#saveTF2

[@shounic]

edit: quick clarification, i fucked up not making this clearer, but i'm partly also trying to convey what valve might be thinking - answering why valve might not have done X solution yet. i don't personally hold the views i argue as a devil's advocate. i understand you don't need everything to be perfect, valve could just do some soft fixes. but the treadmill is self admitted by valve employees to be a problem of concern, so that's why i'm trying to illustrate that perspective. i personally am not trying to ask for perfection or say they must go for only the best most fool proof solution. --- HELLO first time making such a massive video. let me know if you have any feedback about the video :) also, i one-take'd the voice recording when i usually recording everything multiple times over - sorry if it's bad. script was just too long to do multiple takes

[@chairinspace7956]

Why would the script be bad? It's so good

[@xMrPhantofulx]

Shounic, is not just developing a better anti-cheat a solution? VAC is a completely archaic anti-cheat with a design philosophy from the 90s. Most games use anti-cheats that use kernel-level components. FACEIT has no issue with cheating in CS:GO or TF2 due to their kernel-level anti-cheat. Same with Easy Anti-Cheat. Valorant also has the best anti-cheat development in the entire video game industry. It's odd to say these anti-cheats are 'invasive' when... that's linked to the entire purpose of anti-cheat. Perhaps make it a server cvar to require connecting to the server using a new kernel-level anticheat, and people who are too scared to use the new anticheat can stick to VAC """secure""" servers. Regardless, loved the video.

[@inedholp1565]

@@xMrPhantofulx i'm pretty sure there have been videos of people cheating on faceit servers.

[@inedholp1565]

@@chairinspace7956 he didn't say the script was bad, he just said sorry if the voice over was bad because the script was so long

[@shounic]

@@xMrPhantofulx bots cheating is a secondary concern. the main problem is still just that there's lots of fake players that people don't want. if you somehow perfectly ban cheating you still have lots of fake players clogging the servers. + as i said in the video, perfect cheat measures and limits just means they get limited to human ability which is still very good and disruptive

[@luckylucas8596]

>Maybe players should have to submit a DNA sample before they’re allowed into Steam servers. >This doesn’t work because cheaters can simply buy artificial human DNA online at rates of $1 per hundred-million sequences. >Well shit.

[@methanesulfonic]

they cant keep getting away with it

[@jamesfinch6139]

@@methanesulfonic THEY CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

[@evangonzalez7732]

Remove the sniper class. The cheating will stop, and who's gonna stop it? They're sniper mains, they don't get to choose lol

[@crxw4]

@@evangonzalez7732 this is the worst and most selfish solution i have ever seen

[@evangonzalez7732]

@@crxw4 it's also... A j o k e.

[@reagansido5823]

It feels so disheartening that so many possible solutions are instantly shot down with "there's a website that can be used to circumvent it."

[@WestRail642fan]

yep, its really sucks

[@Ultra289]

Ppl dont often realize how easy it is to cause problems and how hard it is to fix them

[@Ashe1001]

@@Ultra289 That is surprisingly universal and depressing.

[@Ultra289]

@@Ashe1001 and worse of all is that not only applies to fixing cheating issues or bugs...

[@Alcatrax_]

Welcome to the world of programming

[@someoneelse803]

I'd like to say that the fact the game got two updates fixing ancient bugs means (in my eyes) that there is people that wanted to fix TF2 for a long time, and only now they can.

[@SheLikesLoons]

you do know that those were just 2 of the probably hundreds of bug fixes COMMUNITY members fixed and just sent over to valve right?

[@SheLikesLoons]

you do know those fixes were made by community right? they were just sent over to valve

[@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth]

But do you realize that these are community updates, right?? They're being sent to Valve in the mail.

[@bagofbananas790]

If they wanted to fix tf2 they would've done so a long time ago. Valve let's its workers work on whatever they want so if someone wanted to work in tf2 they would be allowed to.

[@catswork]

@@bagofbananas790 you would think so but internal reports from balve show that senior employees can basically bully lower employees to work on more "important" things. happened with Alyx, the Steam Deck and countless other projects. savetf2 was the kick to prove that tf2 is important enough to care about.

[@The_gaming_gazimon]

The goal would never be make it "impossible" for bots to join the game, the goal should only be to make bots too much of a hastle to bother at the current scale.

[@半蔵-x5h]

I had that feeling as well. The more I thought about valve not wanting it to be a "treadmill problem" I realized, cheating and bots are ALWAYS a treadmill problem. It never ends so complaining that they don't want to spend the time on it is just absurd.

[@aylmao1230]

@@半蔵-x5h It’s deadass valve employees being lazy lmao

[@NuStiuFrate]

@@aylmao1230 Oh no, i have to maintain a game that brings in money instead of doing nothing and getting paid, how horrible! - Valve employee

[@crisis8v88]

There are likely enough dedicated botters willing to clear any new hurdles and disrupt the game that you wouldn't even notice an improvement if you dissuaded some from botting. And once the more talented members of that black hat community find a workaround to any new barrier, the bottom feeders will come back. If that new barrier also impacts the human community of players (e.g. CAPTCHA, timed queue lockouts), then that's a win for the botters.

[@Web720]

@@aylmao1230 Stupid comment.

[@eclecticspaghetti]

All this being said, both teams being able to call votes at once genuinely has made the problem a lot more bearable. As long as you can survive the very start of a server, bots stand absolutely no chance anymore.

[@Markus1002]

It can take a long time for anyone to start a vote kick though. In a lot of games I've been the only one to do it.

[@mattbutalt723]

@@Markus1002 f2ps can't start a vote, before I upgraded my account to premium, whenever I tried to start a vote it just says "you cannot start a vote right now" That message never popped up after I got premium

[@danielbedrossian5986]

Have you even noticed how ignorat players can be, not replying for a vote, call a vote, or even communicate and read chat? I doupth all those I see not acking are people with different language and can't read.

[@roby4504]

It would be cool if the kick cooldown time (after kicking) was shorter.

[@BichaelStevens]

Yeahhhh except when the fella named DON'T LOOK AT ME joins your game and is absolutely unkickable literally no matter what

[@orangy57]

The invisible player thing is at least a tiny bit feasible, Minecraft servers used to use a player that would spawn behind your back at random times and it would detect if you tracked/attacked them, banning you immediately. It moved so fast and appeared for such a short time that no real player would ever be able to track them, but players using Kill Aura would always hit the hidden player. Bot creators could obviously figure out a way to avoid the hidden player eventually, but it did take a really long time for people to figure out how to circumvent it in minecraft

[@celestialowl8865]

Minecraft servers still have these forms of anticheat.

[@realPurpleOrb]

@@celestialowl8865 For instance, hypixel uses something similar, but it's actually worse than it. If the biggest server is using something similar, then other servers are going to use this solution.

[@router_BasedUser]

i actually do track them when I see them, and I get very scared of a player just materializing behind me (i'm hardwired to think there are many reasons for that to happen) no bans yet

[@forceawakens4449]

Some servers even have anti xray, it places a ton of fake ores around and i believe hides any real ones until they are in line of sight

[@LoraLoibu]

@@router_BasedUser Played too much tf2?

[@andyfriederichsen]

The fact that there's a community of people dedicated to cheating and ruining games is just infuriating.

[@meat.]

I don’t get why no one has tracked down the people hosting the bots and killed them yet lol

[@cactieythecactus]

@@meat. due to jail and lack of currency we are unable to assasinate them

[@alexrowe7063]

​@@meat. you'd be a bigger loser wasting time tracking down trolls to kill them over a video game. which is why no one has done it

[@randomdeliveryguy]

@@meat. Because ending someone's life over a fucking video game is something pretty heinous.

[@JNJNRobin1337]

because bots arent as bad as people that actively forcefully shut down game servers potentially permanantly

[@Predator20357]

Basically what I got from this video Valve is smaller than Bethesda We are fighting Bots with Malice not Humans The short term solutions are basically disable F2P chat 2.0 Fixing the bot problem is really complicated Cheaters are persistent little turds

[@the_cat9568]

Yeah, the only true way to stop the hacking is to get the hackers to feel compassion… Which they don’t at the moment.

[@starmaker75]

Or if we have some magic or technology that teleport to the bot makers's home to beat them up every time they cheat.

[@gloobamane6516]

they could just add a prime account feature like csgo has.

[@rane7784]

@@the_cat9568 what "at the moment"? They'll never have compassion. Cheaters and hackers feed off of someone's suffering and people getting mad at them. I know that because I was a cheater once in PG3D. I didn't give a single turd about the kids crying back in 2017.

[@spacemarine6212]

I know how to combat cheaters. A man who's too angry to die hunting them down.

[@JoeyBoey600]

This has opened my eyes A LOT than i could've known, i really didn't know valve basically had the lowest count of staff untill now, that explains a lot of things

[@ericquiabazza2608]

Yes. But also concider that they keep game production and earnings from this and other games. TF2 alone earn them a LOT of money. The minimal staff just tells you the amount of corruption this company has: Minimize cost, maximize gains. Specially up CEO salaries, as is seen in several industries like industry and interteinment this is the MOST POPULAR thing now. Menwhile low rank worker are trated like slaves, avused, bullied, exploited and treathen with firings trought illegal means as to not repay them.

[@alraz5832]

Immediately want to say: I haven't watched the video yet. For about three years I just assumed that all this time they were taking care of DOTA, SOURCE 2/Half Life Alyx instead of focusing on other places. I remember watching some video that explains how Valve works with its programmers, how they don't technically have dedicated folk on a special seat but many different folk working on different projects that sometimes come together to focus on one thing (like game creation) and literally the next day that same group would scatter for updating CSGO or other games, and then one day come back to game creation etc. IMO it's a combination of things that lead up to "abandoning" TF2, not just money. But at the same time, Valve is somewhat secretive when it comes to what happens there and the truth could be something completely different.

[@mentosvagabond]

The meme "last 2 TF2 dev be like" is not only a meme anymore.

[@chillingchill6823]

@@ericquiabazza2608 calm down son, that's not corruption

[@kotomishione]

@@ericquiabazza2608 shut up dude you look ridiculous

[@prajawalgurung6121]

Best solution : Valve hires several platoons of dangerous, armed and skilled hitmen who are to eliminate every bot owner and cheaters. *Cue magnum force*

[@redbird1f873]

That's a bit excessive, to say the least. These miserable people deserve scrorn from community, not death.

[@redbird1f873]

And besides that, if cheaters can impersonate players, why don't you think they can frame someone innocent? Well that was too serious for the reply to joke comment...

[@sentientlemonbattery]

center of chaos containment

[@guncatto2625]

@@redbird1f873 the solution is simple. Destroy the computers. Make them unusable via virus. Seems fun. Cheaters most likely have money issues. Boom.

[@JM-dq7xn]

"wake up and choose violence" method lol

[@seafouronesea]

The idea behind many of these suggestions isn't that they would be impossible to bypass, it's that implementing them would make bot hosting exponentially more difficult and expensive. The issue isn't that bot hosting is possible, it's that it's inexpensive and easy to do at scale.

[@MrSonny6155]

But also many of these solutions could make it exponentially more difficult for human players too. It doesn't even have to be a worse for bots than for humans, rather just enough to kill off a community. I don't imagine that many people will have more patience than that one spiteful guy who has sworn their life to making others truly miserable. Except maybe MMO players. They seem to have patience for anything.

[@elireloaded]

Exactly.

[@jacksoncremean1664]

this is true for preventing any kind of abuse, the goal is to maximize pain for the cheater while also not annoying legitimete user. it's a tricky balance to achieve though. rate limiting, using cloudflare turnstile captcha, and limiting new account creation will overall make the cheating problem much easier to manage.

[@stellarr1]

I appreciate the realism of this video, people really think its a lot easier to solve a problem like this and it's quite frustrating sometimes. Keep it up!

[@ericquiabazza2608]

Yes and no. KZbin is the same and people has express it abuse. What happen is that this is in part an excuse. "I wont clean the bathroom because is gonna get dirty again" type of deal. Is even more fake when you concider the alarmin low staff, this tells you corpo interest is in exploit staff to the limit while gaining maximum profit. So it isnt that they "Cant easily" is that they are NOT gonna put more money or hiring anyone else to deal with this. It defies their bottom line ideals.

[@shumo7096]

Ok but how do community servers instantly ban bots? How do they know??

[@Henry-Wilder]

@@shumo7096 Do they really instantly ban bots? Or is it just that the bots are only queuing for casual?

[@abicto]

@@shumo7096 because they're smaller so its easier to ban them manually

[@Temmoie]

@@shumo7096 They're monitored by active human admins, compare with Valve servers in hundreds, you'd need hundreds of admins for that, and that'll cost Valve money. Which is why they prefer using AI do the admin job instead.

[@noble6677]

I think alot of people don't realize that even if we fixed them being able to aimbot and instant kill players. They would still dogpile lobbies, fill player slots, and kick players. Just because we fix one issue doesn't mean they magically go away. The people that host these bots will do anything to disrupt the game.

[@oza_lup]

So lets just delete the game

[@Ultimaximus]

There still must be some solution. Although every game has cheaters, none has as many automated bot cheaters as TF2. Either other games have some solution that works for them, or TF2 is just the only game that's ever been targeted by this many bots at once, and any other game *could* be overrun if enough botmakers tried

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

I'm not sure if there's anything bots could do that's more disruptive than instakilling human players, though. Filling player slots and kicking humans is something they already try to do right now, and they're usually unsuccessful because TF2 is a popular game with a lot of human players.

[@alexxx4434]

Capcha was invented for a reason.

[@Ultimaximus]

@@alexxx4434 The video addresses this. There are paid captcha-solving services that hire real humans to solve captchas for you

[@3dz3dz]

I could tell number 2 was a bot. That aside, a bot that plays like a bad/new player aren't the problem. Its bots that play at superhuman levels that are the issue.

[@squmulonimbus]

even if they're forced to make the bots play more like humans, they can still fill up servers and disrupt the game in other ways, kick any human players, cause long queue times, make chat unusable, follow teammates around while constantly hitting them with the frying pan, etc.

[@TeamSprocket]

@@squmulonimbus Right, but it's an improvement over the server-destroying sniper bots.

[@milesbrown2261]

yeah that pissed me off so much like, we just want these aimbotters gone at the very fuckign least god im so mad

[@devilex121]

Exactly, I'm still fine with playing against bots that play "normally". It's those stupid insta-kill bots that have basically ruined the game.

[@partyboycs6086]

Exactly, and I've never played tf2 before (just lots of csgo) and I could still instantly tell #2 was a bot and others were human. Overwatch can work well if implemented properly, and like you said the biggest issue are the blatant insane cheating bots, who cares if there's a bot that sucks?

[@micahnightwolf]

Fighting cheaters as a game developer is like fighting hackers as a security researcher. It's literally always a treadmill problem, so you have to be willing to put up a bigger fight than your adversary.

[@GolAcheron-fc4ug]

Exactly. Valve just wants to be lazy. They are so used to being paid for doing nothing nowadays.

[@SomeOne-vf1rs]

I refuse to believe it is impossible or even very hard to put some code in a game that says “oh this person is achieving 100% headshots in rapid succession, ban them.” Especially with the algorithms people are developing it becomes easier and easier to tell people and machines apart. I fully believe it will get to a point where the only way to have a bot pass through an anti cheat, it will have to move and react in a completely human manner, and at that point your bot is not actually useful for ruining the game. You’re populating the servers and giving people a fair rival to fight against.

[@8stormy5]

@@SomeOne-vf1rsIt's literally already a thing. CSGO (now CS2) has a "tripwire" condition that logs if you attempt an impossible view angle, which is notably caused by spinbotting and other aim-related ragehacking in the Source engine. This happens because of how the injected cheats modify the data being sent to the server and the data being sent back to the client. Tripping it too often too quickly results in an instant ban. I know this because I was once a script kiddie some ten years ago and got banned by this check. So a very basic check that Valve wrote themselves and has been running for ten years is entirely absent from TF2 despite this being the literal most obvious case to use it.

[@SomeOne-vf1rs]

@@8stormy5 Wow that’s very disappointing

[@SuperM789]

It’s also like that when fighting piracy

[@MDPToaster]

TF2 having a consistently larger player count helps quite a bit with making bots less likely to appear in games.

[@LieseFury]

Then maybe they should untangle the spaghetti code so people with older and cheaper computers can still play. I used to play all the time on my ThinkPad E540 and now the game barely runs on it and frequently crashes because there's so much bullshit constantly running in the background that wasn't there before. Poor people are far more likely to play a free game and are far less likely to have good PCs.

[@airayne5176]

Untangling the tf2 code is like me asking you to sprout wings in the next 5 seconds and fly. It's not going to happen, one of the main reasons no one wants to work on tf2 is bc of said code, let alone attempting to fix it.

[@M50A1]

@@LieseFury Cope.

[@LieseFury]

@@airayne5176 God forbid someone ask a game developer to develop a game.

[@LieseFury]

@@M50A1 Your mom doesn't love you.

[@samanthaw.8560]

"We're always, always short on engineers" seems to be a problem in every industry, doesn't it

[@Jojo_clowning]

Ngl, i wanted to be an engineer, but schools keep telling me im under qualified

[@mark-jf5ik]

@@Jojo_clowning its pretty much a money job, no one really wants to do it if they don’t happen to be skilled at it, and if they are- theres better paying options then a middle man company that survives on game taxes

[@gyroninjamodder]

Valve just doesn't want to hire a ton of people.

[@Ana_Ng]

it absolutely is a problem in every industry, but as @@gyroninjamodder said, that's not why valve is short. _valve_ of all companies won't have issues finding competent engineers

[@yandr0]

Well. More reasons for finish my informatic engineering carrer

[@huhjustafox]

With all due respect, the CSGO Overwatch solution has worked wonders for the hitscan approach that currently plagues the game with sniper headshot spam. While you could argue that swapping to an approach that uses projectile classes to avoid detection, the "Suspect" gameplay you showed wasn't anywhere near as oppressive or unbeatable as a sniper that headshots you the moment you're visible.

[@moona4180]

IMO the reason the convictions dosnt go up is less to do with its effectiveness and more to do with the fact that there are only so many cheaters but if you can use overeat h and see a bot obviously doing what they do that’s a easy convictions

[@howaboutno4008]

i'd just remove sniper class lol

[@thebushbros6626]

While you have a point, the problem is that the TF2 community has shown that they have no idea how differentiate between a cheater and a good player, and the fat magic controversy has shown that.

[@2syk4ever]

But the point is TF2 IS NOT A COMPETITIVE. The problem is a lot of people in tf2 community doesnt know who is a cheater and who is a skiller. FatMagic is a big example

[@gmodrules123456789]

Shounic is literally the kind of person who would say "well, this is able to cure one kind of cancer, but it doesn't cure ALL cancer, so we shouldn't even bother doing it"

[@VulcanicCloud]

While not as effective, I still think the hardware ban would at the very least discourage bot users to a certain degree, and definitely annoy them. It may not be flawless, but it is one of the better solutions out of all of these. A big problem with player based cheat detection, is that especially in Tf2, there are tons of toxic players. It's not uncommon for people to get kicked and reported for simply being good at the game, or just to get kicked for no good reason. I just hope we get more support from Valve and at least ease the situation.

[@ougonce]

It would literally be useless. Spoofing hardware ID is so easy that it could even be built into the cheats themselves. As in, it would detect when an account was banned and immediately rotate all the hardware IDs to something else. Not to mention, of course, the possibility of banning cheaters using random hardware IDs, only for some poor bastard to buy a legitimate piece of hardware only to find out it was banned years ago.

[@GirlGoneGaming]

i main sniper, yeah? i usually get kicked from a server at least once a day, and i only have ten total hours on tf2 as of writing this. it is definitely something that happens often

[@errienteunisse8038]

@@GirlGoneGaming Well any solution should also include the Deletion of the sniper class for game health reasons.

[@lexikiq]

"invisible players to bait bots" is actually basically how minecraft servers prevent cheaters, just not quite as literally as you're interpreting it. the fake players are silently spawned behind the bots to bait the bots into snapping their heads backwards and sniping the fake player. though this has the same treadmill problem where the botters would just disable the random head rotating and instead try to create a bot that looks around "naturally" and only snipes players in view or alternate targets every shot or whatever

[@koghs]

Many Minecraft servers have that god awful anti x-ray bot that works by randomising non-visible to player blocks

[@littlenyancat5754]

In addition to that, those invisible players also detect kill aura users. The invisible players are spawned in a way that normal players can't hit them (ie, behind the player), but kill auras can. If the server detects that the invisible player was hit, then that's a cheater.

[@immortalsun]

@@koghs I know about those plugins. What’s wrong with them? They can impact performance in some cases, but I do believe they work.

[@imaginaryboy2000]

TF2 bots have long since moved past trying to headshot players through walls, if an anti-cheat like that were implimented they'd either easily work around it (i.e. not targetting players in spawn) or the anti-cheat wouldn't work in the first place. Either way it'd be unnatural for casual players if the "enemies" were visible, so it's likely not a solution Valve would end up going with.

[@lexikiq]

@@imaginaryboy2000 Your comment here doesn't seem very relevant to mine? Sounds like you're talking about something completely different

[@DEWILL]

That's some high-quality insightful video about the current situation. Yeah, this isn't an easy task. But to be honest, Valve's acts against the problem so far were trivial. Pretty much banned f2p players' from playing the game properly, and added an annoying vote cooldown. I would like to stay positive but after seeing all those pathetic band-aids, it's hard to stay like that. But still, I hope they do something properly in the near future. Plus: It grosses me out every time I look into the cheaters. In order to fix the cheating issue entirely, I feel like the only way is to teach our newborns to have a proper morals.

[@TopicalHat]

ok

[@TopicalHat]

you do you

[@MadJack1]

If we stop acting like we care about them, I wonder if they will stop? If a child is trying to annoy you but you act like you don't care they will more likely stop. Of course they could go the other direction in trying to annoy you more, leading to something like lag bots

[@Sparkz1607]

Some people are born with a physical inability to feel empathy, have morals, or understand that other people matter. These people are called psychopaths. And they make up 99% of cheaters.

[@MadJack1]

@@Sparkz1607 no, they are called jerks, people who are dumb enough to take their programming skills and use it to ruin peoples game and get people mad, which they get a kick out of. In some what of a way like stream snipers, but to the extreme.

[@SirPembertonS.Crevalius]

Only (about) 350 employees at Valve versus other companies having 500+ employees puts it into perspective why Valve is often radio silent as well as the extra time it may take for Valve to fix issues. With their other projects like steam deck and source 2, they likely don't have the Mannpower deal with so many tasks and game fixes all at once. Despite how long it took, I'm still simply glad that TF2 is slowly but surely getting updates and attention from Valve once again.

[@SheLikesLoons]

so your saying that it takes more than 350 people to talk? seems wrong

[@SirPembertonS.Crevalius]

@@SheLikesLoons I've basically just accepted Valve's silence. The only thing I really question about this whole TF2 situation is why did it take so long for updates to happen? The game is thriving, popular, and the community is strong, yet it feels like it was just left to die.

[@Ultra289]

I can understand why they are just silent

[@Ultra289]

Hehe mannpower

[@LoraLoibu]

Also, most employees at valve are VR engineers. They can afford not making games because steam is just _that_ dominant

[@Gunbudder]

deep learning to detect bot like behavior is an extremely good way of dealing with the problem. you state in the video that this will only force bots to play more like humans. EXACTLY. If bots are playing like humans, then the game is restored and playable again. if bots are always playing "bad" enough to not get detected as bots, then they are completely pointless and stop being a problem. its like having a fake doctor that knows literally everything about medicine, and never makes a single mistake despite not having a medical degree.

[@arianheight750]

Yes, it's a beautiful solution. Though, we'll have to see exactly what sort of machine learning scheme valve implements to see how effective it is or isn't.

[@PurpleColonel]

Idk I think playing against a thousand players who are all as good as the dozen or so top players would be pretty infuriating too.

[@Elkomolozupo]

Its a valid method but they can still votekick if they manage to overrun a server

[@houndoomdude2]

Yeah bots behaving like players is not ideal but miles ahead of sniper bots

[@2fifty533]

@@PurpleColonel well it's better than nothing lol

[@samsfromuntale]

I'm really thankful that you cleared up the misconception with Linux and people blaming all their bot problems on it. It has really gotten out of control and I wish people learned more that these solutions people come with can be bypassed over time

[@0Ploxx]

Linux is a communist subversion meant to destroy America

[@rdefsgtghgf3868]

His "clarification" is objectively incorrect lmfao.

[@saltedjules_]

also I'm a Linux user and I do *not* want to have to dual boot with Windows or smth

[@0Ploxx]

@@saltedjules_ then just use windows and stop being both an NPC and a hipster at the same time

[@fizzdev]

@@0Ploxx there's so many reasons to pick Linux over Windows

[@vFives]

It's worth mentioning that since ipv4 addresses are becoming more and more scarce ISP's have started utilizing something called cgNAT which can mean a bunch of customers using the same ISP may have the same public IP address. In that case ip banning a single IP address could possibly ban hundreds of people.

[@littlehorn0063]

No players - no bots, very elegant solution

[@vFives]

@@littlehorn0063 Pragmatic. I like it.

[@Chorismos]

@@littlehorn0063 Genius and straight to the point.

[@courier3567]

IPv4 addresses are not really becoming more scarce. A lot of devices just have a local network IPv4 then go through a router which acts as the one IP address that is actually internet facing. It will take us a long time to run out of IPv4.

[@vFives]

@@courier3567 What are you talking about, ipv4 addresses are already exhausted?? This happened in 2019! Any addresses that you may get now have been reclaimed. They are super scarce.

[@hoarobatty3685]

17:38 Apparently there was a matchmaking cooldown system that used to function which was the in game report system. Valve ended up disabling it due to the fact that bots were also using it to votekick players and then spam the player with so many in game reports that many have ended up with matchmaking cooldowns.

[@Kliatva27]

The true solution: For every 10 kills in a killstreak, you have to solve a timed pop-up CAPTCHA

[@750TheBoss]

This wouldn't work, because bots would be programmed to commit suicide using kill/explode commands at 9-kill streak

[@HexSaber]

@@750TheBossit’s a joke

[@yarknark]

​@@HexSaber that comment was also a joke about how in the video every solution like that gets refuted, like the captcha argument in the video stating that the captcha could just be outsourced to a human to do it for them or a program that auto-solves them

[@iclarke11]

This except it happens every 1-10 frags. That way you cant have bot destroy itself every 9 frags.

[@nef36]

@@750TheBoss nonwithstanding how hast a robot could solve the captcha I think just solvint it would be faster than waiting to respawn and walking back to the fight lmao

[@drgabi18]

"See if you can tell which one is a bot or human" **shows someone using the tomislav at long range** Shounic you're making this too eazy

[@Hambrack]

When I saw that heavy with the festive skin Tomislav with awful tracking, for a moment I thought Shounic got some footage of me playing.

[@jockeysface8753]

@@Hambrack yeah me too i play like that bruh

[@noskin7290]

yeh the cheater was easy to spot

[@napoleon7075]

this man really spelt easy with a z

[@evee_evvillamar4477]

@@Hambrack fat sniper

[@kiroma0]

Just throwing a bit of my own opinion in on Overwatch. My main gripe with the system is the low tickrate of the demo that you are supposed to watch and create your judgement upon. The demoman was easy to recognize as a bot since the grenade launcher is a slow weapon and thus the lead on the enemies was easy to notice. But with the scout I had doubts since I had no way of telling if the scout was hitting or missing any of the shots, there's just too much information missing, I can't see the jitter of the mouse or the flicks performed.

[@bernardonegri5416]

Plus, his video had no crosshair.

[@snaek2594]

@@hoffer_moment obv there are ways to make it less obvious. that was a valve bot. It was made with no intention to hide the fact its a bot. Then again, it would be incredibly hard to code an AI to move and aim in a convincing manner. When I looked at the players, I didn't even necessarily pay attention to the crosshair placement. I was looking at the whole screen to see how the aiming was occurring. Which yeah made the bot stand out pretty well

[@specttor5755]

Actually that scout is quite obvious. He doesn't jump as normal scouts will do since bot's navigation only tells them where they should jump to cross obstacles, and for a bad aim scout, he usually shoots around a target, too left or too right etc. , but this scout's bullet just simply follows the target's trait and keeps an fixed distance, which a bot will normally do. Besides, even newbies scouts are told to use jumping to dodge enemy's attack but bots don't know about this. My English is bad and hopefully you could understand what I typed :D

[@vyor8837]

@@specttor5755 the scout was real though...

[@he3004]

Scout was the easiest one, he bumped on the wall and missed all his shots, that's quite literally footage of me playing scout

[@spillproff]

Thank you for talking about the "ban Team Fortress 2 on Linux" solution. Always annoyed me that people didn't understand how easily it would be to switch the cheat to another OS.

[@ggolden]

free wifi anywhere you go

[@s.e.3765]

@@ggolden that theory is as lazy as "windows cheat makers" then

[@JohnBread69]

Are we gonna ignore the elephant in the room and not mention that literally EVERY Valve and community server runs on Linux? That would be a massive shot in their own foot.

[@sandertrumm7302]

@@JohnBread69 Not every server, Valve also maintains a Windows build of srcds (not to mention you can always just host a listen server) But yes, every Valve server and most community servers do use Linux

[@zZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZza]

@@ggolden HOLD UP!!!

[@ethfan922]

I was quite blown away when someone I knew suggested removing the nav meshes. I studied nav meshes for a short time, so hearing something like that was crazy to me since they can simply be remade with nav_generate.

[@iota3243]

I thought the same thing haha. I used to tinker with game bots all the time when I was younger so I learned about nav meshes for them so I could use them on more maps.

[@georgegeorge25812g]

When i first got tf2 i didnt have good internet, so i played with bots and i learned this very quickly lol

[@zoltanh1985]

At the overwatch part i could correctly guess that suspect 2 was the bot. His camera movement was too smooth and consistent for humans to replicate, and it was very distinctly trailing behind the player it was shooting(this is how the smoothing feature usually works in aimbots). Keep in mind, this was a very short clip, and in an entire match, the bot is bound to slip up eventually(the bots are indeed advanced but they can still be detected, usually due to incorrectly navigating the map such as randomly jumping into walls, getting stuck in a very shallow hole or not being able to make jumps that most humans can). I think overwatch for TF2 would be very beneficial due to casual bots usually using blatant hacks. And if they try to act legit, what's differentiating them from valve-made bots?

[@mark-jf5ik]

I feel like classes like pyro, medic, and engineer can follow a really simple set of rules and get away with boting very easily

[@nemplayer1776]

Exactly. The argument against overwatch is really bad in my opinion. It's very easy to tell if someone is cheating, especially if you're a more experienced player. And the main reason you'd even use it is to get rid of the spinbotting snipers, not a random expert bot that can't ruin your game.

[@RedmondtJacks]

It was obvious because of pipes, you can’t miss them so perfectly, you’ll shoot it all around

[@SurrogateActivities]

If anything instead of looking for signs of botting, looking for signs of human-ness always work. Things like little movements and reactions that are impossible for a bot to completely simulate

[@RiveryJerald]

but OW is clearly only meant for competitive matches, not a 12v12 games.

[@MicRouSn7]

In the "see if you can figure out who the cheater is" I was actually able to detect who the bot was. Not sure how. But either way, I think the problem isn't that "there are bots in the game". It's that "there are bots that are instantly and repeatedly making the game unplayable, ruining the game for users in the process." If there were bots in the game as bad as that demo, then I wouldn't have an issue with them because they're not disrupting my gameplay. At most, I'd probably offer to teach them if I saw them on my team. And a lack of response would probably indicate that they're either all good or a bot, which I wouldn't mind because it's casual.

[@aplebian1731]

For me it was a combo of the excessively smooth mouse movement paired with the way it almost looked to be "intentionally" missing it's shots. It would very carefully and deliberately aim at the wrong location.

[@folx2733]

Yeah that part boggles the mind. The game is fu*king unplayable because of aimbot snipers instantly killing everyone they see, not because of demos simulating noobs...

[@sheacorduroy5565]

The reason you can probably tell the difference is because players 1 and 3 actually use their secondary weapons, something that bots will rarely ever do. Also the 2nd player was pre-aiming around the corner at a demo he wouldn’t be able to see.

[@MicRouSn7]

@@sheacorduroy5565 I think it might have been the smoothness and consistent speed of the mouse movement.

[@ArigatoPlays]

@@MicRouSn7 That's definitely what stood out most. Especially since the other 2 players had some very human looking mouse movement, for example the pistol tracking at 28:00 looks *exactly* how you would expect of a person physically moving their mouse rather than a program following a calculated path

[@RD-170]

4:20 "So you would literally ban everyone on steam called Twilight Sparkle" Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make

[@Starpotion]

"Nice, we got rid of all the bots!" "...bots?"

[@azure273]

“Nothing of value was lost today”

[@blobbem]

A certified Trixie Moment™.

[@Mwright4444]

@@blobbem You sold at life.

[@feinky8489]

I see this as an absolute win!

[@adon155]

Note for the name banning solution its also horrible since in the case its implemented on a regular basis you could just set up a bunch of bots with the same name as someone you want banned and they're done

[@xladbetr8097]

The thing is, for every solution, there’s someone who already thought about it. So the only for having no cheater is if cheaters don’t see the point in chesting

[@raandomplayer8589]

Remove drops. Game is still fun. Maybe more so

[@fuuji111]

@@raandomplayer8589 maybe remove drops for free accounts

[@bruh-cd3kf]

@@fuuji111 nah

[@___-qj2lx]

@@fuuji111 please no

[@asdawasda]

@@fuuji111 that would make the game pay to win

[@5554-c1i]

The tf2 overwatch system would probably be pretty good if it wad explicitly made to catch obvious, game disrupting bots. Not cheating real people or single "realistic" bots, those can be vote kicked by the other players or countered by smart medic ubers, were talking spinning, gibus wearing, parties of bots that absolutely shutdown servers

[@temkin9298]

First thing first is that tf2 is too chaotic, game has been played by too many people. So the best thing is a ban time limit for new joins, aim lock identifier, server side tracker identifier (tracking players across walls), softlock out(trapping bots to specific servers to overload their computer or make them idle). Second possibility is banning behavior repeating bots(since all bots are ai, they will control 100% nearly always). ban those with no kill attempts. Third is too much info being given so restrictions are a must (rendering all players instead of view&area filtered). Fourth is introduce (happy accidents ) for those with overcriting and overprecision . Let me be honest sniper mains with too dam much precision pisses me off. Do they use a aim guide?do they actually have skills? I don't care as long as they hit too many headshots, game becomes who can kill that maniac first. Fifth and last is basically making them lagg by overflowing the bots with info they don't need or causing them to overwork the hardware. Queuing bots can be spotted fairly easily and can be done away with doing the same thing but on reverse wasting their computing resources possibly making them unable to function.

[@lolnt6103]

tf2 overwatch sounds wrong

[@loctite417]

"Just use community server" is not a valid option when there is just no good community replacement of valve server in your region. It's all either Hale server or 24/7 2fort, hightower and randomizer as well as orange.

[@turmspitzewerk]

they were far better before valve butchered them. now the only server host that's able to compete with a vanilla experience is uncletopia. the remaining servers after MYM are just wacky alternative modes that were never competing for the same vanilla playerbase, so they weren't killed off. but being ejected out of the queue system doomed community servers to be a niche option compared to valve's official casual queue. we need to bring back community servers into the casual queue so they can live again. the only way this problem will be solved is if valve gives us the ability to do it ourselves.

[@SnivyTries]

Not to mention I'm not a professional comp winning TF2 player so I can't compete in Uncletopia XD

[@soupcan]

this was mentioned in the video

[@itsjudeau5275]

Right? Normal Community servers are scarce if you don't live in NA

[@redtheyiffer]

My thoughts exactly, I actually dislike gmod a lot because it's 100% community servers, there's no one authority that standarizes how some gamemodes are meant to be and you get countless bloat addons you will never care about and they just add error models that look really ugly.

[@fearlesswee5036]

I think the solution isn't any single one of the presented solutions, but a combination of many/all of them. Steam guard, trust factor, overwatch system, queue cooldown, prime matchmaking, vacnet, and a captcha *all combined* would be a ton to just drop on bots, and while each "fix" on it's own could be circumvented or bypassed given enough time/effort/money, adding ALL of these together would hopefully be enough to prevent 99% of it; think of it like a water filter. You don't just have a carbon filter, or just a sand filter, or just a mesh filter etc., you have ALL the stages combined so anything that gets through one stage gets caught by the next, filtering it finer and finer until the final product is safe enough to drink. All the proposed solutions combined would be like the stages in a water filter; while it may be possible for some particularly nasty things to bypass one or two stages, bypassing ALL of them would be unfeasible for the majority of cheaters due to the amount of workarounds and paywalls required, and even for those most dedicated to trying to do everything they can to bypass the systems it'd be too much of a financial burden to be worth the tiny payoff of mildly annoying players with the few bots they can afford past.

[@jayd967]

Sorry to necro, but, thank you, this is actually the correct take. Dealing with bots, spammers, etc. has always been about mitigation, and the handwringing over all of these strategies as if they're meant to be employed individually to stop all botting forever vs. being used as part of a multi-layered defense to make botting too onerous to be feasible for most people is so semantic it drives me nuts.

[@rodolfo9876a]

I agree

[@boltogen5416]

Honestly this also the bot hosters want too though. Their goal is simply to frustrate people enough so that they stop playing. And I can definitely see people getting upset from changes like this into the game where valve ends up doing the job the bot hosters want for them. People who just want to play the game would already dislike any change that makes it harder to play a match. Some also do not want to give personal info to any company, and that can include things like phone numbers. These people would be driven away from the game. Which is what the bot hosters want. They don’t care how it happens, they just want people to get mad and stop playing.

[@verticalflyingb737]

Gonna play the devil's advocate here; if the combination of solutions end up annoying real human players to a degree similar to bots, then the botters had pretty much won.

[@RdTrler]

Except you don't see games with all those solutions, because they all died of a compromised gaming experience. It'd be like going to a fast food restaurant with a hundred people in the queue. You don't see them, because I'd like to be home by sundown.

[@poppymon007]

i had no idea there was so much talk by valve on this topic, ive been conditioned to think that valve has been completely silent on the issue and since no media sources or anyone i know has been saying anything other than "valve is doing nothing" thats what i figured they were doing. it actually makes a lot more sense and is really nice to know that valve understands the issue and has been actively working to solve it for some time, hopefully they come to a working solution soon.

[@Pikana]

CS:GO feels like their testing grounds for anti-cheat measures. Anything that seemed like a waste on CS:GO won't end up being wasted on TF2. At least I hope that's the case.

[@Plain--Jane]

discourse about valve games is honestly fucking insufferable once you're informed

[@steven.2602]

@@Plain--Jane Discourse about gaming in general is fucking insufferable once you're informed. There's examples of the Dunning-kruger effect in all walks of life, but for some reason its turned up to Eleven in videogame discussion.

[@nuclearpotato4073]

@@steven.2602 It's especially egregious in source. Too many shmucks see shit like the load-bearing coconut on r/tf2 and are like "wow this game programmed so crappy! source engine terrible!" when they don't even know what makes it terrible.

[@drillbitz2816]

@@nuclearpotato4073 the coconut is quite funny tho

[@denaytan7746]

Combining a few of these would definitely be beneficial. Overwatch in particular caught my attention, as it would enforce so many restrictions on how bots behave (Though full disclosure, I've never really played CS:GO, so I don't know what the system is like over there). No more spinbotting, no more chat spam, be it slurs, insults, advertisements, or otherwise, and bot owners would have to make measures to ensure their bots look less suspicious. If some sniper with no paid cosmetics is shooting someone's head the instant it becomes visible one too many times, that's not going to look legitimate. I know there are bots with cosmetics, and this would hurt really skilled free-to-plays, but there are ways to work around these issues without hurting anybody real. Also if we could get some irl-but-not-illegal justice against the bot hosts and/or operators, that would be appreciated. I can't recall much useful information, but I remember watching a YT video a few years ago about a specific bot host (and maybe a Tacobot.tf member as well?) getting exposed for pedophilia. Reporting him to the police, IF he hasn't been already, would make for delicious revenge. I'd share more information if I remembered it.

[@34marmarmar]

I knew tacobot ppl were sad, but damn

[@raccoonukisupportgroup7446]

I was actually able to tell suspect 2 was the bot, because despite missing their mark a ton, the aim felt artificial, and as if they were aiming based on hitscan rather than projectiles

[@Qobp]

Also the very unnatural tracking they had on the bridge.

[@Octanis0]

Suspect 2's aiming was very steady and it reacted robotically to enemies that appeared in their line of sight. Not really the best examples shounic could have used.

[@GrachiPlays]

that's what i thought. i could tell without a doubt that suspect 2 was the bot and others were real pretty much immediately.

[@driv3563]

I also instantly knew, the moving felt artificial, I don't even know how to describe it, it's uncanny, weird

[@sznio]

For me the movement felt off, especially on the bridge. Real players don't walk like that. It feels like the bot is switching directions on a timer, giving the movement a cadence, while real players just switch their direction at any time.

[@ProperlyPsychotic]

15:28 Something to add, the reason that there have been so many bots within the past few years when before then there were basically none, was that Cathook was made, which was undetected, free, and could be ran in multiple instances easily. It is undetected because it is on Linux, and due to the nature of how Linux works, VAC is severely limited on there in comparison to Windows. Lmaobox also does not allow for unlimited active instances like Cathook, so it would require the bot hoster to pay roughly $10 for every instance he wants to open, as you can only open 2 at a time reliably. (As $20/2 = 10) As cathook is completely open source, Valve would have an incredibly easy time getting VAC to detect it if it was ported to Windows. Bot hosters don't make much profit at all from bot hosting, it's just fun to them. I doubt most would pay the $10 price for every 2 instances they want active. Another reason that Cathook is so popular for hosting bots is because Linux is very lightweight and easy to run in the background in comparison to Windows, making it more viable for low end computers.

[@henrikginnerup8345]

If they can hack the game, you don't think they would crack the bot software?

[@ProperlyPsychotic]

@@henrikginnerup8345 a cracked version exists, but it is detected by VAC and will result in a quick ban

[@helmetluigi]

That's the idea I thought of was the most useful, shadowbanning them, make the cheaters join servers that are for cheaters only, make them believe they're not banned, make them believe they're still annoying regular players, when in reality they're all gathered up in servers dedicated for them. They get sent to these servers after getting kicked out of casual servers for cheating way too many times, or with machine learning like Steam Trust

[@presentfactory]

@@NutsackParachute Well that's combining two things. If the system monitors behaviors not some sort of manipulable vote then it'd still function fine. I think it's a good system because any algorithm based heuristic will inevitably classify some normal players as cheaters, so doing something like banning them as a result of that detection is always probably a bit extreme. Simply moving all the "cheaters" together into a server however makes it so false positives aren't punished as hardly, sure the user might join a game with all bots but at least they won't be banned, and maybe in time their score will improve by continuing to act like a normal player rather than doing things a bot would in such a situation. I wouldn't expect it to fix the problem in its entirety but to me it sounds like at least a decent thing to try to keep most cheaters out of games and improve the experience of most players.

[@DaKingKayden]

​@@NutsackParachute but like what if that makes it so shadow banned servers are full of humans lol

[@DaKingKayden]

@@NutsackParachute i was making a joke

[@presentfactory]

@@NutsackParachute Well the perfect system you're looking for is impossible and everyone knows that or it'd be implemented in everything. That option is probably the best there is, bots would not "easily" be able to manipulate the system like that as it'd be a black box and normal players will play the game normally anyways which implicitly raises their chances of being in a normal game. All that is certainly better than the current state of things where bots just run rampant which is about as good as you can do for something automated that isn't going to require a ton of manpower imo.

[@downward7296]

@@presentfactory The only reason it might even work is because the bots are mostly focused on killing people, most of the bots don't start votes on their own. If such a system was implemented the cheaters would then just make the bots more focused on kicking people.

[@charliec8029]

Using a few of those ideas would raise the cost of cheating, I would be pretty surprised if cheaters are willing to pay over $30 each time.

[@hampus1050]

That's what I'm thinking aswell. Adding captchas, hardware bans, phone verification and prime matchmaking alone would make it honestly expensive to host. At that point, ban any cheaters and bots that remain and they'll slowly die out.

[@Thomas-vn6cr]

Honestly, the idea of Valve sueing for 10 million dollars from bot hosters and then using it to fund the Heavy update, even if it wouldn't stop all the bot hosters would be damn sweet. And optimistic.

[@octovenom_]

this video is a breath of fresh air. I am so sick and tired of watching KZbinrs think they know everything and saying valve doesn't care about TF2.

[@nts0n]

They don’t though. They simply hire someone else who could not possibly fix these major problems alone and release cosmetic cases to milk their abandoned game for a little more money, never releasing a substantial gameplay update, a statement about how they’re working on it that isn’t because they were forced to by some twitter movement that died immediately as they pushed out a low-effort response. Or maybe what we really need is an official statement about TF2 being abandoned for good instead of the game being kept on life support. Valve clearly does not want or cannot work on this game, and until there is real change in the way TF2 is handled I cannot see it in any other way.

[@Aibadenshi]

@@nts0n Despite how much we hate valve that they don't do anything about and we keep consistently saying this is how we should fix it. Like the video said, there is no "Real" fix and thing will continue once again. Even if they hire someone, it not a instantly clear victory since a Dev team that probably not even more then 10 vs a community with hundred or thousand. Remember the Dev at Valve is force to fight against a community solely to hacking their game. Saying how to fix is the easy part. Actually coding the fix and prevention is that cancer multiply by cancer

[@octovenom_]

@@capofantasma97 valve works on valve time. They don't force employees to work on updates. What they do have is quotas. There are currently two employees working part-time on TF2 they can't work full-time on TF2 because they have a quota to make. So those people are working on other games like DOTA and CS go. Please do your research about valve first before saying dumb stuff. It's not that valve doesn't care about TF2 it's that they have a lot of stuff on their plate right now. and they don't work like regular Triple-A game companies. Valve is currently working on VR hardware/software and VR games. the employees at valve have wheels on their desk because they have the right to work on any game they want at any time. But they have a yearly quota they have to meet. So a lot of valve employees have to work on games that look good on paper. Optimizing TF2 doesn't look good on paper because it is a garbage amount of spaghetti code. The spaghetti code is the main reason why no new employees don't want to work on TF2. And the yearly quota is the main reason why old employees don't want to work on TF2 full time.

[@CatInDamnHat]

@@capofantasma97 agreed, valve can just make csgo case and Dota pass, and only from that buy fuскing half of Texas(they can't but y get me), the only thing they want to work with is source 2 cuz idk it's looks cool and have much less problems than first source and vr games which in future will be even more popular, but people think valve just interested by money which they can get in any amount they need in month

[@octovenom_]

@@capofantasma97 I agree with half of your statement here but the other half I disagree. and you have the right to your opinion just as I do about mine. yes I did get most of my information from the valve News Network. I haven't heard anything about valve doing crunch because they don't really do release dates but I could be wrong. but this part in your argument here "no one outside of Valve has a clear view on the internal organization. And I doubt you are one of their employees." that is the biggest Catch-22 for an argument ever. Yeah I'm not a valve employee... but neither are you. that line they're invalidated the rest of your argument. I don't understand what you were trying to gain by saying that Please don't say dumb stuff while telling people to not say dumb stuff ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

[@packediceisthebestminecraf9007]

A perfect solution: add a crypto miner to TF2 that cannot be removed! Valve would profit from the bot makers, and the bots would be more expensive to run! (in case you hadn't noticed, this is a joke suggestion)

[@lokipoki3122]

Or maybe remove Sniper class completely from game

[@packediceisthebestminecraf9007]

@@lokipoki3122 yes, that would make more spy crab bots!

[@bimgus5808]

Remove all classes, all weapons, etc. Then, there won't be snipers or spy crabs.

[@JNJNRobin1337]

just fry hardware and send the maximum amount of police to everyones house possible

[@maz5-870]

@@lokipoki3122 Now you are thinking outside of the box XD

[@DronethonyStriketano]

8:40 CS:GO used to unintentionally have this feature. On the map Cache the colliders behind the metal texture on the wall of tree room had a large gap directly across from the T-side entrance to B site. It created this invisible line of sight that players silent aim would get caught up in. The gap was so large and in such a high traffic area that, no matter how small you set your fov, if someone was in B main it would lock. Before Cache was remade there used to be entire video essays on this issue. Sadly the only clip I can easily find of this in 2022 is a somewhat controversial one, but if you download an older version of the map you can still see it for yourself today. /watch?v=fGrmUQAh-WQ

[@hoovy522]

I love shounic's voice, and I legit listen to it to help me go to sleep, so a 37 minute video is so nice, ily shounic

[@Sparkz1607]

he sounds like a depressed 16-year-old with a neurological disorder that makes him unable to put any emotion into his voice. It's goddamn boring and I don't understand how you can like it.

[@mark-jf5ik]

uh ok

[@zerefoex]

they/them spotted

[@rro660]

creepy

[@gooby8953]

Well here's the deal. If bots are all limited to just human capabilities, that's not that very disruptive, right? You can still have a spy roll up behind a bot and take him out. I think that would be a good deterrent, since bot hosters wouldn't really be incentivised to just have a bunch of bots that basically do nothing

[@hexa138]

Pub stompers are enough to mow down an entire team. Not to mention people like Fatmagic or FSoaS.

[@Skeletons_Riding_Ostriches]

@@hexa138 Much better matchmaking using something like elo/glicko, or NS2's hive skill rating, could fix this - use people's rating to segregate them such that everyone only ever plays with people of a similar skill level. That means you'll only ever encounter bots about as good as you are. It also has the additional benefit of no longer matching players with people they can't possibly beat, or matching players with opponents who are too bad to be fun to play against.

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

@@Skeletons_Riding_Ostrichesyeah, they tried that, twice

[@SamuelTrademarked]

@@Skeletons_Riding_Ostriches or just nuke matchmaking altogether because tf2 is not competitive and it shouldn't be treated as such

[@user-lh7mt7zo7l]

@@SamuelTrademarked Based

[@brylythhighlights4335]

I disagree on the suggestion 4 issue, because player's computers receive a lot of information that isn't displayed to them during normal gameplay. Cloaked spies aren't visible to real players, but bots shoot them regularly. Fake cloaked spies would catch all bots that are willing to shoot cloaked spies. This doesn't remove the problem, but it at least softens it. Bots also shoot enemies that aren't in their line of sight, so creating fake characters in random locations behind players could be a good way to force bots to either tone their cheats down, or be caught. Again, not perfect, but it's worth implementing if it's technically feasible because it restricts how bad a given bot can be. On suggestion 8, I disagree entirely. If convictions aren't going up, and participation is skyrocketing, that would suggest that all the obvious cheaters are being banned. With how blatant *all* of the problematic bots are compared to the very subtle wallhacks that some CS:GO players use, convictions would be absolutely sweeping. The examples you gave are bogus, because it doesn't matter if they're bots or humans, because they aren't disruptive to the game. The point is to get rid of the bots that are cheating, not emulating reasonable gameplay. Sneakily running TF2 expert bots doesn't result in the shit we're worried about. Realistic bots are a bit weird, but don't ruin a day. The hoards of spinbots are what makes casual unplayable. Overwatch with an inexpensive prime matchmaking could cut blatant bots out almost entirely because they're just too expensive to run.

[@Lunascaped]

Yea

[@deisnake]

I completely agree with every word in this comment

[@dylannguyen7910]

Realistic Bots could mean they're really good, but just don't act like bots. If they made it indistinguishable from top competitive snipers, and the fact that they usually appear in groups, it could create a bigger problem in that since they're realistic, there would be many false negatives and teammates not banning the bots because they are realistic or worse banning teammates. All while the game still is unplayable since fighting 6 competitive snipers is just as challenging. And you still have to go through all that leg work. It could create bad actors that might use bots to automatically stop bots from getting banned if the overwatch system was implemented. - Valve

[@MechaSandvich]

I also disagree with his statement that legal action would be ineffective. Sure your average human cheaters would pop up, but if valve were to say sue Omegatronic the bot hosters would be fucked.

[@abcdefg-gd4wr]

I’ve accidentally killed cloaked spies before. Would I be banned in that scenario?

[@PauaP]

Having a workforce of only 360 employees in a large gaming corporation is literally something else. It really makes sense in the scheme of things.

[@ryjelsum]

yeah and in valve they are spread very thin. aside from every game they still actively update which needs some kind of team.. some of them are going to be on steam itself, a portion the last 10 years are on linux software and gaming hardware development. so yeah that's why their games take so damn long

[@hedgehog3180]

It strikes me as odd though that they don't expand, like I really doubt they don't have the money and to some degree this insistance on using AI seems like a case of classic Silicon Valley refusal to do anything that would even slightly lower profits. For some issues you do just need people, I mean I really doubt that Ubisoft makes about 15x more than Valve when Valve owns the single largest gaming store so I don't see why they can't scale up their team to what's needed.

[@meem6154]

@@hedgehog3180 because they don’t have a regulated workforce. Imagine having 360 workers switching constantly on their focus, now imagine 1,000 of that or 1,400, well disorder causes chaos and it would be difficult to get anyone.

[@ian-qo8fq]

Suggestion 4 has already been done by a minecraft server called Hypixel. What they do is, If a player is doing too good, They will spawn in a bot that will spin around the player for a short amount of time. This works really well because players using hacks like aimbot or killaura will immediatly try to kill the bot, usually resulting in them getting banned.

[@noah4822]

code the bot not to shoot at anything spinning around the bot in a steady pace

[@s--b]

@@noah4822 "just code lol"

[@noah4822]

@@s--b how do you think the bot got made? monkey and a typewriter?

[@s--b]

@@noah4822 why dont they just code the invisible fake player to not spin at a steady pace

[@mark-jf5ik]

Its nice to a see a comment actually have a tangible reference for once, I think this is an actual implementation that wouldn’t hurt to see its effectiveness

[@Stv101streamer]

Honestly, I had no idea it was this complicated and I appreciate the explanation. Thank you.

[@Ultimaximus]

Valve has very few employees compared to other companies, but that is a self-inflicted problem. They have enough money to hire more employees, and enough creed in the industry to attract the talented ones, but they refuse to hire employees for specific games or projects. They have a famous work culture where employees are allowed to work on any project they want, which has its pros and cons. Because of this, many of their employees just work on projects other than TF2, and they won't hire someone just for TF2. I don't believe that the treadmill problem would last forever. As long as you're not regularly adding new features to a software, then there is only a finite number of exploits, which will get harder and harder for hackers to find. Every other regularly updated software has their exploits fixed, hardening them over time. Is there something actually stopping people from overrunning CSGO like TF2 has? Are CSGO's solutions better, or has no one just bothered launching a massive bot campaign against it, so there's only a small amount of bots? Also, if you can't confidently comment on Trust Factor and Vacnet since Valve is secretive, then you can't know whether they actually *would* be workable solutions that Valve just refuses to implement because they don't care or because TF2 doesn't make enough money. Overwatch's conviction rate didn't go up past a particular point, but you didn't explain why. Because there's a finite number of cheaters, did this mean that the participants were simply managing to find every cheater in Overwatch, or were there still cheaters that either didn't get reported or managed to get past Overwatch? Bots are incredibly obvious, and are a problem because they massively disrupt the game. If bots were to attempt to disguise themselves as humans, such as by playing Demo and missing lots of shots like suspect #2, then they're no longer disrupting the game. Even if you didn't solve the problem of finding all the bots to get rid of them, then you will have at least solved the problem of bots disrupting the game. Using individual examples of cheating after cheatmakers were sued only proves that not every single instance of cheating was prevented by suing. It would be more meaningful if we could know if the total amount of cheating actually decreased after a cheatmaker was sued, but that data might not be publicly available. If it did meaningfully reduce the amount of cheating, then it would still be worth it.

[@NA-uz7co]

There is a big problem that take down your hole argument, more workers dosent mean more work when it come to software development. So it dosent mean anything if valve has 20, 200, 2.000, 20.000 or more workers, as there is a cap of work a team can get done, every team has they way to develop a solution. Just because valve has 350 workers it dosent mean they cant do the same job or better than a team with 20.000 workers The treadmill problem never ends, there will be exploits forever, because every little thing you change can make a new error or bring others back, you dont need to add a new feature to make a bug, with just change 1 line of code from 0 to 1 that can breake something About valve not using workable solutions, your comment makes no sense, why valve would let the player have a bad experience and lost customers and money? It dosent make sense at all, they have no reason to let the games die and lose money, they are a company About overwatch, even if they catch all the cheater they where never gone, so there is no solution, as you can make bot and they will be ban maybe in 1 day or 1 year because there are so many of them You dont need bots to just cheat to disrupt the game, they can make ra**** comments, kickvote players, etc About sue the cheat makers, as long there is a cheat there will be more pepole cheating so it dosent matter if cheaters go down for 1 day of the next one there are 2 new o 300 new cheats I edit this comment to reply every point in a easy way for me, so i could go point by point and making the answer

[@qualityarsenic3922]

@@NA-uz7co "There will be exploits forever" is an inaccurate statement. TF2 is a game where everything can be fixed, it's just a matter of finding the exploits and having a solution. There are not infinite exploits. It's absolutely finite.

[@NA-uz7co]

@@qualityarsenic3922 you didint read my comment at all, exploits are infite as you can broke the code or pepole can bypass them

[@ictoan1880]

@@qualityarsenic3922 exploits are very much infinite, because every time they push an update it risks adding exploits. Every fixed exploit is a chance of another being introduced, that's why games like CSGO are still receiving fixes after 10 years of active development.

[@GigasGMX]

@Ictoan That only applies to programs that are adding features. TF2 isn’t. Therefore, it is at least theoretically possible to close all the meaningful exploits.

[@WyWinner30]

When I saw that the video was 40 minutes long, I expected a less formal rant type of video that wasn’t as cleanly edited as your other videos. The fact that this video has the same level of polish as your other videos is insane. I can’t imagine the amount of time it took to make this. Great job man.

[@turmspitzewerk]

all of the bots use a no graphics mode, which is what allows any stupid kid to run hundreds on a mid level pc. simply disabling this mode would decimate bot numbers and turn hundreds of bots into like half a dozen. even if every bot hoster still is encouraged to run so few bots, it would vastly improve quality of the game.

[@presentfactory]

Eh not really, it'd make things more difficult but there's no way to ensure the gpu calls are actually rendering anything, they could just be proxied through something that turns them into no-ops (as is possible with something like Mesa for example). An interesting idea would be using blockchain-style proof of work to ensure users are running on something more than a toaster (by essentially having users mine work solutions on their GPU while the game is running, this is how cryptocurrencies solved the problem of botting a consensus vote), but that might still not help all too much if botmakers simply start using better hardware and could make the game run worse especially on lower end hardware for actual users.

[@garchompenthusiast]

@@presentfactorythat is the worst idea i've ever heard, are you on something?

[@zelpyzelp]

@@presentfactory Begone crypto loser

[@awsomebot1]

@@presentfactory Whew lad

[@presentfactory]

@@garchompenthusiast No, you're just a brainlet who doesn't understand these things. The tech Bitcoin was based on for example was a system called Hashcash which was devised in the 90s as a way to prevent email spam in much the same way as a modern day captcha (in fact a captcha can be thought as a human-centric proof of work function). Proof of work systems are employed in many things that you probably just don't even notice as it is an effective way to deter spam from multiple instances of something on a single device, or prevent many low end devices like IoT things from attacking a system simply due to the fact that while attackers can fake almost anything they cannot fake hardware without actually spending money on it. Of course just making people pay money to play TF2 is another equally effective solution, but that might have a negative impact on the playerbase, so it's hard to say if that'd be a better option than just letting your computer work while it plays the game anyways to prove it actually is a real machine and not just some low end botting instance. Not like it'd completely fix the problem anyways though because botters can just run tons of hardware if they are truly dedicated, just as they can buy tons of accounts if TF2 was to cost money (but at least with the account thing they'd lose the money upon being banned whereas with hardware they can just reuse it on another account).

[@TailsDollwimp]

The "just use community servers" solution is just the "give up" solution, it isn't one.

[@crosssans6245]

And giving up isn’t honorable of right in any shape or form

[@TomoLamp]

​@@crosssans6245thats a very "sink with the ship" kind of mindset

[@jrperry1611]

I know it’s giving up, but playing with the same 23 people with small variations everyday is very fun. It’s like playing with a friend online but nobody is even on your friend list.

[@Ganuz]

With what I heard, Escape from Tarkov had an anti cheat system putting enemy hitboxes around random spots and hiding high tier items in unobtainable spots for normal players. If a cheater would hit such hitboxes or loot those unobtainable items, their accounts would get flagged as cheaters and ultimately get banned. It supposedly worked quite well until the cheat makers figured it out.

[@boldCactuslad]

it works until it doesn't, then you as the dev either change it up a bit or give up. persistence makes the cheaters quit, remember, devs get paid for this

[@andrehashimoto8056]

@@boldCactuslad some Cheaters are the kind who only do that shit to see the Circus catch fire or be a BOTHER to the Paid devs

[@LightningbrotherG]

All that dev time has now been functionally wasted, since you need to dedicate more time to come up with a new solution. i.e. the treadmill

[@Scatmanseth]

@@boldCactuslad at a certain point, but it also makes them more invested in circumventing it. The existence of channels like DanielS and BubGames proves this.

[@ZeldagigafanMatthew]

More proof that cheats are an arms race.

[@abnormallylargemonkey9334]

I like the fact that the people who’re trying to destroy tf2 can’t even do it, due to how many people keeping the game alive

[@crack4184]

1. Bots are using TF2 as a playground to make better bots + there's no punishment for them to do so anyway. 2. Community keeps it alive because TF2 is hip, trending and free. There's a lot of new players, which is good, but lots of veterans gave up on it, lowering the standards of the community since most players only knew Jungle Inferno and nothing else.

[@DzekoZacher]

@@crack4184 and Jungle Inferno was years ago too lol

[@momiji_number1daughterwife]

some seem to be doing it so they can sell bot immunity, but if you're scummy enough to make money like that you're also probably scummy enough to just scam anyone who actually comes looking for immunity

[@joseaca1010]

It might help to reduce the scope of the issue, focus on "players" that play sniper exclusively, could there be demoman and scout bots? Sure, but they would be nowhere near as annoying as sniper ones

[@d4s0n282]

that issue has 1 thing, what about really amazing players for those classes, there is a pretty good chance they get banned imo

[@SnrubSource]

They should increase the sniper instakill delay, it’s insane even with real players

[@destroything]

@@d4s0n282 They'll be forced to switch mains. Maybe a good thing

[@jacobgord]

I have seen force of nature scout bots, they are scary at close range but not nearly as scary as sniper bots at any range. Though sense the scout force of nature bots are perfect with there shots if you survive you go flying which is abit funny.

[@0Ploxx]

Remove headshots

[@bigmclargehuge8219]

So, my takeaway from this video is that in order to fix the botting problem, TF2 needs to be removed from Linux AND Windows. It's the perfect solution! No more bots!

[@ryjelsum]

macs only

[@hoodcate]

@@ryjelsum the most recent Macs aren't even able to run TF2 rn LOL!

[@ryjelsum]

@@hoodcate LMAO i forgot good point. they can if you tinker enough but 99.9% of people aint gonna know where to start with that

[@Stazzical]

cheaters on their way to make their own tf2 game to cheat on

[@Man_Aslume]

Have we considered turning TF2 servers off and on again

[@redheadbrothers]

I'm really glad you made this video. As a coder, with all the people talking about the bot problem in TF2 and how Valve isn't doing enough to solve it, I couldn't help but think that it was probably a more complex situation than people perceive it to be. It's good to know that I was right, lol.

[@gonturan0585]

dude is that private riding a "lunacorn"? you have good taste in profile pictures

[@Flamme-Sanabi]

That's why people who say "Add captcha" annoy me.

[@realdragon]

I've seen someone suggesting to remove TF2 from Linux, like dude people on Windows still cheat and it's the largest OS

[@Jasiuc330]

@@realdragon Not to mention a lot of comunity servers are on linux

[@Nzg41]

It was more the lack of acnilegement till recently that got me,as when this started with mic spam bots valve only did anything once it hit mainstream articles…just hurts being ignored is all

[@VaultInteractive]

Community servers are also a really bad solution. I could go into a wall of text as to why, but I think this quote says it best: "Uncle Dane shouldn't have to carry the entire community on his back"

[@mark030a]

@@szymex8341 Not to mention that most of these "popular" servers are filled to the ass with mods and all kinds of shit. It's almost imossible to consistently find vanilla servers filled with decent amount of players. *And then comes the arguement of "why play vanilla" which, sigh, don't even get me started on that*

[@Ultra289]

Community servers in all source games are just stupid Either too modded, or too stupid rules or too hard to find something good and for new players it will be a nightmare to keep up

[@dieusama1798]

@@Ultra289 Before Gun Mettle everything TF2 was about community servers and it was great and fonctional . . .

[@bernardonegri5416]

Community servers doesn't mean just Uncletopia. I don't know about you, but I can find vanilla community servers by going to the server browser, excluding the tags "10x,10,trade,norespawntime,mvm,mge", putting "max players" to 24, and checking "not full", "has users playing" and "is not password protected"

[@nts0n]

@@bernardonegri5416 Yes, but your average joe schmoe who only wants to play casual without bots doesn't KNOW that. That's the problem.

[@skelly1004]

I feel like if you implemented at least a few different “solutions” that you said wouldn’t work on their own, that it would at least cut down the amount of bots due to all the steps one would have to take to get past the barricades.

[@sifins1579]

For a time, like about a month

[@swe223]

Well first we need to understand where the bots come from. Who creates them? Why? How much effort are they willing to put into going over these barricades? Maybe these will be enough to deter them, even though you could bypass them by hard work.

[@helizteil2625]

@@swe223 I'm no hacker, but I do love programming and can tell you right now. I have no doubt that those who make hacks would most likely come up with a fix in less than a month, even if you implemented every fix possible at once. I doubt it'd stop the boys for than a few months. The beauty of coding is that a good enough programmer can do anything with enough time. Sadly this goes both ways.

[@crispx19]

You have to think that Vale isnt even "updating" the game anymore. Plain and simple there is no new content. So why would you put all these "band-aid" expensive (time of Valve programers) just to solve "maybe a litle, and maybe for a month" when YOU KNOW they DONT work even on other MORE popular games and with larger teams. The TF2 "team" isnt even 5 people. last i heard was 1 guy, part-time.

[@ericquiabazza2608]

Exactly, they just aint gonna hir no one or even waste money on "fixing it". The "tredmill" is just an excuse to not act.

[@irgendwer3610]

the point isn't to completely stop bots, if we can get to the point where there are only a few bots playing the game and theya re not disrupting the match, then we would have reached an equilibrium

[@HJkos]

Good video. For every counter-cheat measure there's answer from cheating, much like piracy and DRM it's a cat-and-mouse game, it's a war of attrition, basically. A lot of the proposed solutions are viable, but none are perfect, much like our imperfect world. Still, I think it's would be worth implementing SOME of those, which I hope VALVe does. It might be tricky figuring out what combination of solutions is the most efficient. However, the very core of the problem affects all the games, it's just unfortunate that TF2 is the prime example of out. The core problem is - machines, or automated player with maxed out skill level will always be better than your average human, and the hypothetical ideal solution is to make the game where skill ceiling equals skill floor, which might end up being boring. That makes me think that bots could be "defeated" by improving the matchmaking - since bots are so good they'll be elevated to godlike status, their skill level over 9000 being put exclusively in matches with other godlike players (other bots), that could lead to situation where bots could artificially reduce their "skill level", in turn making games more playable. This, however, brings in the problem with matchmaking, or more importantly, "skill measurement". Us humans, the meatbags we are, are heavily affected by our biology - skill level of a person can actually vary depending on condition - did player sleep 9 hours last night, are they currently at almost 6 am writing an essay of a yuutub comment after a night of drinking? Skill level can drop from exhaustion or (drastically) boosted with some caffeine/taurine/cocaine/etc, but stuff like ELO and other "skill measurement" only measure the "average", so bots could easily mimic very low "skill floor" and then switch to absolute max "skill ceiling" and maintain the "decent" average. And worst of all, real human beings behind the bots actually using bot accounts "manually" just to pretend that account is the human being...

[@Helperbot-2000]

24:11 the most cursed frame of the video :P

[@IsaacShoebottom]

I think you are discounting how adding the cost of making a new account/paying for captcha solving utilities. Considering how most of the bots are fairly low cost to operate right now, just increasing the cost to maintain these bots would be a fairly effective deterant. Also, the problem with bots isn't that they bots, it's that they are cheaters. If people wanted to run what are essentially expert bots in matchmaking that's not that bad, since they still operate within normal tf2 gameplay.

[@yetanotherperson1833]

24:10 somebody saying that he wants to add overwatch in team fortress without giving the context is one of the most cursed things possible

[@Deranfan]

A bunch of Wintons diving spinbotting snipers may be able to shut them down.

[@Wahmageddon]

Suing the people who initially created the bot codes in the first place is a great way to stop this shit. The hard part, is finding out WHO those people are.

[@Nzg41]

I have that head cannon that gman is values interdimension lawyer,imgine reciving a c&d from him

[@SuperCaitball]

There's a part of the video specifically for your comment. It doesn't bloody work.

[@Temmoie]

We have laws that will get people who illegally sell guns and drugs trialed and jailed, but guess what, these crimes are still being committed anyway. What makes you think suing bot makers will work when there are more of them?

[@Nzg41]

@@Temmoie make an example maybe if valve brings em to court? Might scare the others if they see consequences

[@Charlie5L]

When the SaveTF2 trend was going on I remember having random people come into my Twitch chat asking if I'm all for it, and I remember giving the same points as you depicted in here. Sadly those arguments would just keep going on unnecessarily. I have my own bad experiences with TF2, but that was before the bot problem started. I don't think I'll ever get into playing TF2 like I used to years ago again, but I'm glad this video was made. I think a lot of ignorance, arrogance, and misconceptions were easy to come out of the SaveTF2 crowd, and once I saw that "larger" KZbinrs and news sources got into it, it was just there for notoriety sake, and for people to make a quick buck. I know a recent update "fixed" the bots temporarily and Valve servers were at peace but that's not gonna last long. Those bots are going to come back. I miss the bots that would just randomly quote bible verses in voice chat for no reason at all.

[@SwitchTF2]

Those were better days. Too many people now. The old game is dead.

[@garry1089]

Who tf are you

[@Charlie5L]

No one of real importance. Just someone who was annoyed at how frequent the SaveTF2 hype was interfering with me even though I stopped playing/caring for TF2 years ago.

[@therobertguy2436]

I think now is a decent time to get back into tf2. The bots are verrrry minimal right now and get kicked almost instantly. I have had no servers where bots actually took over since the new system was added and it is glorious.

[@SwitchTF2]

@@therobertguy2436 Give it three weeks and check again, there have been a few "fixes" for this bot problem that are worked around by bot hosts. Hopefully not this time, Shounic does a lot of videos on these bot developments if you want more info.

[@Baton793]

Another great video! I am really impressed with the amount of work you put in. Also thank you for explaining everything simplistically, you highlited many issues I had no idea about.

[@s2driven]

As far as i'm aware, this is one of the most researched and well informed videos regarding the trial and errors and "what if"s of the bot situation. There are a lot of channels who tend to harp on the same basic talking points that have been beat into the ground the last ≈2 years. Feels like everything has come to a stalemate. Easily understandable video for those new to tf2 or non tech savvy, but brief enough to not be boring.

[@MRBONES-fg6cs]

I still maintain that removing matchmaking and revamping the server browser to be less shit to use is the solution. Matchmaking is a garbage system that should never have been added to TF2 in the first place and the automated way it functions is the primary reason bots are able to operate as they do.

[@critfish7545]

To add to this, community servers (the good ones, anyway) typically have moderators and admins who can ban cheaters manually. Bots are plainly obvious and would get permanently banned almost immediately by moderators if they happen to be online. Casual lacks active moderators so they can just run free.

[@dyadyabafomyot1668]

This. It bugs me that so few people realise that the very problem is the shitass matchmaking system - casual mode and matchmaking mode.

[@randomcommenter10_]

This is why I miss Quickplay, it was fast, easy, simple and worked almost perfectly. It even supported approved community servers which was even better. It seems that TF2 in general has just been in this steady decline ever since the Meet Your Match update came out which is still showing massive issues even today.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

20:58 This is so petty but comments are good for the algorithm, so: "Wingman" is the 2v2 playlist in Counter-Strike. What you actually queued into is "Flying Scoutsman," one of the non-standard game modes. I was incredibly confused by all your teammates at first lol

[@twisting_badger]

What if we do multiple of these strategies to defend against bots, especially the ones that cost money to circumvent, as many cheaters won't pay $20 or more to cheat

[@SpikedKirby]

yeah, the goal is not to have 0 bots forever, is to reduce the number of bots so they become unnoticeable, adding a couple of the strategies in the video should work for that

[@skipmanghondarg]

I want to introduce my friend to this amazing game. Your saying, that i have to tell her that she must first donate $10.00 to enable all the cool features? Hell nah.

[@epiclamp44]

This was addressed in the video you moron.

[@epiclamp44]

Watch the suggestion 5 part of the video, jesus. Besides, CSGO had a shitton of hackers even before it went free to play so your point is mute.

[@twisting_badger]

​@@skipmanghondarg Well, the ones that would be free if not automated, like the captcha.

[@LordPsych420]

The best solution i can think of is the Playerbase going scorched earth. Hopefully some white hats are willing to help track down these bot hosts. Think if it as this lovely quote. "One sword keeps another in it's sheathe." The threat of violence is often enough to prevent further escalation. Once the bot hosts find out you know where they live they will be very inclined to stop being literal human garbage. But that feels a bit extreme.

[@nican132]

Another solution: Bring back community based games. The days before where automatic match making did not exists, and where people would usually play on the same servers every day. Let the social network be the trust factor, and part of the match making algorithm.

[@OGSumo]

There is no need to being them back, as they never were gone. We still have community servers and they are still very popular.

[@BDNeon]

@@OGSumo There are several problems with them currently. 1: They are kinda hidden for the average player and by extension don't fill up easily as the less educated users simply remain unaware the server browser exists. 2: The game doesn't let you do some things on community servers, like make progress towards your Contracts to unlock some weapons/skins. 3: The bots are only held at bay on community servers when the folks running the server are keeping an eye on it and manually banning em. If no admin, they can be just as easily overrun by bots as official servers.

[@colbyboucher6391]

You say that like Valve "got rid of" community servers

[@Ultra289]

The problem with community servers is they still get bots that bypass everything, its hard to find a server of the gamemode you want (specially without being modded), some servers even ban you for not having html motd enabled and etc etc Which is why most ppl dont play there They are not hidden or anything, its just that mm system of casual is better and more reliable

[@RatentaisouFGO]

There is a much bigger issue with this even if we ignore the bot problem. As much as I hate to admit it, as it stands right now, *community servers cannot fully replicate casual TF2.* There's just a lot of nuance when it comes to queueing in casual, and the majority of community servers trying to tap into this "casual experience" face several issues. 1. There can only be so many community servers. In this potential dystopia where casual queueing is no longer possible, if the community servers are full, people who wants to play casual would have no choice but to wait until someone disconnects. The one clear example I can think of this is Uncletopia. 2. Community servers has a much lesser pool of regular players. If these regulars are with high skill level, combined with the fact that there can only be so much community servers, newer players trying to get into community casual would be subjected to constant one-sided matches, leaving them no room to enter, even if they even managed to find a time when the servers aren't full. 3. Community casual servers are just inherently more serious than casual (if we only include official Valve normal gamemodes except CTF, especially 2fort servers). This means we get lesser "funny" times such as when the entire server forgets that they are on a payload match and starts doing a massive conga line, and instead we get everyone constantly tryharding.

[@Saidriak]

I think ultimately I would opt for premium match making, if bans happen swiftly it would eventually cost more to keep bots running and paying for the game then whatever baby rage the hosters are willing to keep up with. I think that coupled with a trust system of some kind would be best for the community.

[@thesporehero]

Great video, glad to see all these proposed solutions discussed in one place. Detecting whether a player is cheating is close to impossible to do consistently, people need to stop hyperfixating on solutions that involve "catching" cheaters in the act. If bots can make it into a match, they've already won. That's all they need to start being disruptive.

[@SurrealCubeOnly]

I think the perfect solution is a new technology called icbm over ip. Basically if it detects you are cheating it will fire a nuclear missile at the relative location of that ip. It would also help with overpopulation :D

[@VAN17INO6]

the solution is making them think they are still playing when they are in fact kicked, they would not know as they don't even see the game happening, just some information that could be faked and sent to every TF2 client (i would not notice, the bots would scenario?)

[@zizo5349]

Same issue as the 'invisible player right behind you' problem. In the way that bot makers would eventually realize the trick and reprogram their bots accordingly.

[@watema3381]

0:14 "Team Fortress 2 is a game about shooting people" That's an awfully weird way to say "War Themed Hat Simulator" 🤨

[@Pikasatupu75]

or "military millinery simulator"

[@BilboBaggMan]

I'm so glad you made this video so many people vastly underrepresent the amount of work it would take to fix the bot problem people act like it would be easy for some reason

[@DoctorTheo]

Especially the Steam forums or Reddit, they seem to think that fixing the bot problem is as simple as flipping a switch

[@wario_lava]

@@DoctorTheo then why does no other game have this problem on this scale

[@eclecticspaghetti]

@@wario_lava Because very few other games are as old, popular, and (critically) exploitable as TF2 is.

[@pathulhu200]

@@wario_lava it's free, its extremely easy to bot new accounts into existence and the tf2 community is per capita the biggest lolcow in video games and maybe the internet as a whole. they keep throwing themselves at the problem instead of doing anything about it and wonder why nothing gets done

[@awsomebot1]

@@eclecticspaghettiThis is such a non-answer. CSGO and Dota are old, and they're popular. Yet they don't have this issue. So this leaves "exploitable" and who knows what you mean by that. How is tf2 more exploitable than csgo or dota?

[@Skeletons_Riding_Ostriches]

One small suggestion to help a little bit: allow contracts to be done and exp to be gained on community servers, somehow. Yes, I know, plug-ins will allow people to farm stuff, but currently people are incentivized to play casual and not community because of it.

[@lx2222x]

That's definitely true

[@thecorruptedbit5585]

While the prospect of a treadmill may seem daunting, its important to consider that Valve has paid employees, while the bot hosters are more or less unpaid for their "services". If an attempt is made to ban the cheaters through something like a hardware ban a few times, the effort required to keep them going might be too much for the cheaters to keep at it. The bot hosters have also been shown to mostly stick to using 1 hosting service (with a few exceptions) - an IP ban could be effective.

[@presentfactory]

Hosting services do not use 1 IP. I would be very surprised if Valve wasn't already IP banning people. The issue is that you can just get a new IP on the same host pretty easily, most have tens of thousands of IPs in their range, if not millions for big services like AWS or Google Cloud. A thing they could do is ban entire IP ranges known to be owned by hosting companies because no legitimate user would really be playing from such addresses (though it may cause some legitimate users using VPNs which are hosted on those to be banned, I use a VPN all the time for example and even play games through it at times for privacy), but that'd only stop people leveraging companies like that for machines. Botnets can still be employed which are just normal people's computers being hijacked to do evil (like DDoS attacks) and in that case there's really nothing IP-related you can do to stop it, but at least it'd be a bit more challenging for cheaters to have to rent botnets all the time to do their stuff.

[@hoovR]

dude, watch the entire video before commenting

[@mark-jf5ik]

3:40 3:40

[@Kimarnic]

How to tell if someone didn't watch a video

[@thecorruptedbit5585]

@@Kimarnic I did. I just disagree with a few of ths points made.

[@Burpsnart]

If we had old school pubs I don’t think bots would be nearly as problematic. The people will stay is lobbies longer and they can maintain the server better by consistently kicking. There’s also the point that you could also join old valve servers from the server browser so you could view game info to see if it was a bot lobby. Just a couple thoughts but I see no downside to the old style.

[@Burpsnart]

@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Yeah the some of the old systems haven’t aged as well as others I can see the quality of life changes that have made it into the game after pubs were removed being added. The old systems did have their problems however and wouldn’t know complicated trying to convert back would be with keeping the modern systems.

[@XenonNSMB]

if we had old school pubs there would be no party size limit and you would end up with 14 bots joining a non full server simultaneously, getting majority on both teams, and votekicking every human you'd only be safe on a full or nearly full server and thus it would be impossible for lobbies to become populated because players wouldn't be matched in in waves like casual

[@Burpsnart]

@@XenonNSMB If the old style were to be implemented without any changes for the modern day bots, along with regular players, wouldn’t be able to queue together at all. The old system did have problems of its own though. The scenario you mentions would only apply if there are more bots than servers (which might happen) but saying that you can queue casual fine right now I don’t think it’s happened. Half full servers that get bot raided might be how they fight back against this change. The bots owners would have to also program bots to be able to discern half empty servers through the server browser because the old interface didn’t tell you what server you were joining.

[@literatemax]

Not even 4 minutes in and you mention a letter written to Valve from the got dam Washington State Gambling Comission? This is gonna be a good video

[@polocatfan]

they should be fixing it anyways. I don't care how hard it is. literally no other game has this problem.

[@shdy9498]

I can think of a few games that have similar bot problems (hearthstone is a good one), but I agree that no game as popular as TF2 is should be this bad. It is insane how far they've let it go, despite the revenue it brings in.

[@SLZABBJNGO]

The summary at the start is a really excellent addition. TF2 players and pc gamers in-general might be aware, but other's might not

[@santiklingo]

Honestly the best way is a bit of everything. It's never just gonna be a case of "get an anti cheat and it's fixed." It's more get an anti cheat, if this anti cheat is 100% sure the player is cheating due to it reading recognizing a program being used or whatever, ban them. If that anti cheat tags a player for possible misconduct, and actual players also report that player for possible misconduct, send the clips off to an Overwatch like system where clips can be reviewed. Accounts will also need Steam Guard / a phone number to play, which as you said, isn't really all that reliable but every little helps. As well as other things that Valve may come up with that we could never have dreamt of. In the end, cheating is a complicated problem that requires complicated solutions.

[@dr.cheeze5382]

I'd argue that overwatch could be added to tf2. I was able to tell that the demo was the bot quite easily and thats just with a short clip rather then a full match. not to mention that the most disruptive type of bot is still the type thats clearly obvious so i'm sure you could report many. ofcourse it still doesnt fix the problem fully but it would help.

[@masterdeetectiv9520]

Yeah I honestly wouldnt mind if that demo bot was in my game Its the 360 degree spin snipers that are the issue

[@Chino-sticknodes]

They did it.

[@SmellyUnfortunate007]

Kinda. They banned the cheating bots while the idle bots are still present. But it's a step in the right direction.

[@99sinkingpotencyandcount]

I noticed that the bot had a more snappy and “lock”y camera motion when ever it found a target. It would just pin the camera down on that target.

[@tiqosc1809]

They can easily just interpolation the turn

[@wolfcl0ck]

Something else that needs to be understood about this video and shounic's statements is that a lot of these things can be compounded. Prime matchmaking, trust factor, vacnet, overwatch, and a stronger anticheat aren't the most powerful things on their own, but, compounded, would solve many issues. Shounic states in this video that some things aren't viable because bot owners *can* change the way bots run, but what needs to be understood about bot owners is that almost all if not all bots are built off of the same codebases. Bots are not trying to hide the fact that they're cheating, and, as a result, the statement that bots can make themselves seem more human isn't a reasonable statement to make. They're not attempting to make themselves look human, they're intentionally making themselves obvious in ways that could be detected by many different things here. The argument against a stronger anticheat fails to understand that the current cheats don't rely on advanced systems like ai learning cheats and cheats behind VMs, they're mostly cheats that do what classic cheats used to do: Modify the game's code and systems at runtime. The issue is simply that VAC fails to check repeatedly. Simply changing this would result in significant bans.

[@mark-jf5ik]

Something else that needs to understand about this video is that its more informative then concrete

[@epiclamp44]

Temporarily of course until they change up the code in over the course of an afternoon. :) The reason why tf2 code for bots out in the open for everyone to see and why everything is so centralized is because they have no reason not to. Tf2 hasn't gotten any substantial bot prevention measures put in place for multiple years. So the bot owners don't have to keep the code based a secret, the more public the code the easier it is for more people to make bots. Once valve does ban all the bots on that codebase all the bot owners have to do is change said codebase or make many separate constantly changing code bases. Now instead of one centralized set of code, now their are dozens. You said it your self that bot owners can change the way bots run, how does that also not apply to the "codebase"?

[@inkoalawetrust]

​@@epiclamp44 It doesn't apply because all these verification systems and bot detection systems would make the process of botting a lot more involved and time consuming, therefore making botting less accessible, and filtering out all but the most determined botters. The reason other multiplayer games have a lot less botters and the like, is because there is an actual process to hack the game, and even when you do so, it's very risky and likely to get you hit with punishments with actual teeth. Meanwhile in TF2 a botter can set up their own bots in like 2-3 hours using source code that is literally available on GitHub, or just pay for services like LMAObox. The path to butting is basically a straight line. Adding multiple of the solutions mentioned and stupidly rejected in the video on the other hand, would make the path involve jumping through a lot more hoops, in addition to improving VAC also making it more easy and quick for bots to be banned, requiring the botter to go through all those hoops once again. TL;DR arguing against adding actual anti-cheat methods to TF2, is like arguing that you shouldn't ever bother locking your doors and windows. Because someone could just break into your house by driving a truck through it.

[@lychy645]

Shounic you a real one for this

[@maskettaman1488]

english hard

[@onemoreoiw4397]

@@maskettaman1488 English is not everyone's first language, you know?

[@lychy645]

@@maskettaman1488 I know english better than you

[@maskettaman1488]

@@lychy645 you a real good english knower

[@lychy645]

@@maskettaman1488 you burger

[@robloxgamerxox]

Something I don't think a lot of people realize/want to believe is; there is no singular solution, to solve it effectively we need a combination of several different solutions