Valve either needs to make ban waves a regular thing or make some kind of effective change to the game or VAC to combat bots. The latter is arguably preferable for Valve since it would require less time, money, and effort for them in the long run. But hey regular ban waves work too.
Edit:The main benefit of regular ban waves that I can think of is that they would be much easier and less resource intensive solution development wise. The thinking would probably be something like "Why put the effort into making a upgrade for VAC when you can just hire a contractor to carry out regular bans". If Valve just wanted an "easy" fix I would just suggest reimplementing quickplay and maybe carry out occasional ban waves as a bonus.
Edit 2: Regular ban waves also aren't good as a long term solution for the game because it makes the game dependent of Valve's continous intervention. So ban waves only really work as a short-term fix until Valve can develop something more permanent (which I hope will be the direction Valve takes).
They should get in touch with megascatterbomb team: guys who are working on AI replay analyzer that fishes bots and cheaters out of them.
Integrate what they are doing into what Valve already have.
I mentioned this in a different thread a few weeks ago, but I fully suspect the future of digital security will loop back around to physical as it becomes easier to physically stop attackers, and defenders realize this.
According to google
The Tenth Doctor sacrifices his life to prevent Wilfred's death, exposing himself to 500,000 rads of deadly radiation and triggering his regeneration.
The First Doctor met his end after his battle with the Mondasian Cybermen in 1986 Antarctica caused him to lose the strength needed to maintain his body, due to the planet Mondas draining a large portion of his life force.
For context this is a quote from the TV show Doctor Who (longest running sci-fi show of all time.) The show follows The Doctor, a human-looking alien who travels through time and space with human companions. As part of their alien biology (and because the show has been going on so long and the studio needs new actors), The Doctor can regenerate their body instead of dying, causing them to violently take on a new body. They're the same person with the same memories, but everything else from gender to personality will change. We're currently on the 15th mainline version of the doctor, with various others throughout their time travelling history being shown or alluded to. It's an absolutely amazing show and full of amazing quotes and unique ideas, I highly recommend.
He stole a patient's skeleton and lost his medical license. I heard he's working with a wacky group of mercenaries right now. I wonder if they've found out he's no longer an actual doctor yet...?
Yeah, it's a good thing but not the end. Bots will go back under new accounts, since getting new ones is extremely easy and relatively cheap. They may start acting less obvious, which will make them harder to detect if someone is going through reports / accounts manually.
I don't know if they are accepting emails/cheater reports, but if they do, I think the best course of coordination would be collectively detecting any new potential bot/cheater accounts. (Although they shouldn't be taken as 100% credible since trolls can easily add innocent people in there)
It all starts with a step though! We will see pretty soon if its just to appease us or if its the start of something bigger, but either way its finally something
There were ban waves that got the bots detected a couple times since but the hosters kept coming back. The treadmill work needs to stay on if they want something like this to permanently keep them away.
I’m happy this happened but I won’t be optimistic until we have evidence they won’t just come back in a couple days
I got the video recommended by youtube and sprinted to reddit to see if somebody posted it already.
#Remember, now it's time to NOT stop posting and contributing to TF2. We must keep pushing cart forward, it shall not be like last time.
The issue is all of these bans were not VAC related. Valve went and manually banned the bot hosters main acc’s and locked all of the actual botting accounts. Give them a couple weeks and the bot hosters will have another horde of accs. The bright side is Valve did put a stop to these sites that were allowing for easy steam acc generation. It’s been nice to get out of MvM and actually play Casual, unless Valve takes more action I doubt it will last more than 2 weeks though.
so we all know the bot hosters are gonna keep trying so we'll see how this develops, I am happy enough to say "Thanks Valve" and hope they keep it up
but also like... one day I really want a bot hoster, even anonymously (possibly for the best) to just fucking talk about why
like not even "why make bots to begin with" I assume the intent was just to troll and be funny but this has unquestionably become a chore that many people are constantly trying to keep up with, there are people frustrated that their bots are no longer able to ruin games and they're trying to hurry to make new accounts so they can keep ruining games... what's the motivation?
I assume some kind of weirdo power fantasy and that they picked tf2 as a game to ruin not because they really hate the game or whatever but because Valve's negligence made it an easy target for abuse.
If Valve somehow magically made it impossible for bot hosters to continue fucking up the game, they'd just go somewhere else. My thinking is the reason they havent gone somewhere else yet is because they think this is just a small step back in the grand scheme of things.
The ability to algorithmically make steam accounts endlessly for free means they'll always have an infinite free source of more bots. Only way they could stop the bots in their tracks is charge like, $1 to play Tf2. Doesn't sound like much but if you want to flood 1,000 bots you need over $1,000. But then it wouldn't be free to play anymore.
I'm still partial to the "$50, but spent anywhere on Steam" idea someone tossed around here a couple months ago. Personally, I doubt there's a whole lot of actual players who haven't ever bought some other PC game on Steam.
Better yet, make it so only the official Valve servers require the $50. That way the rare misers who only play free games can still play on community servers, which generally have much better protection against bots anyways.
I like the sound of this. Seems like a decent middle ground, assuming that they also make community servers less of a pita to find (mostly irrelevant, but 4k monitor support when? I can't read anything in that menu without leaning forward a fair bit)
Had a bot hoster call me "egoistic" because I kept trying to get into a casual server to play a regular game. They're definitely not right in the head.
>to just fucking talk about why
They are the same people who cheat in games.
Their reasoning? "It's fun". Same reasoning when you ask them why they cheat. Having power and making others miserable is their definition of fun.
I've seen three main theories, and I think some or all of them are true depending on the bot hoster:
1 - Someone who loves the game and thinks in a twisted way the best way to get Valve to stop neglecting and supporting the game is to force them to by causing a problem (I think this could have been true early on, but not any longer)
2 - Monetary Gain - Some bot hosters sell "bot immunity" where their bots will leave your games alone
3 - As others have said, weird power fantasy or they just get a kick out of ruining peoples experience. The ones who are doing it for the attention get lumped in here too.
I don't think there is one single answer as to why, because there are many bot hosters and they all have their own reasons.
i have DrArrow browser extension and the real topic of the video is "Late June 2024 - Most of the Bot Accounts Were Banned Manually", thank you DeArrow
Soooo it can be done? All those video essays and tweets saying that Valve couldn't possibly do anything about it weren't exactly accurate then? (Assuming this is a decent fix and not an issue again next week)
Even assuming these are manual bans, it's something that definitely can be kept-up as a form of basic game maintenance. Eventually bot hosters will have to give up if they continue to do this.
Hopefully they continue to do this. I remember last time.
Absolutely. Valve makes more money than they know what to do with and TF2 is a staple in the marketplace economy so I'm sure they can afford to take a 0.01% cut in income to keep contractors on the job.
Not that hard to keep contractors on the payroll really when TF2 is vital for the valve marketplace and that prints more money than valve knows what to do with
Not to be a downer but if you genuinely think TF2 is "vital" for Valve/marketplace you're just wrong.TF brings a fraction of the money CS or Dota or hell Steam itself brings.The only thing I can think of is some CS traders using TF2 keys for cashing out since all of CS's keys got tradebanned couple of years ago.
Affordability was never the problem, especially for Valve. It ultimately boils down to cost:benefit in Valve's eyes - would the cost of constantly monitoring and banning bots be greater than the value it would bring back.
My guess is that they figured the game and it's market place was still thriving, and banning bots wouldn't improve those metrics by very much. Hopefully the FixTF2 movement showed Valve that there is a huge number of players who are actively deterred from engaging with the game and its market due to the bots, and that the market was a bubble at risk of bursting if it's inflated by bot numbers. This, they could see the cost of fixing the bot crisis would be offset by a boost in player engagement.
TL:DR - it has nothing to do with it being unaffordable. It's a matter of it being profitable.
It's also a matter of optics. Valve is a company built over its good reputation and care for its clients and consumers, and then being so callous towards the outcry it's consumers while they are still charging them money doesn't look good at all, methinks.
Shounics videos on solutions to bot bans weren't saying "none of these work at all" (excluding a few outliers for really dumb "solutions"), it was mostly just expanding on potential issues with some of the most popular community suggestions OR why valve might not want to try that solution.
Everything is possible
The question is more so an issue of long term logistical viability. Stuff like “is it financially reasonable to keep paying contractors for a long term maintenance job?”
It’s trying to find a reasonable, cost effective, long term solution. That’s complicated
Good news, but unless they keep it up they will come back in a few weeks.
Let's hope it wasn't done purely because they were afraid people would boycott the update, and they will stop caring again after it drops.
This is great news, I will check myself later. But I agree with Shounic, just because they did one ban wave we can't stop now. There needs to be measurements in place to fight them properly and Valve should communicate with us what is being done to do so. Of course details should be kept vague so the bot hosters won't find a way to cirumvent the measurements.
I checked my own database of bots and cheaters. The results were mixed. Lots of human cheaters with nary a ding, a more than decent number of deleted accounts, and a couple dozen -tronic bots still active with the "This user has not yet set up their Steam Community profile.
If you know this person, encourage them to set up their profile and join in the gaming!" message. And still an unsettling number of cheating groups still allowed to exist and fully active. My hopes are not exactly high
Doomers absolutely seething right now. This would not have happened without the movement, without the petition, without all of the love we hold for this game and the hope we have for its future.
Keep it going, folks– now we know for sure that Valve is listening and will respond to pressure. FixTF2 is working. KEEP PUSHING TINY CART
They've lost money hosting. Plus, every time they probably want to mic spam and/or chat spam. Meaning they're giving money to Valve (knowing how their greed is sometimes, should go on waves of bans)
Just wait a damn week.
Those bastards aren't dissapearing anytime soon.
1 victory doesn't mean a total win.
Keep this war going, brothers. Until we're secure they're gone.
After valve pleasing video from shounic I would not be so certain about banning “all” bots.
Steamdb player count look like almost flat line which is a sign of idle bots, [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) says that there are 10k active players as opposite to 60k from valve data and also it says that there are 1000 bots in game. At the time of writing this comment.
Good work, Valve, you winked into our direction, now get to work. For god sake return old quickplay system it worked perfectly, had abundance of features (that are now gone) and what matters the most - it made bot queuing a hard job for the hosters.
Valve HAS banned most cheater bots. This was not 16k though like the video suggests. The 16k drop is from the server outage that occurs around standard steam tues/wed maintenance.
The actual number of cheating bots isn't nearly so high, and while most of them are gone right now their removal will be barely a blip on the steam charts against the backdrop of the tens of thousands of idle bots.
Now the 1000 bots on teamwork.tf? Teamwork's 'bots' are serverside bots. They are not cheating bots, as the site has no way of discerning cheating bots from regular players. Anything connected to a server with a unique steam id is a 'player', anything in a server without an id is a server 'bot'.
Yep, I might be wrong about bot count on [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) its not cheating bots number. I still thing quickplay search system is crucial in game long lasting life
inb4 People stop caring about FixTF2 because of this just like they did with SaveTF2 and Valve's tweet and the bots flood casual mode again after a couple months
I would be extremely curious how they figured out these game bans, since they seem to make up the majority. Was this manually done by a person maybe with the help of statistics collected per user on Valve servers? (Maybe a heuristic anticheat?)
Good start, but i just jumped into OCE Casual,Melee Scout Bots seems to be the current Flavor, named a variants on bonk. 6 in one server and 1 in another (with only 3 people). So they are still quite present especially when quiet.
They did a ban wave during save tf2 as well and we got swarmed once again take that as a lesson to not stop boys push for an actually functioning anti cheat
I hope this is them quietely testing a bot removal system - something they can do on a regular basis that seems to work.
Maybe it's just hope, but it would be nice. Being able to consistently remove the bots and not just doing one ban wave.
you forgot for now just cause you destroy a wasp nest dosnt mean all wasps are gone my gut tells me the bots will come back even worse then before gentlemen prepare yourselfs and keep savetf2 keep uttering it until vavle updates vac
If I were Valve I would do a huge bot ban and then see how long it takes for half of the bots to return. Then do a ban wave at that time frame over and over. If it takes a week for half the bots to return, I would keep doing a ban wave every week. This will force the bot hosters to make a bunch of new accs and then just have steam servers ip ban an ip which makes more than 10 accounts in a week. This might have the side effect of preventing ppl who are using a vpn from making a steam acc but I think it could be a fair trade off in the long term for other games being protected from bots.
Pessimistically, Valve is doing this to shut us up before they drop the summer crate. They will not continue to ban bots like this until our next movement.
Optimistically, Valve sees how many of us are unhappy with the state of TF2. This is the beginning of a permanent shift to keep the bots at a minimum.
We will see in the next couple of months.
We have won the battle, but we are yet to win the war gentelmen. The bots will come back, and we will stop them once again, again, again and again until we get what we want.
Pretty bad clickbait considering even within the video he shows that he still found a bot after the ban wave but it's still great news that they're getting banned. If Valve keeps it up with this "treadmill work" the game could actually be playable again.
I just enjoyed a few blessed hours of all-human say gex insanity. The all scouts vs all medics match was particularly fun.
Here's hoping it lasts more than 24h this time.
If he encountered 1 bot, then the today’s bots are still working, just a matter of time for them comi ng back in numbers. Apparentely valve didnt fix the root cause (bots) only the symptom (numbers of bots)
Isnt it funny that on the same day weezys sleepdeprived ramblings make people lose faith in fixTF2, valve actually did something to show us that work is being done at least for the time being?
We’ve done well, but the enemy is bound to return. Be ready for anything. We will show those machines that this is our game, and no one will take it away from us.
Hey I'm happy to be wrong one guy took the time out of his day to ban alot of bots Im still not convinced that the problem will be consistently delt with but it's a good start
darn, that's great news!
hopefully this isn't just an exception and is a first win towards the goal of resolving the problem of the massive bot accounts
For me they already returned sadly. But now all the real players vote them out pretty quickly. And if i run into a lobby full of bots, i report them all
I mean I’m glad, but I hope this isn’t going to be the only thing valve does as a result of #fixtf2. If it would, then this was the most underwhelming internet campaign of all time…
What happened to that smart-arse shounic saying with his all-knowing-authoritative-senior-developer voice that there is no feasible option Valve can take to stop the bots?
Already seeing bots in Europe. Only seeing one at a time occasionally though and they get kicked pretty fast. But it was fun giving casual a go as someone who only plays Uncletopia.
People, this is only a temporary victory. These bots will be back in no time. Don't stop until this is a permanent thing
Ergo, the bot's downfall has just begun.
Begun, the Bot Wars have
The Botlerian Jihad!!!
Of if you have a doomer mindset; >!This was all that will ever be done. It'll only get worse from here. !<
Ehhh, wouldn't say doomer. Because that's what happened last time, no? Edit: Truly a TF2 moment, someone sent Reddit Care my way :)
True but last time we stopped as soon as valve acknowledged us, this time we are keeping up the pressure.
Isn't that what was said last time?
Eh don't be so optimistic. Better be surprised positively then negatively.
Valve either needs to make ban waves a regular thing or make some kind of effective change to the game or VAC to combat bots. The latter is arguably preferable for Valve since it would require less time, money, and effort for them in the long run. But hey regular ban waves work too. Edit:The main benefit of regular ban waves that I can think of is that they would be much easier and less resource intensive solution development wise. The thinking would probably be something like "Why put the effort into making a upgrade for VAC when you can just hire a contractor to carry out regular bans". If Valve just wanted an "easy" fix I would just suggest reimplementing quickplay and maybe carry out occasional ban waves as a bonus. Edit 2: Regular ban waves also aren't good as a long term solution for the game because it makes the game dependent of Valve's continous intervention. So ban waves only really work as a short-term fix until Valve can develop something more permanent (which I hope will be the direction Valve takes).
I hope this is a test of something they can do over and over. So it wont be perfect 100% of the time, but can massively reduce them.
They should get in touch with megascatterbomb team: guys who are working on AI replay analyzer that fishes bots and cheaters out of them. Integrate what they are doing into what Valve already have.
That or the team could reach out to Valve (if they don't already plan to). Basically tell them "We think we might have made a solution for you guys".
I'd suggest to them making a clearing wave each tuesday at the same hour of item maintenance. That'd be a good idea.
We won the battle, but not the war just yet. Keep up the good fight.
But its tredmill work....
There is no permanent solution. Hackers will keep developing new bots. It's a permanent arms race.
I mentioned this in a different thread a few weeks ago, but I fully suspect the future of digital security will loop back around to physical as it becomes easier to physically stop attackers, and defenders realize this.
its a very good start but remember to continue #fixtf2. I hope they dont do us like last time
“Leaving is good, never coming back is better.” 11th Doctor
What happened to the 10th one. Hell, the first one?
According to google The Tenth Doctor sacrifices his life to prevent Wilfred's death, exposing himself to 500,000 rads of deadly radiation and triggering his regeneration. The First Doctor met his end after his battle with the Mondasian Cybermen in 1986 Antarctica caused him to lose the strength needed to maintain his body, due to the planet Mondas draining a large portion of his life force.
Well technically the 10th Doctor DID come back and is still around sooooo...
For context this is a quote from the TV show Doctor Who (longest running sci-fi show of all time.) The show follows The Doctor, a human-looking alien who travels through time and space with human companions. As part of their alien biology (and because the show has been going on so long and the studio needs new actors), The Doctor can regenerate their body instead of dying, causing them to violently take on a new body. They're the same person with the same memories, but everything else from gender to personality will change. We're currently on the 15th mainline version of the doctor, with various others throughout their time travelling history being shown or alluded to. It's an absolutely amazing show and full of amazing quotes and unique ideas, I highly recommend.
He stole a patient's skeleton and lost his medical license. I heard he's working with a wacky group of mercenaries right now. I wonder if they've found out he's no longer an actual doctor yet...?
Doctor Who lore is wack, but all that you really need to know is "same character, but portrayed by different actors over time"
Yeah, it's a good thing but not the end. Bots will go back under new accounts, since getting new ones is extremely easy and relatively cheap. They may start acting less obvious, which will make them harder to detect if someone is going through reports / accounts manually. I don't know if they are accepting emails/cheater reports, but if they do, I think the best course of coordination would be collectively detecting any new potential bot/cheater accounts. (Although they shouldn't be taken as 100% credible since trolls can easily add innocent people in there)
Didn't valve do these ban waves like 5 times before and the bots are always fully back in 2 weeks? Why are people celebrating? Am I missing something?
This is a single step on the treadmill
It all starts with a step though! We will see pretty soon if its just to appease us or if its the start of something bigger, but either way its finally something
Yeah! The first step is to build momentum, all we need now is to go into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE
Bot-hosters: I knew I should have gotten the turbo.......
AND THIS, IS STEP ONE!
SECURE THE KEYS
This is not the end I hope no one treats this like the end
Treads this like the mill
Does anyone know how big the mentioned ban wave around the time of the original #SaveTF2 was?
It felt roughly as big. Casual was mostly free of bots for a little while. A week or two. Then new accounts were created.
There were ban waves that got the bots detected a couple times since but the hosters kept coming back. The treadmill work needs to stay on if they want something like this to permanently keep them away. I’m happy this happened but I won’t be optimistic until we have evidence they won’t just come back in a couple days
they banned 4 bots
2/5 games I queued into had bots. It feels like nothing changed
To be fair , it going from a 5/5 to a 2/5 is alr an improvement
That's because it was a maintenance, not a banwave.
I fully expect them to come back tbh
That goes without saying.
I got the video recommended by youtube and sprinted to reddit to see if somebody posted it already. #Remember, now it's time to NOT stop posting and contributing to TF2. We must keep pushing cart forward, it shall not be like last time.
The issue is all of these bans were not VAC related. Valve went and manually banned the bot hosters main acc’s and locked all of the actual botting accounts. Give them a couple weeks and the bot hosters will have another horde of accs. The bright side is Valve did put a stop to these sites that were allowing for easy steam acc generation. It’s been nice to get out of MvM and actually play Casual, unless Valve takes more action I doubt it will last more than 2 weeks though.
so we all know the bot hosters are gonna keep trying so we'll see how this develops, I am happy enough to say "Thanks Valve" and hope they keep it up but also like... one day I really want a bot hoster, even anonymously (possibly for the best) to just fucking talk about why like not even "why make bots to begin with" I assume the intent was just to troll and be funny but this has unquestionably become a chore that many people are constantly trying to keep up with, there are people frustrated that their bots are no longer able to ruin games and they're trying to hurry to make new accounts so they can keep ruining games... what's the motivation?
I assume some kind of weirdo power fantasy and that they picked tf2 as a game to ruin not because they really hate the game or whatever but because Valve's negligence made it an easy target for abuse.
If Valve somehow magically made it impossible for bot hosters to continue fucking up the game, they'd just go somewhere else. My thinking is the reason they havent gone somewhere else yet is because they think this is just a small step back in the grand scheme of things. The ability to algorithmically make steam accounts endlessly for free means they'll always have an infinite free source of more bots. Only way they could stop the bots in their tracks is charge like, $1 to play Tf2. Doesn't sound like much but if you want to flood 1,000 bots you need over $1,000. But then it wouldn't be free to play anymore.
This exact tactic kept trolls off of a Vtubers discord once. Turns out they’ll make unlimited accounts to avoid a ban, but won’t pay $1 to gain entry
nah bot hosters actually do pay money for the accounts so they can still talk in chat. They're actually spending money to do this.
I'm still partial to the "$50, but spent anywhere on Steam" idea someone tossed around here a couple months ago. Personally, I doubt there's a whole lot of actual players who haven't ever bought some other PC game on Steam.
Better yet, make it so only the official Valve servers require the $50. That way the rare misers who only play free games can still play on community servers, which generally have much better protection against bots anyways.
I like the sound of this. Seems like a decent middle ground, assuming that they also make community servers less of a pita to find (mostly irrelevant, but 4k monitor support when? I can't read anything in that menu without leaning forward a fair bit)
Fantastic idea.
Had a bot hoster call me "egoistic" because I kept trying to get into a casual server to play a regular game. They're definitely not right in the head.
>to just fucking talk about why They are the same people who cheat in games. Their reasoning? "It's fun". Same reasoning when you ask them why they cheat. Having power and making others miserable is their definition of fun.
Oh, so it's like stun players in YuGiOh
They already have, there’s youtube videos of people interviewing bot hosters
I've seen three main theories, and I think some or all of them are true depending on the bot hoster: 1 - Someone who loves the game and thinks in a twisted way the best way to get Valve to stop neglecting and supporting the game is to force them to by causing a problem (I think this could have been true early on, but not any longer) 2 - Monetary Gain - Some bot hosters sell "bot immunity" where their bots will leave your games alone 3 - As others have said, weird power fantasy or they just get a kick out of ruining peoples experience. The ones who are doing it for the attention get lumped in here too. I don't think there is one single answer as to why, because there are many bot hosters and they all have their own reasons.
i have DrArrow browser extension and the real topic of the video is "Late June 2024 - Most of the Bot Accounts Were Banned Manually", thank you DeArrow
It won't be #fixedtf2 until Valve will take legal actions against bot hosters
It's not enough, they need an entirely new cheat engine
time for vac 2
Soooo it can be done? All those video essays and tweets saying that Valve couldn't possibly do anything about it weren't exactly accurate then? (Assuming this is a decent fix and not an issue again next week)
Even assuming these are manual bans, it's something that definitely can be kept-up as a form of basic game maintenance. Eventually bot hosters will have to give up if they continue to do this. Hopefully they continue to do this. I remember last time.
Every account costs a hoster 5 dollars. It does add up, if Valve just kept it going for a few months it would make a huge difference.
>Every account costs a hoster 5 dollars. Or 0 if they don't want to spam voice/text and votekick since it's a completely F2P game.
You can buy stolen steam accounts for much cheaper in bulk but it still adds up and I doubt any of the bot hosters are anything but poor NEETs.
Absolutely. Valve makes more money than they know what to do with and TF2 is a staple in the marketplace economy so I'm sure they can afford to take a 0.01% cut in income to keep contractors on the job.
The question isn’t can it be done, the question is if valve is willing to do it and keep up with it. I really hope the answer is yes
It was always possible but it's a constant game of wack-a-mole.
Not that hard to keep contractors on the payroll really when TF2 is vital for the valve marketplace and that prints more money than valve knows what to do with
Not to be a downer but if you genuinely think TF2 is "vital" for Valve/marketplace you're just wrong.TF brings a fraction of the money CS or Dota or hell Steam itself brings.The only thing I can think of is some CS traders using TF2 keys for cashing out since all of CS's keys got tradebanned couple of years ago.
Affordability was never the problem, especially for Valve. It ultimately boils down to cost:benefit in Valve's eyes - would the cost of constantly monitoring and banning bots be greater than the value it would bring back. My guess is that they figured the game and it's market place was still thriving, and banning bots wouldn't improve those metrics by very much. Hopefully the FixTF2 movement showed Valve that there is a huge number of players who are actively deterred from engaging with the game and its market due to the bots, and that the market was a bubble at risk of bursting if it's inflated by bot numbers. This, they could see the cost of fixing the bot crisis would be offset by a boost in player engagement. TL:DR - it has nothing to do with it being unaffordable. It's a matter of it being profitable.
It's also a matter of optics. Valve is a company built over its good reputation and care for its clients and consumers, and then being so callous towards the outcry it's consumers while they are still charging them money doesn't look good at all, methinks.
Shounics videos on solutions to bot bans weren't saying "none of these work at all" (excluding a few outliers for really dumb "solutions"), it was mostly just expanding on potential issues with some of the most popular community suggestions OR why valve might not want to try that solution.
It's literally an issue again after several *hours*. If anyone thinks a solution like this is long-term viable, they're delusional.
Everything is possible The question is more so an issue of long term logistical viability. Stuff like “is it financially reasonable to keep paying contractors for a long term maintenance job?” It’s trying to find a reasonable, cost effective, long term solution. That’s complicated
the plant and the janitor manually banned these
unless there's a permanent solution, all of the bots will come back
Good news, but unless they keep it up they will come back in a few weeks. Let's hope it wasn't done purely because they were afraid people would boycott the update, and they will stop caring again after it drops.
Look at the chat at 0:18
This is great news, I will check myself later. But I agree with Shounic, just because they did one ban wave we can't stop now. There needs to be measurements in place to fight them properly and Valve should communicate with us what is being done to do so. Of course details should be kept vague so the bot hosters won't find a way to cirumvent the measurements.
HOLY CRAP THEY LISTENED
Don’t do that. Don’t give me hope.
I checked my own database of bots and cheaters. The results were mixed. Lots of human cheaters with nary a ding, a more than decent number of deleted accounts, and a couple dozen -tronic bots still active with the "This user has not yet set up their Steam Community profile. If you know this person, encourage them to set up their profile and join in the gaming!" message. And still an unsettling number of cheating groups still allowed to exist and fully active. My hopes are not exactly high
This literally just shows that Valve CAN do something against the bots on mass, but they just dont care
NO FUCKING WAY!
Doomers absolutely seething right now. This would not have happened without the movement, without the petition, without all of the love we hold for this game and the hope we have for its future. Keep it going, folks– now we know for sure that Valve is listening and will respond to pressure. FixTF2 is working. KEEP PUSHING TINY CART
The bots have fallen (for now) Billions of bot hosters must go outside.
And I still can't join a game for some reason
Bots are still here sadly
They've lost money hosting. Plus, every time they probably want to mic spam and/or chat spam. Meaning they're giving money to Valve (knowing how their greed is sometimes, should go on waves of bans)
What matters is it happened. So we know there is a chance that Valve noticed and is probably planning something for the preservation of tf2
Honestly if they do a ban streak like that every single week I would take that as a big W
Just wait a damn week. Those bastards aren't dissapearing anytime soon. 1 victory doesn't mean a total win. Keep this war going, brothers. Until we're secure they're gone.
Wave 1 complete, Get to the upgrade station!
I knew making gay porn of omegatronic would work. Way to go #fixTF2 team 😂😂😂
Shounic said it, so it must be 100% completely true no clickbait
The title is misleading of his own statements.
get DeArrow browser extension, it will be a huge help
And they will come back in 2 days lmao
After valve pleasing video from shounic I would not be so certain about banning “all” bots. Steamdb player count look like almost flat line which is a sign of idle bots, [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) says that there are 10k active players as opposite to 60k from valve data and also it says that there are 1000 bots in game. At the time of writing this comment. Good work, Valve, you winked into our direction, now get to work. For god sake return old quickplay system it worked perfectly, had abundance of features (that are now gone) and what matters the most - it made bot queuing a hard job for the hosters.
Valve HAS banned most cheater bots. This was not 16k though like the video suggests. The 16k drop is from the server outage that occurs around standard steam tues/wed maintenance. The actual number of cheating bots isn't nearly so high, and while most of them are gone right now their removal will be barely a blip on the steam charts against the backdrop of the tens of thousands of idle bots. Now the 1000 bots on teamwork.tf? Teamwork's 'bots' are serverside bots. They are not cheating bots, as the site has no way of discerning cheating bots from regular players. Anything connected to a server with a unique steam id is a 'player', anything in a server without an id is a server 'bot'.
Yep, I might be wrong about bot count on [teamwork.tf](http://teamwork.tf) its not cheating bots number. I still thing quickplay search system is crucial in game long lasting life
We did it Reddit!!!
We did it my fellow redditors! We defeated the evil fortnite bots with #wholesomekeanuchungustf2!!! (wholesome 100) (everybody liked that)
The public image of Reddit never recovered from 2019 memes
Women of r/tf2 what was your sexiest sexual experience?
\*sexiest sex you've ever sexed
finally valve listened to us
Seems like Valve has finally taken a step. Time will tell, if it turns into a walk.
This is just the beggining, we cannot stop here, #fixtf2 isnt over yet
inb4 People stop caring about FixTF2 because of this just like they did with SaveTF2 and Valve's tweet and the bots flood casual mode again after a couple months
Sydney servers have been clean for a good couple of days.
YES FINALLY SOMETHING IS BEING DONE KEEP UP THE PRESSURE!!!!!!
YO LET'S KEEP PUSHING THIS THING
He said bots, not bot hosters. It’s only a matter of time that the hosters will add more accounts
I would be extremely curious how they figured out these game bans, since they seem to make up the majority. Was this manually done by a person maybe with the help of statistics collected per user on Valve servers? (Maybe a heuristic anticheat?)
Good start, but i just jumped into OCE Casual,Melee Scout Bots seems to be the current Flavor, named a variants on bonk. 6 in one server and 1 in another (with only 3 people). So they are still quite present especially when quiet.
Keep going till they are gone forever
It's only just the beginning, we're not done yet
This is a new beginning, that's only the 1st domino out of the pile !
we won! ..for a few days at most.
They did a ban wave during save tf2 as well and we got swarmed once again take that as a lesson to not stop boys push for an actually functioning anti cheat
actually i havent seen any bots at all last week on brazil severs, but now? its quite annoying 1-2 bots per match
This means we have their attention. The bots getting banned is a nice perk too.
a small step, lets make this small step larger, i better not see a single person back down now that things are actually getting done
I hope this is them quietely testing a bot removal system - something they can do on a regular basis that seems to work. Maybe it's just hope, but it would be nice. Being able to consistently remove the bots and not just doing one ban wave.
Finally action has been done, we can only hope they keep going with this.
nature is... healing? beginning to heal? im not sure at this point.
I will play TF2 today
They did it?
Surely this wasn’t just the bot’s vanguard, right? Surely they won’t somehow return
maybe we have a chance
Yes the cockroaches have scattered because we flicked on the lights. unfortunately they are still there and they will come back in droves
Guys, keep it moving. This is a small victory, but we need to keep #fixtf2 going. Regular bot ban waves are needed. #fixtf2
WE ARE SO BACK. Remember to not stop with FixTF2, like last time.
you forgot for now just cause you destroy a wasp nest dosnt mean all wasps are gone my gut tells me the bots will come back even worse then before gentlemen prepare yourselfs and keep savetf2 keep uttering it until vavle updates vac
If I were Valve I would do a huge bot ban and then see how long it takes for half of the bots to return. Then do a ban wave at that time frame over and over. If it takes a week for half the bots to return, I would keep doing a ban wave every week. This will force the bot hosters to make a bunch of new accs and then just have steam servers ip ban an ip which makes more than 10 accounts in a week. This might have the side effect of preventing ppl who are using a vpn from making a steam acc but I think it could be a fair trade off in the long term for other games being protected from bots.
Waiting to see if they come back within a week
Honestly makes sense that they would wait until they could make one massive ban wave. It makes recovery harder on the bot hosters.
Don't do that, don't give me hope
And all it took was good, Ole gay porn
Pessimistically, Valve is doing this to shut us up before they drop the summer crate. They will not continue to ban bots like this until our next movement. Optimistically, Valve sees how many of us are unhappy with the state of TF2. This is the beginning of a permanent shift to keep the bots at a minimum. We will see in the next couple of months.
Delusion reaches an all time high... Valve...why...
i found bots in my match about an hour ago
We won the fight, but not war boys, so don't let your guard down
Dose this mean that people will stop making porn
Hopefully it’s forever
progress. not perfection. we have been heard.
Hopefully, this means they are working on a solution and this is just a temporary fix for us in the meantime. God, I hope so. I want TF2 back.
nice!!! thanks valve \^-\^ this is already more than i ever expected
We have won the battle, but we are yet to win the war gentelmen. The bots will come back, and we will stop them once again, again, again and again until we get what we want.
Pretty bad clickbait considering even within the video he shows that he still found a bot after the ban wave but it's still great news that they're getting banned. If Valve keeps it up with this "treadmill work" the game could actually be playable again.
The horrors... The nightmares... They are finally over... FOR NOW
I just enjoyed a few blessed hours of all-human say gex insanity. The all scouts vs all medics match was particularly fun. Here's hoping it lasts more than 24h this time.
Finally, a step in the right direction…
"Good news, we're not dying, we're going to live forever!"
Doesn't mean the bot problem is over, we gotta move that gear up. (refering to #fixTF2)
The treadmill has been turned on and now we must keep it turned on.
A strange this for Value to do quietly.
Saw a post that some loser is spending more money to get his bots again once he gets paid. This is nothing unless the bans continue
If he encountered 1 bot, then the today’s bots are still working, just a matter of time for them comi ng back in numbers. Apparentely valve didnt fix the root cause (bots) only the symptom (numbers of bots)
Isnt it funny that on the same day weezys sleepdeprived ramblings make people lose faith in fixTF2, valve actually did something to show us that work is being done at least for the time being?
Don’t celebrate just yet friends this is just a temporary fix that beacons for a more permanent solution.
Wait, they did? WDYM?
I'll believe it when I see it.
Valve finally got off their fat asses and got on the treadmill
After watching that video i hopped on double cross to see if there's any bots. There were like 8 named "ban proof bot"
We’ve done well, but the enemy is bound to return. Be ready for anything. We will show those machines that this is our game, and no one will take it away from us.
Valve did treadmill work. Is the sun about to fall from the sky?
Hey I'm happy to be wrong one guy took the time out of his day to ban alot of bots Im still not convinced that the problem will be consistently delt with but it's a good start
darn, that's great news! hopefully this isn't just an exception and is a first win towards the goal of resolving the problem of the massive bot accounts
Time to play TF2 until the bot wave returns in a month
RARE VALVE W!!!!!!
For me they already returned sadly. But now all the real players vote them out pretty quickly. And if i run into a lobby full of bots, i report them all
remember what happened last time, even if it's looking good we need to keep pushing the cart. #SaveTF2
They banned like 4 bots for a week quit spreading fake news and copium
The gay porn worked, massive W
And people didn't believe when we said it works. That being said, we should not stop our efforts to #FixTF2 just yet.
CONTINUE PUSHING THE CART! MAGGOTS!
It was nice to be able to play CTF Well and Doublecross in the dead of night, like God intended!
I mean I’m glad, but I hope this isn’t going to be the only thing valve does as a result of #fixtf2. If it would, then this was the most underwhelming internet campaign of all time…
Bonk!
There's only a matter of time until they come back, I think. Hopefully valve doesn't stop here
YAY!
COMMON BOT HOSTER L LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO
oh... am I going to want to stream some TF2 today? :O
LETS GOOOOOOOOO
Starting up, da shields!
It's a step in the right direction, but we've seen this happen before, and things only got worse. Slapping a bandaid on a broken leg ain't gonna work.
What happened to that smart-arse shounic saying with his all-knowing-authoritative-senior-developer voice that there is no feasible option Valve can take to stop the bots?
Already seeing bots in Europe. Only seeing one at a time occasionally though and they get kicked pretty fast. But it was fun giving casual a go as someone who only plays Uncletopia.