Team Fortress 2‘s received its first major update in yonks last year, and then the nearly 17-year-old game promptly broke its concurrent player record. Still, talk to one of those players and you’ll find all is not well with Valve’s shooter, which is apparently regularly overrun by bots and cheaters.
Some players are now reporting “a large ban wave” targeting users of aimbots, however.
Valve themselves have not announced that they’ve taken any new action, so all we have to go on are reports from the community.
One user posted an image of a message they allegedly received from Steam Support. “Our team noticed your accounts were involved in majorly disruptive activity in Team Fortress 2. Accounts dedicated to the disruption of TF2 have been deactivated, and accounts used for other purposes have been locked and banned,” says the message.
Another community member claimed to have confirmed that a “prominent hoster” of bots had been banned. There’s much anecdotal evidence that the game has fewer bots in online matches than normal.
Some players also pointed to substantial and sudden dips in Team Fortress 2’s player count as evidence of banwaves. At the time of writing, however, the game has had a steady and significant increase in its player count.
Players have been begging Valve to take action to clean up Team Fortress 2 for years, often organising under the #SaveTF2 moniker. This isn’t the first ban-wave in recent years either, although previous efforts have seemed short-lived, with cheaters swiftly moving back in. For the sake of those still playing, I hope this time is different.