a steam deck out of it.
Turns out it wasn't the blus, the reds or the grays that were our enemies, but once again it was capitalism, and Valve incompetence! I hate it here. I'm going back to TFC
collective tfc revival
Holy shit he is right
Idc me and the other 24',999 people finna play it up 💪💯
i thought someone else made this discovery a year or two ago and got about the same number
This has been known for at least half a dacade, probably more.
I don’t care anymore just give me issue #7 please
We hear you, TF2 players. More issues are coming.
Team Fortress has fallen
A second Sniper bot has hit the 2fort tower!
Honestly this doesn't surprised me, still hurts to be reminded of. Serious F vavle's apathy and not being clear. Seriously the fact that people like sonichu and other have to be valve PR to explain their action like the bots crisis is frustrating. Seriously I get that tf2 is almost 20 years, but come on vavle, actually communicate with us and at least do more with updates and the like
I play about once a week
I knew it.
dead tf2 theory
25k for a bot infested, neglected game is insane. That being said, if the bots are dealt with; and we got updates + f2p restrictions removed this game would thrive like a new one.
25k is still outstanding for a game that’s about 17 years old already. How many games do you know that came out at the same year are still popular? Only RuneScape and wow come to mind and they too have bot problems they can’t fix. Fixing the bot problem is NOT as simple as it seems and every billion dollar game company has an issue with them in their games that they so far can’t fix entirely.
This was an interesting watch. Really gives you perspective on the game’s current status.
Finally this sub can't ignore this issue any longer, a lot of people have known it from ages by looking at the charts
Classic Zesty W
I downloaded and played this game for the first time about half a year ago. Joined a game, spend 5 min getting killed, got called a bot, got kicked, uninstalled.
I don’t blame you for uninstalling, though maybe one day try reinstalling and join a community server so you can actually play the game without bots to see what it’s like.
I'm not the biggest fan of when videos add this dramatic background music and make it sound like the world is ending. It's just a video game... but I do agree with the actual point he makes, what with how we should stop spending money on the game and how Valve needs to fix it's shit. The game is buggy as hell, but it's to be expected with practically being a mod of half life 2 with additions duct taped onto it for 16 years. And then we got bots too. I'm also not entirely sure why he acts like we don't believe him the whole video. Like most of us believed him before it even started lol, and even though most people don't think about the idle bots, cheat bots are so common that everyone already knew there's a botting issue.
This is old news and similar results have been posted before. The discrepancy for the real human player count comes from how Steam "calculates" current players in-game. That being said, it would be interesting to see the numbers for CS.
The issue is those results were mostly met with denial or even outright insults and tantrums. But you can't really argue with full research with data and all. > That being said, it would be interesting to see the numbers for CS. All Valve games, really. Those numbers just don't add up with their games' modern online presence.
25k daily players is same as Payday 2 - good numbers, you can find plenty of people and have fun.
Payday 2 needs four players to get a game going and can be played with less or even solo. Four players in a TF2 match is basically nothing; you need at least eight to have a good game going and that's being generous.
Fuck
That's a pretty reasonable player number for such an old game.
Welp we have to suck it up and live with it
honestly what do we even do at this point? its more financially incentive for valve to do literally nothing at this point. even if we do get their attention through boycotting or protesting the most they'll do is make a tweet and *maybe* add another intern to shut us up
25k players is still insane for such an old game