After finally reaching 2,000 hours of playtime on TF2, I can say that this game is completely unplayable in its current state. All of the official servers are infested with aimbots that not only instantly kill you, but also abuse the text chat with profanity and would automatically call a vote kick against you when you've done nothing wrong, even if you literally just joined a lobby. The only way to properly play this game is to join community servers (which is probably what Valve expects you to do), or their Mann VS. Machine game mode where you basically gamble for expensive items.

It makes me sad to see this game suffer from such a terrible fate, as this is one of my favorite childhood games. I would spend countless hours on this game playing all of the fun game modes created by the community, befriending other players, and grinding so many hours that were spent on all of the 9 classes. I would always try to collect as much money as I could and beg my parents to buy Steam gift cards for me when I was a kid so I could buy taunts and hats. Unfortunately, I never discovered the Steam market and external sites back then, so I would always buy from their overpriced in-game store, where a hat that would be worth a few cents costs at least $5-$10. I took a long break from this game after the Meet Your Match Update because I didn't like how the new matchmaking system worked since it would usually take forever for you to load into a match back then. I then came back to this game during the summer of 2023, and I was shocked to see how one of my beloved games turned out after discovering the bot crisis.

Valve has become somewhat of a lazy and corrupt company over the past few years. Their radio silence treatment towards TF2 has shown what type of company they really are. I understand that their employees are still caring people, but Valve as a business has done nothing but ignore their fans. Not only have they been neglecting TF2, but also their popular titles such as CS:GO/CS2, L4D2, Dota 2, etc. I know most of their games are at least a decade old, but they are the sole reason why Valve has become so successful.

If Valve doesn't want to fix their games, then they should let some other game company take control and take care of them. If Valve doesn't want to update and release more patches for VAC because it's considered "treadmill work", then they should hire more employees to do that for them. If Valve wants this game to die, then they shouldn't be making a profit off of TF2's economy anymore. There are numerous things Valve could do, but they simply choose not to.

FYI, Valve calls itself a "medium-sized" company, even though it developed Steam, which houses 50%-70% of the entire PC gaming community worldwide. They can't consider themselves so small when they have something so big.

Whether this game gets fixed or not, I will continue to play TF2 because this is still a genuinely fun game to play. The only thing that I would like to see happen is that this game gets a solution to the bot crisis and receives an up-to-date anti-cheating system. It's not wise to keep ignoring what your fans want, so it's always important to listen to their feedback.

#FixTF2 #SaveTF2