#SaveTF2

/ discord shocord - main hangout
/ discord 24/7 100 player tf2 server (+ map testing) (shounic trenches: 45.62.160.71:27015)
/ discord join future experiments
/ shounic patreon
channel project status
trello.com/b/L3B65jUX
random feedback
forms.gle/bkuGF6attQrRPc6o9
custom files (hud / crosshairs / hitsound / killsound / gfx cfg)
pastebin.com/raw/e32aG4nP
Music: BananaSlug / user-426347780
Geoff Keighley's interview with Valve:
store.steampowered.com/app/13...
Stiffy's visit to Valve:
knockout.chat/thread/58944/4#...
(please don't abuse their forums)
treadmill problem:
• GDC 2018: John McDonal...
star's video:
• TF2 Servers
FAQ:
Q: How did you make that? What editing software do you use?
A: I use Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro & After Effects. Photoshop for image editing and thumbnails. Premiere Pro for compositing and After Effects for motion graphics (the fancy animations).

[@shounic]

this video was written expecting you're caught up. if you're lost my older video starts from zero: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZjOmKadlqd1eaM yes i agree valve should just hire more people and the treadmill work excuse is dumb also here's a small bonus bit i cut from the video: "disabling textmode doesn't do anything because the bot hosters are already cheating, they can mess with tf2 however they want. disable textmode and they spend like a day at most turning off rendering and setting tf2 to a 1 by 1 window or something. it doesn't matter"

[@maxwelldimensio]

Can you add a link to that valve article? It's rough to search for valve stuff.

[@YoutubetermsAndcondition-jp2xe]

What about a waiting time for when you make a new account and you had to wait 10+ days in order to play the game? It would surely supress the bot hosters ability to create massive amounts of bot accounts right? Although that is only viable if those accounts are actually banned one way or another...

[@thiccboi1651]

Running a 1 by 1 window would still require on linux to download a DE or WM or some gui server even if its bare bones it would still take up more processing power no matter what!

[@thiccboi1651]

Also the point the issue with textmode isn't the aimbot but the idle's mentioned in zesty videos. It more of just about a bug where textmode still gives you items drops even though the documention says they shouldn't. Fixing this small bug would just get rid of the idle bots that clog up the steam api of player counts. (edit: and also slow the key inflation since less metal is being produce at one time) (edit: this also applies to private servers not just text mode stuff)

[@popcultureprogrammer2171]

@shounic, since you are probably one of the few TF2bers with advanced knowledge of the cheats and TF2 (as well as computer science), I figured you are the best person to hand this idea off to... I think the community is approaching this from the wrong angle. We aren't going to get rid of the bots, BUT we could make sure that it's treadmill work for the HOSTERS. From my limited computer programming experience, cheats read and write data from the game and convince the game that everything is okay. This means that the cheating bots have to make certain assumptions about the game, such as how positions are stored. In memory, a vec3 is typically stored in the format XYZ. If you have an address to X, jump 64 bits and you have Y. Another 64 and you have Z. They also remotely call kicks within the cheating software, and in order to call that function, they need the function signature to it. If you chaotisize the signatures of functions and the format of data structures on a regular basis, those assumptions cheaters make falter. So what I propose is a system that does all of this automatically pre-compilation. Valve continues writing code as per usual, but have an automated system alter the code . Maybe it adds an extra useless parameter to a function and programmatically adjusts for that in all of the source code. Maybe instead of vectors being stored as XYZ, they are stored as ZYX. This would break the bots for a few days until the bot hosters can reverse engineer it. An update once a week would run this process again, once again putting hosters on a treadmill. This would dissuade them from hosting since half the time they aren't even actually botting. Only like half the week, tops.

[@visoreyes6393]

Valve is waiting for someone to announce "TF2 ends in sixty seconds," then they'll pub push a solution.

[@hevnet]

uncle dane newest vid

[@YouTubeHandlesSuck420]

😂😂😂 It never fails to amaze me how us as humans are still able to joke around and have some fun even in crappy situations

[@RingingResonance]

Five!

[@battlecatsbunbun9643]

@@RingingResonance Four!

[@8gram8]

nah man we've been in overtime for at least 2 years

[@AlbinoRhinoTF2]

The solution is that Valve uses a small portion of their infinite money to hire someone to do the treadmill work.

[@tigersympathiser2265]

God forbid you expect a company to do work

[@Blazing_Plasma]

Even if they can't do the treadmill work, they could at least hire people from the community who can. With projects like megascatterbombs anticheat in the works, the community has shown that they are willing to do the work for valve, given resources and support from valve

[@formuloid]

@@Blazing_Plasmahonestly haven’t thought about this. Very good point. Valve might rely on the community as they have in the past to create value for them (mods community skins ect ect.) and if a community member made a fix in the workshop they might consider adding.

[@somerandomgamer8504]

​@@formuloidRelying on this community is genuinely one of the worst imaginable ideas.

[@ludvighauger5044]

@@formuloid true but this also means bad actors can hide malicious code in shit like that...

[@machine.angel.777]

9:37 passport verification would be a breach of anonymity and user privacy anyways, you shouldn't have to go through a border checkpoint to play tf2

[@RyutaaKuzunoha]

Privacy?

[@pancakewafflez]

Not enough. You must in-person register at a active TF2 real-world sign in checkpoint. You must refresh your login here every month or you cannot play.

[@luka9967]

@@pancakewafflezthis is the worst idea I’ve seen yet

[@heavygaming1167]

and getting doxxed isn't?

[@luka9967]

@@heavygaming1167 would much rather give people my ip address than my passport information

[@TheYeIIowDucK]

The real "danger" is that the campaign will produce enough negative publicity for Valve that someone there will do a cost/benefit analysis. They'll figure out that TF2 is too much effort for what it is worth, and will decide to publicly ditch the game to distance the company from the controversy. They'll release one more "farewell update" that fixes little and adds even less, and then declare the game is "in the community's hands" now. You know, without even giving the community the tools they need to actually fix stuff.

[@he3004]

remember me when you get famous for predicting the future

[@twicethegalo]

this comment will age like the finest of wines

[@_vVinter]

I guarantee this is how it'll play out. Valve is not the same company that released stuff like Half-LIfe 2, L4D2, and Tf2. They are more than comfortable resting on their laurels, and simply gutting things if it means more money for them, even if it's something valued by millions of people. The people who support Valve these days are like beaten housewives, happy to even get a disgruntled nod of acknowledgement, and refuse to listen to anyone telling t hem that their husband is beating them, because "He treated me good once! I am sure he will again!"

[@Jerome18921]

I am here before this happens

[@therealthirst8099]

If Valve gutted matchmaking and returned to TF2 to being 100% ran by community servers, that'd be preferable to just continuing to let the game rot away like it has been.

[@listertf2]

valve employees be like "better not wipe my ass since i'd just have to wipe it again next time, fuck treadmill work"

[@Kwaish]

😂

[@Manu0jedi]

me getting up to work everyday like most people "fuck I hate treadmills"

[@RobSaucy]

love your vids bro, keep it up!

[@vinnyandlin8510]

What if the guys making electricity in Valve's area just quit because people will never stop using electricity, lame ass treadmill work

[@LyritZian]

Y'know lister, I still hate the Dragon's Fury and its design, but you're based in every other way. Godspeed.

[@Bobdangerzone]

Remember when joining a game with 3+ snipers was just considered bad team composition?

[@fishydids]

no, i don't remember

[@Kurokami112]

How things change, huh...

[@poke548]

Ah, the good old days of 3 snipers, 4 spies on Upward.

[@dashyz3293]

really more like a bad team composition because of 3 bad players than 3 snipers

[@JAMBUILDER08]

I feel so old

[@fearlesswee5036]

I think the issue you are seeing is presuming that there *needs* to be a single, magic-bullet solution, so-to-speak. Either one solution that solves the problem completely, or no solution at all. The way I see it, Valve should do multiple of these proposed fixes. A trust factor system that ties into matchmaking, hire more people to exclusively do the "treadmill work" (not just on TF2 but other games too, like CS2 which is also suffering, and eventually Deadlock when Valve inevitably ignores it), add a custom captcha (aka one that no AI has been trained on yet) to matchmaking if you get kicked from too many matches (and maybe a temporary ban from making a votekick yourself for like a day), a manual bot banwave, maybe license a 3rd-party anticheat (aka one where they just integrate it with the game and the 3rd-party company does the "treadmill work"), human moderation/spectation of every X matches to just weed out any stragglers, etc. Think of it like a water filter. You'll never just find one magic material that'll take dirty stagnant water and turn it into crystal clear spring water. You'll need a stage to filter out large debris, then large particles, then microscopic particles, and then microbes. Each stage catches whatever the last stage misses, until the final result is clean enough to drink. It may sound unreasonable, but Valve is worth a billion dollars, and has a money printer called "Steam". They can afford to do all of this, they just choose not to.

[@zelbekon]

This is why I don't like the "captcha is worthless" argument. They could roll their own captcha which none of these captcha solving services can solve or rotate different variants of captcha so that the cost of solving it increases even further. Not to mention that the bot hosters have to rely on these services in the first place; if there's no service that could solve the particular captcha variant for them then they can't do anything.

[@user-sd6xp8qq6g]

Exactly! This has to be a simple (but with multiple levels) system. That's how security measures work Trust factor is a good basis, as it can significantly narrow the pool of suspects

[@MomovskyChannel]

Thank you for this! I feel that this whole video is made in such a bad faith because of this “well you can only deal with 99,9% bots, but can’t get all of them, so stop demanding valve to do anything at all”.

[@blueyandicy]

​@@zelbekonDo you realize the SHEER AMOUNT OF WORK THAT WOULD BE? For a SINGLE GAME?! Team Fortress 2 fans really are delusional, oml...

[@iskawhiskers]

​​@@blueyandicy Do you realize the sheer amount of work that goes into developing a videogame at all? Of course it would be a huge workload to implement complex captcha systems. But it would be a good step in the right direction. That's assuming Valve wants to bother with any solution at all, though. (also this would realistically be able to be applied to all of Valve's games going forward)

[@DoYouSeeBananaManTH]

You never thought to make bots dizzy if they spin too much

[@purpseatpeeps8641]

As much of a joke that is, it’s actually not all that crazy, I mean, what reason would a real player have to spin around that fast that many times? It probably wouldn’t affect all that many innocent people.

[@Scatmanseth]

Introducing a check on people’s inputs seems rather resource intensive unless it’s only done every thirty seconds or so, which would be easily avoided by rejoining the server.

[@Notanegg.]

​@@purpseatpeeps8641sometimes when you are demo knight and trimping you do

[@_Crowuh]

The point about making TF2 pay-to-play again stunting the growth of the game would be fair if the bot problem hadn't already been doing that for years.

[@vouvusbovus9100]

I've been thinking about the same thing, I would gladly pay 20 or more dollars for TF2 again.

[@Violet_Knight]

Yeah, as if the game has shown any sign of "growth" the past six years lol

[@TheManinBlack9054]

Well, at least the new players CAN play the game and CAN join community servers, otherwise they'd have to pay (for a lot of people in the world) good money to get into it and not a lot of people will.

[@nkacey2000]

I'd rather the game be a niche community of likeminded folk than the eternal circus of hell it currently is

[@aqz7603]

@@TheManinBlack9054 Why not just add a f2p and non f2p matchmaking. They already track paid accounts.

[@TheMAZZTer]

Steam Guard is not intended to stop bots from using their own Steam Accounts. It is designed to stop people from taking over YOUR Steam Account, and is most effective at this if you use it on a mobile device as intended. I wouldn't say Steam Guard is flawed for not doing something it was never designed to do.

[@SiroccoShorts]

something to note is where do you think alot of these accounts come from, many many of them are stolen accounts

[@moogobIin]

It is mentioned as being flawed because a substantial number of people mention it as something which could help solve the problem.

[@AuditorMadness]

​@@SiroccoShortsaverage basement dweller bot hoster doesn't have the time nor effort to do that, they just mass generate accounts and give some of them $5

[@mark-jf5ik]

@@AuditorMadness Wrong, they do, I've seen spin bots with otherwise normal accounts and player inventorys. I can only assume these are stolen or bought

[@santy8017]

​​@@SiroccoShortsIs that a fault of Steam Guard, though. Not all acounts have Steam Guard activated, and accounts are often stolen because the account holder themselves make a vulnerability that Steam Guard doesn't have the authority to protect against(logging into phishing sites and handing over all your credentials to a stranger, downloading suspicious files, etc.)

[@AlexPechenka]

Poor Valve, they are spread so thin across their projects, I suppose the best solution here is to spread even thinner by developing a brand new original competitive multiplayer live service title

[@Ihasnotomato]

On the topic of "what do we realistically hope to achieve with this protest?" for me it's honestly: Anything. I think that valve making visible, tangible steps towards actually fixing this issue that has plagued TF2 for 5 years now would go a long way for the community and even Valve's own reputation. For me, it really is a situation where I'd rather know they were at least trying something, and making an effort that might not be working/ failing than doing nothing at all and just allowing this game to drown and die in bot hell.

[@DrMonty-ng5fo]

completely agree. Valve has shown a complete lack of effort in trying to address the crisis. Even if they're doing SOMETHING, it's better than nothing.

[@ninjadanoite1560]

Did you watched the video?

[@the_hiroman]

At this point it may be way easier for Valve to hire mafia goons to show at the bot hosters' doorsteps and make them "disappear quickly and quietly".

[@andrehashimoto8056]

Tbh givej that there's tales of people who PROFIT off all this cheatin, hacking and Bot hosting stuff pulling the most criminal acts to protect their BS. I am of the act of reciprocity, if Valve ain't doing THEIR share of work for a problem plaguing THEIR PRODUCTS, then the reasonable men MUST DO THE MOST UNREASONABLE ACTS and make Valve SUFFER so they have to take action.

[@willtheoct]

The doorstep is Moscow. It's a huge fortress.

[@TheManinBlack9054]

What is mafia goons? Are these people gooning to mafia movies or something or are those gooners from mafia???

[@willtheoct]

@@TheManinBlack9054Could be the same orgs the United fruit company used against Honduras. Only Honduras isn't Moscow.

[@GarudaRamudasRumpusRoom]

​@@TheManinBlack9054this comment cannot be real bro

[@aspiceeone]

They're a billion dollar company, i think they can do some "treadmill work" 💀

[@Tulip_bip]

They can do it easily, but they want to avoid doing that as much as possible

[@_charlie]

They have a very small staff. The problem has never been money, but rather manpower. The obvious solution is to hire more people, but Valve's structure simply cannot work at a large scale. Either they stay small or become like any other big tech company.

[@dazeen9591]

not how their company works. they flatout refuse to. they don't care or want to do that treadmill work. so they don't.

[@2thpaste]

exactly, the one thing valve has over bad actors is having waay more resources

[@2thpaste]

@@_charlie valve is already like any other big tech company lmao

[@volatile5460]

has TF2 accidentally discovered a practical maximum shelf life for a live service game?

[@Jo-Wilbe-Dina]

Thinks I've been thinking about TF2 recently: 1. Meet Your Match Incident 2. Last Major Update (2017) 3. The Next TF2 Comic 4. Engineer's Voice Actor (Grant Goodeve) saying *_"Engineer Gaming."_* 5. Botting Crisis 6. Back when we didn't having Botting Crisis

[@Thomas-vn6cr]

Additional things I have on my mind: 7. Crate depression 8. New Zealand incident: "we have updates for TF2" 9. Kitty 10. Faceit 11. Source Leak

[@denizo9263]

Guys, if all the bots are on planet Earth, why don't we just destroy that planet?

[@Killet-wt6ho]

ww3

[@jeremypanjaitan4039]

you see its treadmill work cuz they will just move to mars

[@Rainbro359]

They're in the cloud. Burn the atmosphere.

[@bettergs2790]

Most sane TF2 player

[@Snooopy28]

@@bettergs2790 as a tf2 player, can confirm

[@RaidSpinel]

The AI hysteria has done irreparable damage to so many things. Nobody knows what it actually does and assumes it's a magic bullet.

[@godlyvex5543]

People either assume it's a magic bullet, or completely useless

[@SioxerNikita]

@@pantommy It has also increased productivity, allowed smaller developers to do stuff that was infeasible before, and overall helped a lot of normal people.

[@matthewcampbell3146]

​@@pantommy seeing it explained, yeah that sounds like hell to deal with.

[@SioxerNikita]

@@user-is8nn1sb1n Easy to bypass

[@bujustic]

​@@pantommyat work I used AI for three things; Reading documentation for me "Can I do this in (language)?" And "This doesn't work but it should, find where I fucked up"

[@Underqualified_Gunman]

the real solution i think isn't a return to quickplay or fixing casual. it's having the community server browser getting fixes and improvements and made easier to understand how to use.

[@Leeloo-Foxx]

fr. the server browser is still stuck in early 2000s design and gets harder and harder to read for each generation of gamers

[@nathanwilkins6107]

I had an idea where if you get kicked more than once, it puts you into the training map and tells you to destroy a cutout of a certain class while you’re playing as a certain class. Basically a captcha that relies on being able to play the game and understand instructions

[@blikthepro972]

would require the instructions to be complex enough to not be easily programmable, but simple enough for real players to follow through with little issue. even then, bots would start abusing it and start targeting people who they know theyve kicked multiple times

[@aeolianthecomposer]

Easy to bypass as a bot, tedious to deal with as a human

[@nathanwilkins6107]

@@aeolianthecomposer how is a bot going to be able to know what class to pick and which target to kill?

[@aeolianthecomposer]

@@nathanwilkins6107 By reading the instructions, duh

[@fireking6308]

@@aeolianthecomposer What if valve made multiple different sentences explaining it in different ways?

[@intensegamerrage]

"But we don't wanna do treadmill work!" THEN WHY DO YOU CONTINUE SUPPORTING A LIVE-SERVICE GAME?

[@Keygentlemen]

Why are they even fucking employed if they don't want to work lmao???

[@groggygary]

TF2 is not a live service game lol

[@deathmelon12]

@@Keygentlemen Because they work on CS, Dota, Half Life, Steam, etc etc... The company's structure is flat, employees choose the projects they work on

[@groggygary]

​@@KeygentlemenBecause there are much more efficient ways to do tasks than treadmill work. Watch the keynote that quote comes from Valve works in a way different to most companiee in that their employees work on what they want to work, leading to TF2 to have only a handful of developers at a time. Therefore their anti-treadmill approach kind of falls apart due to a lack of support for TF2.

[@plaguedup]

Free money basically

[@CookTF2]

"Valve hates treadmill work" Thus we can conclude that nobody at Valve brushes their teeth.

[@Grayson-tk5hn]

or walks or breathes or does ANYTHING

[@Keykasta]

This is why they can't count to 3. Treadmill work.

[@pantommy]

This would be fair if, by brushing your teeth, the amount of dirt you need to clean will always be higher than what you clean to the point you can never say you have clean teeth for more than a second.

[@josuebasterretxea3923]

Are they brits.

[@SioxerNikita]

This is the most dishonest comment I have seen in years. Treadmill work is not taking a bath, or brushing your teeth... Sure, it may carry some similarities, but it is silly. If you just posted it as a joke, the joke doesn't even work properly... The punchline doesn't really have any foot in reality.

[@citywokbesitzer6834]

So you are saying that we can do nothing against some basement kids from Russia with Virtual Machines?

[@willowbarrelmaker8269]

Yes.

[@fozart-9309]

Why from Russia exactly? Other countries suddenly dropped in having cheaters or something? What about china for example?

[@EnoEso]

@@fozart-9309 i believe russia has cheaper costs for bot-hosting, and so a lot of tf2 botnets are put there and often have russian names. i don't think the russian government particularly cares about them either, especially since they use similar tactics on social media sites for propaganda purposes, so laws against bot-hosting are likely few i doubt china would like TF2 being run on their machines, since censorship is extremely strong; i also think it would be much harder to get to them unless the hoster lives in china, which at that point they wouldn't care for or know about TF2 also due to censorship. other countries are used but russia is probably the most efficient option the video "TF2: I Found 60,000 Bots" by ZestyJesus shows the amount of russian bots used, although it's more focused on the trading bots and not aimbots

[@blooper5li]

I think one major element that gets missed in the #FixTF2 conversation, and that, so far, I've only seen Uncle Dane talk about in the detail I think it deserves, is the fact that this isn't just a TF2 or Valve problem any more. CS2 still has a massive cheating problem on its hands. Overwatch has major issues with cheaters. Massive shooters like CoD and Battlefield are infested with cheaters too. This is an issue that ALL multiplayer shooters are currently struggling with and that TF2 is only a small part of. It's BAD. This is a problem that every major shooter on the market should be very concerned about and should be actively working to find a solution to. As much as I understand and agree that Valve doesn't have a ton they can directly do to "fix" TF2's bot crisis, they should still be trying to find a way to mitigate and eventually solve these issues. If they don't, CS2 and the yet-to-be-released Deadlock could be next. Valve should be actively working to solve this issue because of the impact it could have on ALL their games. So should Blizzard. So should Activision. So should DICE. This is more than just TF2, but I'm hoping that TF2 can set the spark to get these companies treating this issue as the problem that it is. #FixTF2

[@CB66941]

This might sound kind of asshole-like (is there a better term?) but I am kind of glad this is affecting ALL multiplayer games. Now don't get me wrong, it sucks that multiplayer games are being affected, but I like to think game companies might start going back to focusing on delivering good single player games again if the problem gets so bad.

[@GoogleAids]

Everyone at valve died in 2012 and all of their servers are just ran by a fleet of hampsters led by a general hampster named snuffles.

[@jarate173]

It was Snuffles fault!!11!!1

[@GoogleAids]

@@jarate173 snuffles is doing the best with what he was given dammit 🫡

[@qwertyiuwg4uwtwthn]

@@GoogleAids for a hamster he sure hates treadmill work

[@GoogleAids]

@@qwertyiuwg4uwtwthn gold. Didn't see that coming. You deserve reddit points or something.

[@crimson_void]

its true i was the treadmill work

[@Camad]

> don't want to do "treadmill work" > continue making live service games that require nothing but treadmill work > ??? > give up, update steam > profit

[@tfx9223]

Live service games aren’t inherently treadmill work. Every update a live service game gets is an *update* that pushes the game further. Treadmill work is work that fixes something for a few moments before you’re right back to square one, ultimately changing nothing. It’s not ridiculous to try to avoid treadmill work, but at some point (TF2’s point) a single run-through of the treadmill would be a big enough of an improvement for a long enough time to be worthwhile.

[@joseaca1010]

live service is not treadmill work treadmill work is basically work that goes nowhere, say valve bans 2000 cheaters, whats stopping them from making 2000 new accounts? on the other hard, ideally, all the content you develop for a live service stays there, for instance TF2 has a ton of maps and weapons that have been aded over the years, none have been deleted

[@sonicmeerkat]

@@tfx9223 yes they are, every live service game requires a functioning anti cheat to prevent them becoming tf2, cheaters tools are ever advancing so if you don't run that treadmill they'll absolutely destroy everything.

[@chrisriverata1917]

​@@joseaca1010Treadmill work is still important bots don't just shoot players they actively spam harmful links in chat doing treadmill work at this point is the only thing Valve can do well they find a better solution.

[@joseaca1010]

@@chrisriverata1917 well even if that was true, theres the very uncomfortable question of: "is it worth it?" Remember around 70% of the TF2 player numbers reported by steam are bots, so theres around 23k people playing right now, and only a fraction of these regularly spend money on the game Can valve justify, from a business point of view, working on treadmill work on TF2 instead of say, Steam or their new multiplayer game in development? Is even outsourcing this treadmill work profitable?

[@EventH0riz0n]

Every solution of which the only downside is "bad for new players" or "bad for the games health" i can overlook. With how it is now also NO new players are joining because of the bots and tons of people quit every day. Stopping the bleeding at least a bit would help for the time being. And if they dont intent so solve it completly at any point in the future it also doesnt matter because as it is the game is also dying.

[@iexistapparently7862]

Exactly we are at such a dire point that most of these cons would actually better than our current situation

[@ketchup901]

"no new players are joining" is a false statement

[@EventH0riz0n]

@@ketchup901 new players are joining but I'm talking about new players who stay. If you join and then leave again because you only join hacker lobbies after a dozen matches...

[@eliescobis9922]

tf2: has bots that are P2W accounts valve: *deletes all F2P* 300IQ logic right here

[@Trafficallity]

dont u mean P2P and not P2W

[@eliescobis9922]

@@Trafficallity "Pay To Win" is defined as games in which you get an advantage in the game if you spend real money on items, weapons or features and are thus clearly superior to other players. f2p can't use chat or even call for medic or spy, people who paid can

[@Trafficallity]

@@eliescobis9922 ah, that makes sense

[@ben.juan.]

Valve: **shuts down tf2** .+♾ IQ

[@crimson_void]

​@@ben.juan.the only valid solution

[@Quryam]

Guys, dont hate on valve, they are a small indie game company, they can't fix their games

[@gordonf5553]

Hidden indie gem

[@ninjadanoite1560]

Tell me you didn't watched the video without telling you didn't watched the video.

[@Quryam]

@@ninjadanoite1560 how is your stupid comment relevant? I just made a joke and you are crying about me apparently not watching the video. Shut up dude.

[@Quryam]

@@ninjadanoite1560 bro can't take a meme

[@iamnothale]

@@ninjadanoite1560 We’re just playin’ with ya man.

[@anitabath8315]

I just want teams and fortresses again…

[@WSWC_]

The fortresses have always been there brother, the teams have to make themselves even in extenuating circumstances, these trying times.. Dr.Blunt knows what's up

[@Nooke95]

Try team fortress 2 classic, it's great

[@SaintRedFox]

​@@Nooke95>gets pubmstomped and its not let to play the game >wacky unbalanced weapons server ok? now what?

[@cookiejoe5564]

I want teams and fortresses too

[@mrluthfians01]

me when the fortresses have teams innit 😂😂😂😳🗿💀

[@damsen978]

Community server moderation and STAC plugin are the solution to this. STAC alone can ban bots automatically, without anyone lifting a finger. Because they're too obvious to ignore, STAC has a harder time against silent aim cheaters, but if configured properly, they still could detect them, and even if not enough, you got moderators/admins to deal with them. Community servers are the answer. TF2 would remain like Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source, fully playable without big problems and kept alive by the community. I'm also in favor of having a matchmaking browser for vanilla servers. Casual needs to be put down though, because that is what killed community servers. Even with Quickplay, servers filled constantly with players. But Quickplay is only worth bringing back if Valve makes an upgrade for it to avoid servers with ads and with gameplay-breaking plugins like "roll the dice". If Valve is going to bring back Quickplay, they should implement a reputation system and stricter requirements for a vanilla experience.

[@Leeloo-Foxx]

to this day valves "treadmill work" statement pisses me off. nobody likes doing treadmill work, but it has to be done. imagine if your bank didnt want to update their security because its treadmill work.

[@paulussoler]

Valve has to do it, not even for tf2, or cs2,but for deadlock. If they cant stop them on tf2 or cs2, deadlock will fall too

[@stronensycharte64]

Good, i fucking hate soulless ass moba hero overwatch clone shooters

[@FantasmaNaranja]

again shounic raises the point that TF2 (and also CS2) is incredibly easy to cheat on because it's a two decade old game that runs on the same engine that has been thoroughly dissected by everyone and their mother CS2 runs on source 2 but mantains much of the original CSGO code that makes it easy to repurpose cheats assuming deadlock isnt just built on top of CS2 for some reason then it gives the game a good few years before cheating becomes so widespread and most games make their majority of profit in their first few years so valve really doesnt have a reason to worry there

[@paulussoler]

@@FantasmaNaranja True, but if they use VAC they'll have to update it and if they intend to make it competitive (which I am only going from vibes but seems to) a good few years is not a good promise to a comp community and will make them go to other games. Valve needs eventually to start waging war agaisnt cheaters, no matter what kind of work is it.

[@ronaid-with-an-i]

Deadlock is going to be the perfect testing and training ground for vacnet I feel

[@SioxerNikita]

@@stronensycharte64 MOBA shooters are actually quite rare...

[@MrTauren1996]

as much as i hate it making tf2 20$ does seem like cutting the Gordian knot

[@Keygentlemen]

How many new people are flocking to a game that's infested with bots, and how many of those new people would really consider $20 a dealbreaker?

[@SonicMaster519]

@@KeygentlemenI don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not but I definitely would not spend twenty dollars on TF2. It’s a fun game for sure, but not worth twenty smack-a-roos, especially the state that it’s in right now.

[@Keygentlemen]

@@SonicMaster519 I'm 100% serious. We live in a world where $70 for a game is the norm, so I don't see $20 locking anybody out unless they don't have the money for games period. The cost is intended to mitigate the swarm of bots anyway, so it's not a case of "do you want to spend $20 on a bot filled game?" it's "do you want to spend $20 so the game isn't filled with bots?"

[@FletcherCat]

Gordian Freeman knot

[@neighborhoodthreattv]

@@Keygentlemen I misread your post and retract my reply.

[@Gilbals]

I think the lesser hangups like captcha and Steam Guard could fix things a bit more. Bot hosters obviously have some level of overhead and investment. Annoyance walls like needing to farm phone numbers, install new programs and pay out (even if miniscule) more to get their bots rolling might be just enough to at least make the entry bar higher and freeze out smaller botters. It wouldn't solve the issues by any means, but every roadblock and perceived annoyance put in the way that must be solved pushes botters to weigh whatever their "profit" is against the trouble and hurdles they gotta go through to get there. Once you squeeze out a bunch of small fries, you would have more solid targets of major hosters you could directly observe and see how they operate. Then implement potential surgical attacks on the core of how they operate as opposed to "fixing" TF2 itself.

[@enderkoregameing8090]

Good take

[@huhneat8908]

all valve needs to do is change allowBots = true to allowBots = false its really that easy

[@gloriousblobber9647]

kekw

[@The_Endless_Now]

That's ingenious! Valve should hire you!

[@huhneat8908]

@gloriousblobber9647 thank you I spent long and hard thinking about this solution

[@lollermann]

7:23 That twitter account belongs to one of the devs of cathook by the way, a cheat for tf2 on linux

[@lollermann]

Also possibly partook in the first steam account generator iteration

[@ghoulbuster1]

of course they have a trans pfp LOL every time

[@ConfusionUwU]

@@ghoulbuster1 whoa there pal i'll stop you right there

[@Real_temmie_undertalo]

​​@@ConfusionUwU Sadly, the most common inclinations for people like these are either "femboy-coded transfurs" or "self-proclaimed sigmas that are always right", and it's become so frequent it's no surprise to have people expect it (Also, I intend no hate.)

[@Professor_Genki7]

You're not stopping anyone bud​@@ConfusionUwU

[@lowellrindler9454]

As a note about price: it’s my understanding that many bots have access to text chat because they’re using stolen accounts. If that’s widespread practice, then a pricetag on TF likely wouldn’t affect many bots at all

[@user-is8nn1sb1n]

i think better solution would be to use mobile authenticator for mm tf2

[@GolAcheron-fc4ug]

all those stolen accounts would have to have purchased tf2 though

[@ghoulbuster1]

Most bots are new account though, and making tf2 cost 5 bucks would be a good first line of defense.

[@heiromarc]

They might have been stolen accounts, but once they get banned, they either steal another account or pay 5 bucks. TF2 not being free-to-play is the best line of defense against the bot problem.

[@singleNim]

This is a new theory that is now being passed around as fact. I have seen 0 evidence for it from anyone anywhere and can personally attest that every bot I see is either a brand new account, or an account up to several years old that I already have marked as being a bot (and Valve just never got around to banning it). Stealing a Steam account isn't that easy, and it sure as heck isn't happening in the dozens on a frequent basis by the same few people for the sake of making TF2 bots. Most of the bots already have premium TF2, which requires spending money. It also requires manually changing the accounts' profiles to erase the identity and information of previous owners. This is why most bots' profiles are completely empty. Bot hosters are not going through the trouble of doing all this. They generate burner emails, quickly make fresh Steam accounts, buy a hat or whatever and go. Stop spreading this theory unless you can back it up with proof.

[@dangerouslysafe3]

The real disaster is the push back some people are making against #savetf2. No joke, some bot hosters have started a #killtf2 movement.... the level of dedication they have to destroying a beloved game is sickening.

[@honfohopno5494]

why not a combination of several of the listed solutions?

[@SpawnofHastur]

Shounic thank you so much for understanding that AI isn't a magical wand that you can wave to fix things because goddamn a lot of people don't seem to understand that.

[@CakeDispenser]

You'd be surprised how much be people take AI for granted and it drives me mad. Heck there are people who look up to AI as a God.

[@MrPsycoSilver]

I blame the entire entourage of tech bro douchebags that have been peddling that exact nonsense.

[@muffinconsumer4431]

If it goes basically unregulated, I give it a decade at most before it is lol

[@lautystrike1]

​@@CakeDispenser there's a reason for that but it will so much text to explain

[@aeolianthecomposer]

​@@muffinconsumer4431People have been repeating this shit for decades now. AI is not ane never will be a god

[@ghost_ship_supreme]

They don’t want to do “treadmill work” because it’s not worth the weight

[@BossKnight]

Its more cause if you have to put 90% of your work on stopping cheaters, you can’t develop the game or do anything other than stopping those cheaters

[@Idlefd]

@Bossknight Then why not essentially bring in a contractor to do the busy work while they get to spare their free time on something important, or even he’ll just ask a few savvy community members, there’s no lack of volunteers. If someone doesn’t work they don’t eat, I don’t see why Valve should print money from cases and Mann co stores before they can even ensure it’s in a presentable shape with the excuse that working for the company’s income is too plebian for them

[@BossKnight]

​@@Idlefd youtube has kept closing when i try to fully answer you so I'm gonna really simplify this so i can rewrite it if needed, i can clarify if you need, they did do a community update for TF2 (the invasion update), but the behind the scenes work had issues which left a bad taste in valves mouth about it, most likely leading to them not doing it again, although they do seem more open to the idea again and suggested a similar thing a while ago now, and they would have to pay that cost indefinitely, which the higher-ups might not like, and also out sourcing your anti cheat is inherently semi risky, bot hosters have doxxed and swatted people, it wouldn't be beyond them to target individuals who are maintaining it to leave in some cheats

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

​@@Idlefd trying to fix a cheating problem is like flushing money down the toilet, but instead of a toilet, it's a millennial who thinks he's hot shit and the best programmer ever

[@mrlnl13]

"We can't come up with a silver bullet to solve all cheating forever, so we won't do anything at all" - nah, it's not how it works and I am glad community is finally fed up with Valve's excuses.

[@NoSoupForYouu]

Exactly, since when did appeals to futility become an argument for doing your job???

[@Ultra289]

It is how it works, becuase ppl would still complain anyways

[@armitx9]

shounic elaborated more on this on his previous video but each one of the proposed solutions comes with a downside for the real human player. Putting a $20 price tag for instance, locks out several poor players and phone verification locks out players with unsupported budget phone plans. If you implement multiple fixes then you get all of the drawbacks wholesale with little gain in return since bot hosters can get around these barriers so ideally you'd want a single fix with as few drawbacks as possible. If you implemented every strategy then the game would be borderline unplayable because of all of the verification checks.

[@Only4two100bucks]

@@Ultra289 Given the current state of the game, players have every reasons to complain and let their voices be heard. After all, if you can suck Valve's boots and blindly defend every decisions they made, why can't the community do the opposite?

[@mrlnl13]

​@@armitx9 "ideally you'd want a single fix" - yeah, thanks for insight, but we do not live in ideal world and no solution to any problem was ever ideal. If you drop defeatism "uhh it's all useless the bot hosters will just circumvent EVERYTHING" and look at the problem realistically, this is simply a case of attrition warfare. Bot hosters have infinitely less resources, time, money and they gain nothing from mass ruining games, they only waste resources. The only thing Valve needs to do is continuously put pressure to wear down bot hosters, until most of them gives up. Even just manual ban waves for bots will do. Valve doesn't need to come up with solution for cheating in general - they just need to get on the treadmill and outrun very small minority of bot hosters. Just like every single other developer does for their online games. And I'll take solution that makes bot problem even 50% better over defeatism and doing nothing while daydreaming about some "ideal fix" that will never ever exist. But the real reason Valve won't do anything is simply because they don't want to spend a single dime on TF2, yet they want to shower in millions it makes them. Valve doesn't do anything not because they are pessimistic and really believe in their "treadmill work" excuse - but because they don't want to throw a single cent on TF2's maintenance.

[@howniceofyouofficial]

The absolute number one way to cut down on the bots without greatly affecting players is to simply remove the -textmode argument, this will increase the power computers need to run multiple versions of TF2. Another way would be to disallow sandboxed versions of TF2, by this I mean TF2 will check if it's being sandboxed by something like Sandboxie and if it is, turn off VAC meaning you cannot connect to VAC enabled servers, but we'll allow Virtual Machines. The reason for this is Sandboxie uses barely any memory and allows you to virtualize another version of steam on the same system/OS, while virtual machines will require simulating an entire Operating System, meaning you'll need a lot more hardware in order to run multiple bots. This is coming from a developer that has created tools like this.

[@DrMonty-ng5fo]

You should contact the tf2 contractor about that idea! Sounds fantastic, I haven't heard it before

[@mega_gamer93]

how does removing the -console argument help? From what I see all it does is open the console automatically without you having to press ~ Bot developers could simply make their bots open the as part of the same macro that makes them move. Also, I am not familiar with the sandboxing solution that you are thinking about, but sandboxing is often used for security reasons. Punishing people for wanting to secure their computers is a terrible idea. Besides, a sandbox could still try to seem like the real machine, so this changes very little, and you can also just run another instance of steam from another account, no sandbox needed

[@howniceofyouofficial]

@@mega_gamer93 I apologise I meant -textmode. And sandboxing is absolutely fine and removing that is probably the best way to go, removing the ability to sandbox wouldn't be a great idea as you say.

[@Lonqudor]

Wait, F2P’s haven’t been able to talk for 4 YEARS?! …Damn

[@proactiveomnipresentvessel6569]

We make do with what we have

[@davisdf3064]

It's tough man, and i'm an F2P medic main, it's even worse

[@dyslexicbatnam1350]

They can't even press e to call for medic. I wouldn't like this game at all if I first started playing it in this state.

[@lander_Eversor]

Ha Life is pain.

[@kingdingaling3376]

[Voice communication is not available for this account.]

[@shovelgaming52]

I WILL NOT ABANDON MY POST

[@SarmaTheFood]

NO STEP BACK, KEEP ON THE ADVANCE!

[@bro5756]

HOLD YOUR POSITION SOLDIERS

[@iammonke5970]

Hold the line men.

[@thecanadiankitty4213]

EVERY MANN TOGETHER

[@goodbyenostalg4]

corny ass

[@Splendisimo]

I like the idea of using captchas, but the problem is that normal captcha popups are kinda boring. What if we built a captcha within the gameplay, like a parkour course or a puzzle which would be difficult for bots to solve, but easy for humans? Like in order to leave the spawn room, you have to complete some kind of puzzle in game that requires image recognition. Shounic is already an experienced mapmaker, so a solution on the map level should appeal to him. Inb4 bot developers will just program the bots to get around the puzzles; it's not about having a perfect solution for bad actors, it's about making life harder for the bad actors until they give up. And having many, many puzzles would make it impractical for bot developers to program their bots to solve all of them due to the high complexity.

[@Linkman8912]

It's a cool idea, but it's a lot of work, and image recognition captchas already exist. (Also, did you miss the part where they said you can pay humans?) Parkour could be broken relatively easily with bots I bet.

[@Scatmanseth]

-it’s about making life harder for the bad actors until they give up I think you drastically underestimate the tenacity of the terminally online

[@awyeagames]

Doesn't matter. The game is already a disaster. You're talking as if things weren't already at their lowest for TF2. Even if Valve takes TF2 down for good in response to this pressure, we, as a community, will at least have closure. This whole movement is just the community trying to get Valve's attention once more. It's an act of desperation, and a rightful one. We have nothing to lose, because we already lost everything in regards to TF2. We only have to gain with this, be it a real solution or a reason to hate Valve forever.

[@boldandbrash6170]

i think everyone is missing the point slightly, we should be trying to make bots (current and future) not worth it to the hosters, both financially and effort wise. The bots may never be gone, but if its 10x harder to make and maintain bots then we should get 10x less bots

[@OmegaRC59]

That's my thoughts. VAC or any other solution doesn't need to obliterate all of the bots or cheaters, it just needs to filter enough out that they're at worst an occasional nuisance and you're not entering in games all the time with 6+ bots

[@PowerOfTheAsian]

Well I don't think it would scale down 1 to 1 but I understand the idea. The next thing you have to figure out is what is the reason for the cheater bots to exist, as cheater bots is what gives negative feedback to players, while idle and trader bots don't directly affect players but their reasoning is well understood by now.

[@OmegaRC59]

@@user-is8nn1sb1n then the barrier of entry is identical to trading bots. It won't do a thing to the current bot situation

[@augustday9483]

At the very least, I'd like them to carry out a banwave on the existing bots and make it more difficult to automatically create new steam accounts. Zesty Jesus found tens of thousands of them just via public methods of analysis, and he doesn't even have the data that Valve themselves have. If you banned the accounts and made it difficult to make more (such as with a strong captcha system), it would drastically curtail the problem with no changes required in TF2 itself. Yes, captchas can be solved cheaply with humans or AI, but if it's more difficult then less people will do it. It's a temporary fix, but it's a strong first step in my opinion.

[@CaptainBasculin]

This video addresses the capcha option. There exists workarounds for capchas

[@BananaGatorProds]

Yes lets make it cumbersome to make an account on Valves money printing machine platform so they can keep people from cheating in a game that they have had no interest in updating in over 7 years

[@avroo]

it wont help, as bots come with either stole bots, or could be created by humans, bot hosters simply buy a lot of already created accounts (possibly banned in another game to be cheap) and use tohse accounts to bot.

[@dazeen9591]

Honestly yeah I wanna see a multi layered captcha. Like a whole series of puzzles you have to pass before you even queue to a game.

[@aguy216]

They have to create make another anti-cheat, vac doesn't work. CS 2 is having the same cheater problems.

[@KingPBJames]

Here's a very Valve-esque idea: outsource bot policing to its community. Players could spectate games instead of actually play in them to try identifying bots. If a bot is confirmed and then removed, the spectator is paid. False positives could result in penalties, like spectating bans.

[@Renteks-]

As memeable as Valve's treadmill work point is, it is a legitimately smart idea to follow. Treadmill work is often caused by an unwillingness to problem solve, leading to constant, temporary solutions rather than a permanent solution. Blanket refusing treadmill work forces you to search for superior long-term solutions, which is usually a better road to take for a company like Valve. The issue comes when treadmill work is among the only reasonable solutions. Staying away from treadmill work is a great rule of thumb to prevent yourself wasting money and time for no reason, but strictly and rigidly following a rule of thumb is an error.

[@whtwolf100]

I agree the most reasonable long term dolution is TF3 I'll sit here while you hold your breath waiting for valve to be reasonable

[@ninjadanoite1560]

🤦‍♂

[@redey1290]

That last bit there about Eric coming across as passionate about TF2 is nice to see, but it also brings into question why exactly Valve as a company is doing things as it is if they’re spread thin on almost every project. They’re apparently trying to launch ANOTHER live service game when they’ve got 2 other live service games in a state of disrepair. Seems a bit confusing for them to just… throw themselves into the same inevitable problem, sooner or later.

[@LiamMoffitt]

Because they want to work on new games, not old ones. It makes perfect sense

[@Bruh-lq7ev]

It's cause they have infinite money more or less, have a management structure that even anarchists would largely consider crazy, and runs on high school social hierarchy bs

[@stereozero396]

@@LiamMoffitt Yeah i am sure everyone valve loves working on another generic, soyboy, moba, overwatch game like Deadlock

[@jeremypanjaitan4039]

​@@stereozero396its not even out yet bruh

[@Folbak]

@@stereozero396 I mean you can frame it with as much ridicule as you want but, unironically, yes. When the alternatives are 1) working on games so old they're made up of code written by hundreds of people who might not even work there anymore, and where new ideas have to meet a long list of criteria before even having a chance of being implemented, and 2) working on the storefront, a new, even if generic, game is genuinely the most exciting thing they could do.

[@ChapuleTaylor]

gentlemen, synchronize your death watches

[@Grayson-tk5hn]

this is a bucket

[@Aura_Mancer]

The only actually funny comment here, good job, thank you for the laugh

[@Airvent2]

Raising the price tag would also influence people that dont live in america, like example: $=5 ZŁ=25, that would severley impact people that live in poland, but also any onther country that has the same affect.

[@vladimirblanven8211]

It seems to me that one of the possible obstacles for bot owners is detecting whether the game is running in a virtualized environment. It is enough for Valve to use existing or develop new tools to detect some specific "hardware" that a virtual machine or container has on board (not all drivers neither namespaces can be pulled straight from bare metal). For casual and competitive modes, you can use a combination of captcha and this environment detection tool to block or lower the trust factor for suspicious players. By blocking access from the virtual environment, we significantly reduce the amount of actual bot hosts. I am sure that it will be extremely time-consuming for bot owners to create a new virtualization system, or detect and rewrite every "driver" in the vhost

[@armitx9]

valorant has anticheat with kernel level access and people can still cheat using a virtual machine. I think the tf2 bots can find away around any detection

[@CloudCuckooKing]

Virtual machine doesn't mean cheat, though. This assumption is already what makes it unnecessarily harsh to try to play a game while keeping dangerous, bad-acting rootkit malware like EAC and battleye in a harmless sandbox.

[@vladimirblanven8211]

@@CloudCuckooKing yea, I agree that vm doesn't mean cheat. I meant in my message that bots are mostly hosted on vps servers. And who really plays the game through a virtual machine?

[@vladimirblanven8211]

@@armitx9 vm has its own kernel. Guest OS is almost completly isolateted from the host OS. Only containers use host's kernel

[@CloudCuckooKing]

@@vladimirblanven8211 Well, in the case of TF2, Steamplay works fine, but there are absolutely things that don't play well with Wine, or where the anticheat figures out you're preventing its malicious behavior and throws a tantrum. In those cases, the ONLY way to play without putting Windows onto bare metal is a VM. I don't trust Windows with my bare metal.

[@dankmemester3398]

Cant wait for Valve's next game, deadlock, to be botted to hell, because it will use the same unworking anticheat. Who knows, maybe they will make an anticheat that works, and slap it on all online valve games.

[@Chinfu-gb8sk]

They literally are working on a new anti cheat that will be used for cs2 and future titles idk why you guys don’t research this topics instead of just accepting what these YTs say

[@RealLotto]

​@@Chinfu-gb8sk because until there is actually proof that the new anti cheat is being developed and working I would rather believe what I've seen with my own eyes rather than hearsay.

[@SarmaTheFood]

I hope it does. I hope it gets botted and ruined by cheaters to the brink of collapse. Because Valve needs a wake up call. If #fixtf2, by some unholy reason fails, that is the only way for them to get their shit back together. Money is a thing they have, they can just get more people to work and solve it. There are people willing to do it without even demanding pay.

[@MisterSandmanAU]

​@@Chinfu-gb8sk people know this, it hasnt been added since it was announced a year or so ago

[@GabrielAKAFinn]

@@Chinfu-gb8sk These clowns? I wouldn't trust them to develop my dog up and down the street.

[@jebusspqr2121]

The thing with their 'Threadmill work' analogy is: Using a threadmill is a great way to stay/be healthy. And they're not doing that.

[@DoctorCyan]

Fatass company 😂😂😂

[@gorga8618]

GabeN has actually lost a lot of weight

[@poptop89]

Only until you've overextended yourself and become a dehydrated, exhausted mess and have to get off the treadmill because running the treadmill too long can be disastrous

[@jacksonwilliams5399]

They simply shouldn’t do an in game economy like this if they’re unwilling to do the treadmill work.

[@AmoniPaleo]

@@poptop89 Valve be like: Why be healthy if I will be sweaty and feel exausted afterwards... I Should not even bother then. Stupid Thread Mill work

[@determinationincarnation]

Valve employees when they have to get up from their couch and do actual work:

[@ExoTheFlyingFish]

The way I see it, people are making all this noise just to avoid playing Community servers, which are a better experience altogether anyway. It's illogical.

[@Casterborous]

I like playing casual. Plus a lot of community servers just aren't my thing, don't play the maps I like, are often full of very advanced players that I can't compete with. Various other reasons like that are why I prefer casual. Plus if it were the case that everyone moved to community servers, the bots would follow. This whole movement isn't about "lets find a way of avoiding the bots" this is "botting shouldn't be an issue for any game." Because this is an industry wide issue. So many games are getting botted like this.

[@Wolfy-qf5pe]

what community servers? The ones with 150+ ping? No thanks

[@Yama-qg3il]

The way casual works in tf2, it makes it easy for bots to get in matches and overrun everything, everyone leaves after a match is over, most matches have 6 slots open ready for a group of bots to come in and ruin everything, the way player slots are reserved and bots can come in groups, etc. Meanwhile, in community servers that work the classic tf2 way, they are way less of a nuisance, a community server that goes strong and has constant players can't get overrun by bots and if one or two of them appear they are promptly kicked out. Valve rolling back casual and bringing back quick play would be a step in the right direction, along with a bunch of other countermeasures however small, I don't care if it's just small inconveniences to bot hosters or if it's treadmill work, stuff adds up to make a better experience for human tf2 players, doing nothing is way worse.

[@iratepirate3896]

Community servers have their own issues, being breeding grounds for child grooming and 'alternative lifestyles'.

[@Ultra289]

But the issue still remains on community servers so same thing... And again, tf2 with no matchmaking would be disapponting for a lot of ppl

[@bruschetta7711]

​@@Ultra289 there was really no issues with Quickplay tho, i really would not miss anything about matchmaking even without bots

[@Kylirr]

Yes, a return to quickplay would be a big improvement.

[@mee091000]

Lol how many "steps in right direction" does Valve need? These people are tripping me out with this minuscule and completely temporary solutions. No wonder the botters have been thriving for over a decade.

[@randomcrandoface2363]

I better not go to work tomorrow seeing it's "treadmill work" and I'll just have to do the same thing tomorrow

[@distorted_heavy]

Must suck to have such a job. Have you thought about looking for employment elsewhere?

[@ponponpatapon9670]

@@distorted_heavy job searching is treadmill work

[@whatisupbois]

@@ponponpatapon9670 and when you think of it... breathing is treadmill work... and drinking water and eating food and pissing and shitting is also treadmill work... why do anything if it's all treadmill work?

[@Manu0jedi]

@@distorted_heavy have you worked a day in your life

[@dyslexicbatnam1350]

@@ponponpatapon9670 Your heart beating is such treadmill work, give your body a break

[@titanic_monarch796]

It's admittedly kind of amusing how no sooner does treadmill work get introduced into the video a really large portion of the comment section immediately misunderstands it

[@ninjadanoite1560]

bunch of idiots

[@Jagerbomber]

I was instantly permabanned from TF2 for the first time ever several years ago (before they stopped banning and stopped those "Your Report Banned Somebody" notifications). They actually unbanned me (I did contact and talk to support). I suspect it was because I reported so much (they won't tell me, unsurprisingly), but I still wonder what method they used to ban at that time.

[@RoverStorm]

People say that community plugins are able to stop bots, but to be honest I think that's because bot hosts don't try community servers. If they did, they could get past the plugins. The only true defense that community servers have is moderation. The immediate and effective solution is to actually use their methods to identify trustworthy players, and give them moderation power even on valve official servers. But I can't be the first to think of this; they must have thought of this and decided it was legally risky.

[@playedtoomuch5259]

So the solution would be to invent a time machine and Sarah Connor the person who first developed the bots

[@Keygentlemen]

More like Sarah Connor whoever's idea it was to make the game F2P

[@callmefox630]

Why bother with a Time Machine? just send an Terminator to them right now!

[@ghoulbuster1]

@@callmefox630 Ironic.

[@kwildspirit]

That's treadmill work though

[@RyutaaKuzunoha]

That sounds like a solution from the TF2 comic.

[@yourunclejoe9500]

@shounic you should make a follow up video explaining the "treadmill work" thing, because I think people are misinterpreting what it is and what Valve's attitude towards it is.

[@watermeloneatergaming]

this needs to be top comment

[@cynapse993]

About half the comments I see reference that

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

Yeah, a programmer would have a fucking aneurism looking at this comments section or at TF2/Valve discourse.

[@hamburguesaconpapas124]

i think the best way to remove bots from tf2 would be to make tf2 free if you spent an "x" amount of mone on steam (10,20,30 bucks) that way botting would be really expensive and normal people who didn´t spend money could use that money on other things (games,ites,dlc...)

[@thecluckster3908]

I guess that’s a solution, but TF2 was my very first steam game and I didn’t buy another steam game for like 2 years after that. This isn’t the best solution

[@chdata]

@@thecluckster3908 it is the best solution, just not for you

[@klauspeter7092]

There is nothing to lose , the game already as no way of growing with the bots , if they do a half ass way to "fix " it , they just get more bad press. There is no way for Valve to save face without putting in hard work. "bUT tHaT iSNT EAsY" rough for Valve but dont sell broken games

[@Keygentlemen]

For real, "the game can't grow with a pricetag" is such a bullshit argument. Firstly, people spend over 3 times TF2's original price on brand new games with zero reputation all the time, so I think asking $20 for one that people know and love is far from outrageous. And second, if all people talk about surrounding this game is the bot crisis, why would anyone new want to get in on the game to begin with?

[@kaly_osu]

They aren't selling shit it's free, just stop buying keys and then they probably do something or just shut the game off

[@102ndsmirnov7]

@@kaly_osu even if no one bought stuff from the in-game store (which a lot of people do), Valve is still making a shit ton of money from the marketplace sales.

[@budgetcommander4849]

Community servers exist

[@undercover1790]

@@kaly_osu They wont shut the game down. CS and dota market which are much much larger than TF2s economy would instantly take hits because, people would realize valve can take away hundreds of thousands of dollars on a whim. You cant shut down TF2s Item servers without ruining confidence in those other markets

[@cellulanus]

If Valve doesn't want to do treadmill work then they should focus on single player experiences that don't need any ongoing upkeep at all on their part. And yet the next game they're working on is a multiplayer shooter. A game that will require the exact same treadmill work that TF2 and CS need.

[@user-ir8te9me9r]

That's why they'll just pump out skins or whatever gambling based shit in that game and abandon it immediately

[@555Soupy555]

@@user-ir8te9me9r genuinely looks like its gonna be botted to shit and also boring so they are most likely prepping for a pump and dump

[@malahay_31]

​@@555Soupy555a lot of people who keep saying this both forget this game is in alpha and never seen any gameplay of it

[@Kuroo39]

​@@malahay_31its tf2 drones coping and crying about it because their 17 year old game gets no love and they only started playing 2 years ago and so don't know how to use the server browser. If there's anyone to really blame its traders (for causing the insidious rot) and everyone who pushed for MyM.

[@HeideGuy]

​@@Kuroo39Hey buddy stop doing KZbin. You have bots to host.

[@celvinardenwu5382]

Yeah, i feel like finding the "one" true solution while preferable is unfortunately not ideal. Like some other comment said, we have to do multiple steps like water purification to essentially stop it. Remember one of the thing to be a bot hoster is convenience since it's literally sold publicly, imagine if suddenly that process are not convenience anymore, the bot host have to go multiple step to just ruin tf2, it would actually disincentive them to do it in the first place, i mean if what Gaben said is true that Piracy is a service problem and steam essentially mitigate alot of it then it could be the same with the bots

[@muffinman9018]

For valve hiring moderators, the mods wouldn't have to it in a casual match for the rest of the game. You can implement a "call mod" button for players so that some casual matches get flagged by players and mods can hop between servers to moderate for themselves. To avoid the prevalence of false negatives, you can give players a casual cooldown for falsely claiming their server has a bot.

[@dragonlord564]

The cooldown wouldn't really stop purposeful false mod calls because Bots have more accounts than genuine players. As the Genuine Player is waiting for the cooldown to finish. The Bots have just called that moderator to 24 different servers where nothing is going on except for a bot masquerading as a new player and time being wasted. Granted. A new modding API that can navigate servers easily possibly without even opening TF2 proper could make going through reports significantly easier

[@muffinman9018]

@@dragonlord564 If the bot reports a server, the mod can come in and kick or even ban it. Since we have actual people moderating, the punishment for bots can be more severe since falss positives are less likely. There is the issue of how do we hire moderators that are competent and trustworthy which kinda sucks.

[@kitepz]

"at the expence of the game's growth" excuse me, what growth? from 15k actual real players to 16k?

[@gemstone7818]

Didn't he say health not growth?

[@rawmaw]

@@gemstone7818 he did.

[@APootisBirb]

​@@gemstone7818He said both. Growth at the beginning, health at the end.

[@unfa00]

The only new players TF2 gets are bots :D

[@AsheTehFox]

The argument that making the game paid would kill it is laughable, it’s literally been unplayable for years because of bots but people still play, a pay wall will not kill the game lul

[@TheAnnoyingF2P]

Once again, it seems the solution is to first remove matchmaking and return to quickplay for a myriad of reasons, but in this case its features give players more tools to actively discourage and deal with bots. Then, Valve would just need to actually do the manual ban work they used to and update VAC more frequently. That would solve a substantial amount of botting cases, but they just won't do it because they DO NOT CARE.

[@pancakewafflez]

>just hire bro >just make it p2p bro >they have $1000000 bro >treadmill work bro

[@Radi0he4d1]

One more patch bro

[@cynapse993]

>just one more cope bro

[@Goldenleyend]

What I got from this is there's a guy at Valve named Greg COOMER

[@UnethicalExperimental]

Yeah, apparently Coomer is a real name. He's the guy that Dr. Coomer is named after in the "Half-Life VR but the AI is Self Aware" series on this site.

[@merminator416]

His school days must've been fun

[@Windowsfan100]

Hello Gordon!

[@neVeseos]

What's so... funny about Greg Coomer?

[@dramaticlock7524]

​@@UnethicalExperimentalor from the original halflife??? 😭

[@shadowmaster435]

i dont expect them to completely get rid of the bots what i DO expect from them is to make it possible to find a normal game with no bots in a reasonable time frame

[@baronbacku9984]

how do you expect them to do that?

[@lefishe5845]

I think it would be interesting to pull a option I see becoming more common where if you are suspected of cheating, you are silently put in lobbies with other suspected cheaters. The bot posters would have to check manually that they aren't in jail, and the legit lobbies would be slightly less worse.

[@live10yearsinthejointreact80]

​@@lefishe5845 kinda like the Dark souls thing? Where if you're caught cheating you're forced to play with other cheaters?

[@lefishe5845]

@@live10yearsinthejointreact80 Yeah

[@solffie9613]

A lot of them are run with tf2 on text mode so why not just remove that feature?

[@enn1924]

Why is that even a thing anyways?

[@whtwolf100]

​@@enn1924its a hack built from the source engine code leak. Getting rid of it is nigh impossible from what I've been told

[@fireking6308]

@@enn1924 Actually curious why it exists, gonna look it up rq

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

​@@enn1924 most likely debugging, since 99% of bugs don't have anything to do with graphics anyways

[@KP1YT]

Who are the ones doing the botting? How do we go after them?

[@Yukinari2007]

It would honestly be cheaper and easier to in fact kill Casual and bring back Quickplay so Valve can wash their hands of it and hand server browsing back to the community. Even if that means Skial gets to lie about their ping, i think most people would rather play a bot free match than worry about what scummy methods Skial and other servers do to draw in players. I dont want to romanticize Quickplay but it is literally the most cost effective option especially if Valve continues to add holiday updates every few months that continue to draw in money.

[@willtheoct]

What makes you think servers would be bot free? This isn't 2013 anymore, computers are cheap and that's why bots are around.

[@Yukinari2007]

@@willtheoct Because Quickplay was completely community driven and Casual is not. Shounic thinks Quickplay would just devolve into chaos but its better than having no matches at all.

[@willtheoct]

@@Yukinari2007 um. You just gonna ignore the part about computers getting cheaper?

[@Waskomsause]

@@willtheoct Don't think you understand one of the reasons bots were unable to really get onto servers using the browser, or why they don't infest current community servers. The browser is hard to code around, it changes locations of servers as it searches, it forces them to have to put in more effort just to be able to connect their bots to the network. Once something becomes a chore, the braindead AI users get bored of it.

[@purplesky135]

​@@willtheoctdoes not matter, all you need is 1 server mod with free time and there will be no bots in their server

[@notherpersonnel]

Bringing back quickplay is definitely the best option IMO. Not only it brings back good ol' 24/7 doomsday, it also lets people get exposure to the server browser with its wacky game modes. ad hoc-3 round max only servers were a mistake

[@willtheoct]

Probably won't work though. Russia wants its citizens to stop communicating with Americans, so if Russians play community servers the bots will strike those.

[@ihavenoidea598]

I really don't understand just why people want to keep casual: - Can't switch teams - Can't team scramble - Can't spectate - The map voting is borked half the time - No admins or anyone caring enough to moderate - Warm up or whatever is annoying - Only 2 rounds for each map I know that the community servers aren't perfect, but just how is this shit better?

[@nomnom8376]

For a long time, I despised matchmaking for killing doomsday. Destroyed the small but dedicated community it had when you had to que 10 minutes to play the map with 10 people in a server where you could only play up to 3 matches that lasted about a minute on average.

[@scrittle]

Hoo boy, surely you must've seen the two-step authentication prompts and web hooks before writing this comment. Hell... No! This solution would be perfect 5 years ago when there weren't any bots or any overblown AI marketing.

[@energeticyellow1637]

Yep. The bot problem wont go away for good, but it would be far more manageable. Community servers with their own anti-cheats get popular, you can just instantly join another valve server if it gets infested with bots instead of having to requeue, you can see who's in a server before even joining it, man... its insane how terrible MyM was of an update.

[@StupidityNotIncluded]

I just wanted to thank you for being so grounded in all of this. There’s a lot of emotion going on from all sides with the movement. It’s refreshing to have someone stay humble and reasonable amidst all this.

[@evdestroy5304]

I have no idea what you're talking about with quickplay. There used to be an option to choose whether or not to join community servers. That option was disabled by default in the later years of quickplay's life, by default it would only join Valve servers.

[@shounic]

if they just bring back quickplay with no other changes, the bots are still there, right? so you wouldn't want to queue for Valve servers because they have bots, and instead use community servers because they deal with the bots. if we're queuing for community servers, then we're dealing with community server problems

[@energeticyellow1637]

@@shounic I'd much rather deal with the problems of community servers of old than to deal with the bots we have now. I can just add a bad community server to my blacklist and never see it again. I can't do the same with bots. Reviving Quickplay is the best solution because its also the most low effort solution on Valve's part.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

@@shounic Not to mention, if everyone is matching into community servers with Quickplay then the bots are going to focus way more of their attention on circumventing community server protections. Making TF2 fans do the treadmill work instead of Valve is good in theory but running a community server isn't a job and there are limits to how much they can do on their own :/

[@banguseater]

@@shounic itd probably have a good effect on community servers tho, some dedicated players would chime their money and time to getting some new servers with keeping basic vanilla experience if it means that quickplay can automate that experience without touching the server browser.

[@bruschetta7711]

There would be at least the option to join a server not riddled with bots, unless that was removed too

[@Sasquatchseattle]

Honestly, a team of 100 moderators reviewing games with reports as priority then random games would be almost as effective as 1000 people checking every game.

[@whitefang1657]

Until the bots start reporting every game they join as a review priority. The problem is any tool you give the players, the bots can use to. Not making excuses for valve, they absolutely have the resources to fix this, but it's certainly not a simple solution.

[@Thespikedballofdoom]

@@whitefang1657 ehhhhhh just start prioritizing games with mass-reports and de-prioritizing reports from users that get reported as bots. Just exposing trust score to the moderators would be strong enough. random vote calling bots will be handled this way too, at least until they have to lay so low and blend in so well that they aren't vastly significant as an issue.

[@duckyduckington9736]

that'd be 1/3rd of their staff team for 1 game. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds out of context?

[@Sasquatchseattle]

I was responding to the claim "you'd need to hire three times as many people as there are active servers" to be able to moderate. However, malicious reporting is a known problem with some research on it. You should read up it's really interesting. Also, I'd hope that valve would create more sophisticated moderation and report systems than can be described in a two sentence KZbin comment about how to reduce labor requirements.

[@Keygentlemen]

@@duckyduckington9736 not really when they have the money to pay outside help to do it

[@3-valdiondreemur564]

If I remember correctly, bots work by running TF2 in text mode inside a VM to save on resources. By immediatly banning any player trying to run TF2 in text mode or in a VM, it would already make it impossible for bot hosters to host more than one bot per machine. There should also be something to detect other instances of TF2 running though, because I could see bot hosters using different accounts on their PCs to host more bots - but that would already be waaayyy harder and annoying to do. And to people running TF2 in VMs, you're hosting bots and can go F yourselves. TF2 runs natively on Linux. Maybe it needs proton, not sure. Edit : I would also like to mention that CAPTCHAs would be a stupidly effective and easy way to ban 99% of bots before implementing the previously stated changes. And it would be _entirely_ invisible to both the actual players, bots, and bot holsters. Thing is, most CAPTCHAs these days are just a simple click on a checkbox... And they work! Well, as long as your mouse movements look artifical/human. TF2 bots don't move their cursors over the button, they just TP the cursor to it in a straight line, which, as you can guess, _isn't particularly hard to identify as bot activity_. Wait a month or two to catch pretty much every single bot, and boom - they're all gone, and the hot hosters have literally zero no clue why! Also I just realized this may require the TF2 menu to not be ran in text mode. They could also put this system on the Steam app itself, by keeping track of your mouse movements as you click the play button.

[@ForOne814]

Isn't proton basically a virtualization layer on its own? It's not difficult to fake human-like mouse movements with a bot (just move the cursor between the coordinates with added randomness, you can even replicate your own mouse-moving patterns), and cheat developers tend to be aware of the countermeasures, so they'll figure out what's going on quickly. All of those ingenious solutions that are guaranteed to work and can't fail have been tried already. They just don't work in practice. The only thing that does work is behavior analysis. And no one has managed to automate it properly yet.

[@3-valdiondreemur564]

@@ForOne814 I think you underestimate how hard it is to make human like movement, and also how stupid bot hosters are. If they don't know what's getting them banned, they can't get around it - and it's 100% transparent. Also, Proton is owned by Valve. They'd know to let TF2 access it, and it's more like a translation layer than virtualization either way.

[@ForOne814]

@@3-valdiondreemur564 not really all that hard, since people have very predictable movement patterns. Also it's overkill to begin with, you just need mouse emulation with actual movement, so it doesn't teleport, and some randomness, so it doesn't move in precise straight lines. I think you're overestimating how difficult troubleshooting is, especially when you have information on what you should test. Trying to analyze mouse movements to counter bots is not a new thing. They will figure it out quickly, because it takes one person to realize it, and then the whole community knows about it. How do I know that? Botted in Retail WoW for a while, it never took us more than a day of work to get the bot running again. Fair point. Probably the best course of action, although still not a concrete fix.

[@c.flames]

This was such a good video, I'm pretty sure the best one so far during the #FixTF2 movement, great job!

[@Hewerine]

my cat started biting my phone when i started this vid

[@jurgiz]

nice

[@SarmaTheFood]

even the cat hates valve's ignorance lol

[@chloe_gospinny]

meow

[@_Firebert]

mrow

[@jurgiz]

meow

[@MEWOVER9000]

Expanding on the AI option... There could be a massive data collection effort on Valve's end that tracks a *wide* variety of parameters for a given "player" or account. (Next paragraph just me listing off potential parameters) Time played. Time played consecutively. Player movement. How quickly does a player snap onto a new target as soon as its in frame. How often a player is pointed at players behind walls. How often the player switches class. How often the player gets random crits. What settings does the player use? Are they running "high end" graphics? Are they running a bare-bones version of TF2? How often does the player use voice chat. How often do they put things in chat. Is it all the same message? Is it a different message every time? What is the ratio of headshots to bodyshots. How often do they spam voice commands? Does the player have a verified phone number? Are they premium? Do they share an IP address with many other accounts? How often does their IP address change? What IP address did they use to set up their account? Is that shared with 10,000+ other accounts? Do they queue with friends constantly, or solo? etc. etc. etc. You would then take that data and analyze it to build profiles of what a cheater looks like, versus a bot, versus a noob, versus a veteren, etc. For example, if an account is getting headshot after headshot for 72 hours straight, all on sniper, you can be pretty sure they are a bot. A data scientist would likely be able to come up with some sort of machine learning neural network that spits out a likelihood of an account to be a cheater or bot. Its a nuanced discussion, but it 100% is possible to detect obvious bots. You could put guardrails in place that even if a botter manages to fly under the radar for a bit they won't be able to get away with nuking the entire server. If your typical newbie TF2 player can identify a bot without even squinting, there is certainly a way for a computer to do it.

[@halfparsd]

The counterargument would be that bot creators could easily brute force a combination of factors that looks like a real person and so there would only be non-obvious bots left and those would proliferate. Analogously, it is a lot cheaper to run a DDoS attack than to create an adequate protection model. It's probably fairly easy to identify a 10 year veteran, but there's a lot of grey area between a well-made bot and a child who plays like a bot & hitting even a 0.1% false positive rate is catastrophic.

[@mateuszsuszek1159]

​@@halfparsd tbh if cheaters end up changing their bots to be more like "real players" then I literally won't care. Let them have it. I just don't want to be headshot the instant i round the corner by 7 spinning snipers

[@mrrooter601]

@@halfparsd >a combination of factors that looks like a real person and so there would only be non-obvious bots left and this is a problem how? IF this was the only thing that came out of a change like that, that would mean not having spinbots that instantly kill you repeatedly and instead having "Indistinguishable from a good player" bots. in what world is that a negative lol. A good human sniper can STILL win out on a lone bot, if they nerfed them hard enough that they were "undetectable" they would not be NEARLY as oppressive as they are currently. it would not be "blue gets a bot that instantly wipes red and they win before even realizing" anymore. being able to actually play the game for five freaking seconds before calling a kick would be MILES BETTER.

[@willtheoct]

@@mrrooter601 well the goal is to destroy culture, so the bots could simply gang up against players after infiltrating a trust system.

[@Tharronis]

before trying to develop an anti-cheat super ai maybe they should just try dedicating a few people to actually doing anything at all to improve the situation in any way.

[@Michael-sh1fb]

This isnt a problem for LLMs. Its a class of problems known as anomaly detection within ML. Useful in the finance industry to detect whether market manipulation may be taking place. You don't need humans to scour data and identify bots manually. You just need data where most people are not cheating. Anomaly detection can identify what "normal" looks like, and then infer that someone is cheating from being sufficiently far from normal. My friend is working on a startup which applies anomaly detection for real-time detection of cheaters in video games. The first version was tested on counterstrike, where the cheaters were way more subtle than tf2s aimbots, and it was able to detect cheaters with almost no false positives.

[@raspy_on_osu]

Promising. Who's your friend? Do they have demonstrations? Ideally the false positives get lowered as far as possible. There are tools to parse TF2 STV demo files, would it work with those?

[@Michael-sh1fb]

@@raspy_on_osu the company is "CapsuleAI", in the top few results on Google. I can't link it here because KZbin. From everything I've understood, yes it could be adapted to work on stv demos. I'm also a software dev but ML isn't my thing.

[@Cirkruh]

I think Valve first and foremost needs to be open and vocal with their community. I think most people understand fixing the bot problem is hard but the near dead silence we get from Valve doesn't help. 2 Years ago they said they would fix tf2 and if they still plan on doing that but are too caught up in other projects to work on tf2, they need to tell us. Communication is key here I feel.

[@Spika94]

Making the game 20 dollars again wouldn't actually be a terrible idea. I mean, most people already have the game. And I am sure plenty new players will join regardless when they hear how good the game is again.

[@Keygentlemen]

Bot crisis is already stunting the game, no doubt, and we live in a world where $70 for a new game is the norm anyway

[@bleyk_267]

you cannot by no means make the game $20 USD. This will kill the new players from in countries with less buying power

[@agentc7020]

​@@bleyk_267 No offense, but if it's between those *potential* new players and the rest of the already *there* community, I think valve should choose the latter.

[@HeatherKayagi]

If they allow people who already own it to avoid paying 20 dollars for it, botters will just buy tons of the cheap steam accounts that already have it in their library, and thus the cycle would repeat only this time actual players have to pay 20 dollars for the same game with the same bot infestation.

[@CodyEthanJordan]

Give the game free to any steam user which has spent over 20 dollars on any game?

[@Micha-Hil]

Valve not wanting to do treadmill work is a poor excuse. Most jobs are treadmill work.

[@ED-gw9rg]

OI, ya have a point! That's what people DO for online games! THAT'S WHAT MICROSTRANSACTION UPDATES DO, TOO!

[@somerandomgamer8504]

Which is exactly why they don't want to fucking do it.

[@Rairaichan]

Where I come from we call it "Maintenance".

[@pyerack]

​@@somerandomgamer8504 Then pull the plug or sell the game. Problem solved.

[@willtheoct]

Glad your job is treadmill work, at valve they also have 'thinking jobs' where you reasonably understand that no amount of human filtering labor can outperform generating computers, so someone with the thinking skill probably decided against that idea

[@catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca]

The assumption that you constantly need one employee per Valve server seems dubious. We could safely assume one person could monitor at least three servers concurrently. I’d argue even ten servers would be doable with very high quality, as eventually you have flagged enough players as humans that the server needs little attention. With some basic automation and by accepting some delay, one person could monitor 20-50 servers, spending their time based on player reports, automated checks, and focusing only on joining players. Then, we need to consider the amount of Valve servers in that 300 server estimate that would just be bots. It’s probably a big number. It would make sense to reduce the number of servers and accept longer times to join servers. More servers are started only at phase where humans can monitor them, so only once they are free of bots. This would need tooling and internal software, as well as hiring and training people to work around clock. So it won’t happen anyway. Still way cheaper than hiring 3 people per server to play tf2 as their job.

[@xora7490]

I dont think the game would die if it was marked for $20. Almost everyone that has ever played that game has spent money on it one way or the other.

[@SurrogateActivities]

YES QUICKPLAY Matchmaking was a mistake

[@ssssssssssssssssss50]

Just want my 2011-2013 game back 😢

[@damsen978]

#BringQuickplayBack Even if flawed, still better than Casual and it brought more life to community servers.

[@ninjadanoite1560]

Build a time machine.

[@ssssssssssssssssss50]

@@damsen978 oh yeah. Quickplay FTW

[@ssssssssssssssssss50]

@@ninjadanoite1560 gimme the money and you can use it too

[@kR-qj7rw]

That bee is long dead bro

[@user-pu4lv6pr5v]

All Valve need to do is fix the matchmaking system, or revert back to earlier quickplay or server browsing. Allow for ad-hoc connections again, and make it so matches do not end just after 2 wins. Problem is that bots join servers of which lack players, which is thanks to the matchmaking system. And after a match ends most people just leave to que for a new one, making it possible for bots to join. We have the tools to deal with the bots ourselves, it is just the current matchmaking system makes it possible for bots to join servers more easily and in greater numbers to not get kicked.

[@Vedad1944]

Temporarily disable the sniper for new players, and the ambassador. Then work from there.

[@iammonke5970]

I’m beyond caring about if the outcome is worse than before. After everything we’ve been through, I think I’d honestly rather see TF2 shut down entirely than left at the mercy of a tiny group of pyschopath scum. What’s the difference really? I can’t play the damn game either way. This is the only chance we have.

[@RyutaaKuzunoha]

What region are you in? Because on East Coast American hours at peak hours. It's possible to get good games currently.