On Friday, June 25, 2021, the Free2Play shooter Team Fortress 2 broke a 14-year-old record on Steam. The reason was a large patch that is supposed to narrow down the bot problem.
The long fight against bots
Team Fortress 2 has had massive problems with bots for a long time. The bots spam on servers, used names with hate messages and filled the voice chat with annoying music and high-pitched tones. The vote-kick mechanism was bypassed by changing nicknames and changing teams.
Last year, publisher and developer Valve tried to get the problem under control with a patch – with moderate success. After a year, another patch was released last week that, at first sight, got the problem under control.
151,253 players are testing the new update at the same time
The patch not only brought new mechanics against bots into play, but also cosmetic items, all of which were created by the community. Many players and probably also some bots took this as an opportunity to restart Team Fortress 2.
In the end it was 151,253 simultaneous players – a new record for player numbers. And two days later, on June 27, 2021, there are still over 128,000 players in the shooter.
The biggest changes were made by Valve in the voice chat, which is now more adaptable and flexible in handling. In addition, by default it is no longer allowed to change the name during a match.
The developers list further changes under “Security and stability improvements”, but without any indication of what exactly they are. You can find the full patch notes in the Announcement on Steam.
Since the release of Team Fortress 2 in October 2007, the shooter is still very popular even after 14 years. We have also included in our list of the best Free2Play games.
What do you think of the latest update? Did you have bad experiences with bots in Team Fortress 2? Let us know in the comments!
