TF2: Nobody's Home
Вставка
- Опубліковано 21 тра 2024
- If only you knew how bad things really are.
Support me on Patreon: / zesty_jesus
hell: / zesty_jesus
2nd channel: / @zestyalt
My website & TF2 server: zestyjesus.com/
Join my announcements Discord for notifications when I go live/upload: / discord
Huge thanks to Megascatterbomb, this video wouldn't have been possible without his help: / @megascatterbomb
Thank you to Casperr for the information on teamwork.tf: / @casperr
Data Sources:
steamdb.info/app/440/charts/
teamwork.tf/community/statistics
Thumbnail and SFM work by Jauntyweb: / jauntywebau
Devil's Advocate art by NightinGery: / 1773499006972289359
Music Used:
Upgrade Station- TF2 Soundtrack
Teardrop-Massive Attack
The entirety of the Metroid Prime 2 OST
00:00 Intro
02:36 Bot Types
06:25 Human Activity
17:26 Botnets
25:18 Botted Games
28:43 TF2's Real Player Count
39:57 Botted Updates
49:01 To Where from Here
55:41 Reality Check - Ігри
![[TF2] The Ultimate MvM Achievement Guide](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RqA9lBM-fck/mqdefault.jpg)
We will be making the data used in this video public soon!
Edit: here it is github.com/megascatterbomb/tf2PlayerCount
Edit #2: A criticism I'm seeing is "it isn't profitable to harvest cases/items, therefore there can't be tens of thousand of idle bots." You're right. On paper, it isn't profitable, but for some reason they still do it. I don't know why, nor do I have the full picture. There's some element/elements to this I couldn't find. It could be part of something grander, or bot hosters could being doing this simply because they can, who knows. I don't know the reason, all I know is that it's happening.
nice
nice 2
nice 3
nice 4
thanks zesty, ur the besty.
Sorry guys I accidentally left my 50 thousand computers idling on the main menu of TF2
Oh crap, hope he sees this so he can send a follow up vid! We fixed it!
Typical sniper main!!! *shrugs, demonic thrall of laughter echoes through these hallowed halls*
i see you in comment sections a lot
@@freakshowjimmyscrackheaddu8255 [Automated Reply #345]
its ok, we forgive you
2012: Mann vs Machine
2024: Machine
we lost, the machines took over
Democracy may have to wait on this one. Automatons. We. Will. Be. Back.
Sooo... Long Night has started.
@@roniecervantes9122
FOR DEMOCRACY
You all don't know that we all got finally a mvm update
Never ask...
... a man, his salary.
... a woman, her age.
... a TF2 player, to select all squares with bicycles.
Tf2 player here, can confirm captchas are rigged
some irrelevant information. the hunk mod for risk of rain 2 is cool
I dont get it
@@Neoniq41 recaptcha reference
The idea that roughly 2/3s of my gift-a-pult gifts have gone to bots is the saddest thing I learned by watching this video. That’s just not fair.
I gift-a-pulted an unusual holy grail Homerunner's hobby (scout beanbag taunt) and it went directly to an OMEGATRONIC bot :(
I have "voice communication is not avaliable for this account" and i must scream
can't even call for a medic, utter bs
@@ZestyJesusyo zest can i show you pictures of my truck
Same on mine, and I can’t play the game because the new update broke my game :p
@@ZestyJesus I am now sad after the watching this video. Anyway, voting with our wallets wont really work, bc comparing the amount of money valve earns from tf2 to steam is like comparing the amount of real players in tf2 to bots in tf2 - not enough for valve to care.
@@ZestyJesus nor a spy
i cant believe tf2 predicted tf2 being overrun with bots
thats crazy man
Life imitates art
😂😢
Mann vs Machine
wait that IS crazy
got banned from r/tf2 for pointing it out a year ago lol
Time to make an alt and post this video as evidence.
@@Drunken_Hamster i would rather be banned from that subreddit than not
@@a-c1081It's a honor to be banned from that subreddit
Getting banned from r/TF2 is a blessing
That place is a shithole filled with neckbeards who clap whenever the word "pootis" is mentioned
It's a safe space for transoids
A microcosm of the dead internet theory, shit’s chilling
It actually sorta operates in the face of dead internet theory. The majority of players you play with, despite the high bot count and low player count still will be human. That's even stranger
@@celestialowl8865 that’s because the bots don’t join the servers and play the game; only humans do (with the exception of cheater bots, but most bots aren’t cheater bots, just idlers)
@@nechdaught3412 Yes I also watched
Dead Internet isn't that sad, well until AI tries to fill the void.
Most of the Internet is dark and you have no need to interact with, the only parts we care about is where we have interactions with other people.
in just 9 hours, twice as many people have watched this video as there are people concurrently playing tf2.
Yeah it just shows that there are so many people who genuinely want to play this game but valve just doesn't care
i dont even play tf2 but this is interesting
@@dootdoot8755 thats implying that youtube isnt botted aswell
dead internet theory
Who like watching TF2 stuff?
*Hand ups*
Who wants to actually play TF2?
*Hand down*
Name one other game community where ranking virtual skins is toxic and problematic behaviour lmao
- tf2
-
Some "friend" he is
ehrm that’s not shorkin wholesome thewhat, sorry chud!
Lol, lmao even
"HoW dAre yOu CriTiciZE muH VirTuaL skINarInos, yoU aRe lE toXIc ChuD"
All those jokes about TF2 being on life support is true after all.
TF2 activity graph indeed looks like constant cardiac arrest...
I alsways found it funny how people kept saying TF2 outlived Overwatch when TF2 is as much of a mess as OW
"no one talks about the bots!" there is no war in ba sing se
bros boutta take zesty to lake laogai
Yeah yall talk about it but do nothing. Savetf2 was the best yall had.
No wonder Pyrocynical comes back to TF2 on streams, the player numbers there are VERY inflated...
One joke
@@seronymus I don't know why
@@TheNormalplayer12 It doesn't even matter how hard you try
@@GayDemonWarlordKeep that in mind
@@TheNormalplayer12It doesn't even matter how hard I try
People called me crazy when i pointed this out a few years ago
You dare criticize our le hecking wholesome game ? Le downvote for you.
okay where? Considering the nature of your content I doubt that.
Edit: I would like to apologise, he did indeed make a video with the exact same calculation and same result, I am sorry.
Whaaaat? You did?
AWW, YOU MUST BE CRAZY, MAN!
crazy?
i was crazy once
they put me in a room
a rubber room
with rats
i hate rats
they make me crazy
crazy?
i was crazy once...
Yeah I remember being one of the many who called you crazy at the time but damn you were correct all along, apologies.
Good job, well researched, written and edited. Made a video on this myself a while back, I don’t know why people don’t care more about this.
Also, every article online about TF2 talks about its player count and record highs, goes to show how little research is done most the time.
Ever since I watched your video a couple of years ago I believed tf2 was about 50% bots because of the average play time data shown in said video.
Now I have a better scope of the bot problem.
I was a little surprised when Zesty said no one else is making videos on this topic! I saw your video a while back and thought it was great. Like you and Zesty both lay out here, it makes the in game expeience so much worse.
True or not, I just see that as being pessimistic.
@@phoenixflambe3319because enforcing toxic positivity is such a better alternative right
@@baronvonwhinsectown2454 Is toxic negativity the better option then? Toxicity is just a buzzword that lost meaning an impact nowadays.
Guess machine won, Mann lost
waltuh
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue Sandvich- the story ends, you queue up for another match and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red Sandvich-you stay in cp_hydro and I show you how much of Valve has neglected this game."
That's a cool reference
I legitimately wish Tc_hydro was iterated on with more territory controls.
*eats the yellow sandvitch because it recharges faster*
No one likes BLU cheese, start munching on some grade A, reality seasoned RED meats.
actually makes me sad
So. The true of the matter is...
Whenever we celebrate TF2's immortality, we have a king's parade with TF2 at the throne.
But the king is dead, and the bots puppet the rotten corpse.
Not quite.
Just because about 30% of the playerbase is actually human doesn't mean that the game is dead, just that the Steam player numbers are bloated and the playerbase stagnant.
TF2 dies with us.
It does create issues depending on your region, though.
@@manunova5929yeah, that's the unfortunate part of a dying game. Funny enough, Apex legends is kinda dead over here on SA too with our servers being the lowest populated for the most part.
that but less cheesy
The Corpse of King Teufort
@@Lyss-Jack This man, he gets it.
POP QUIZ:
An entity that was beloved by millions, led a golden age, went through a civil war, crippled by an event, forced on life support, constantly suffering from incursions from an outside force and has a deranged cult following that will attack anyone that so much as disagrees or points out a flaw in the system.
Now, did I just describe the Emperor of Mankind or Team Fortress 2?
both series contain some level of buff sexy men oiling up
When i read this i thought of the roman empire
Clearly TF2.
To be the fair the Emperor of Mankind might have foreseen what was to come…Maybe? Still
not sure how this fits into his supposed grand plan for humanity though.
Sounds like the HRE lol
I’m sure this comment will sink to the bottom, but the truth is Valve *doesnt* have a reason or incentive to fix anything, namely because people keep buying. People buy the keys, people buy the cases, people buy the content. People shouting on Twitter or Reddit or UA-cam isn’t going to fix anything, money will, and people will never stop buying. People have sunk thousands into tf2 over its lifespan, and won’t stop because they’ve already sunk so much in.
Reddit and Twitter and online spaces don’t want to admit the issues with the game because they’ve sunk so much in to, and don’t want to admit the truth, that TF2 is in a bad place and on the verge of collapse. TF2 is dying, maybe human player counts are stable, but but players already more than double human players.
It's kind of a no-way to run, the game is old and Valve already got 2 Milk-Cows to dry off.
If people stop playing the game the game will just let it be.
and the thing is, yes 30K is a lot, but eventually, they will move on. And since Tf2 isnt really bringing in new players, that player count will steadily decrease
@@Gojira-ii4ruExactly
"Tens of millions annually" is a lot of money sure, but compared to the revenue that the giants of Dota 2 & CS2 and compared to the revenue that the absolute behemoth that is Steam pulls in every year?
It's like a glass of water compared to a lake compared to an entire ocean
more like Valve literally can't get itself together to do anything about it, Valve is so decentralized power goes to a few workers in the company
valve makes pennies with tf2 in comparison to everything else they run, people forget valve isnt just tf2 dota and csgo
“Speak with your mouths and with your wallets”
*screams in voice communication is not available for this account*
laughs in voice communication is not available for this account
buy the orange box whenever it goes on sale
you're not giving money towards TF2 exactly, moreso towards HL and Portal
Kids can't pay a dollar for their "favourite game" lol
@@panthekirb7561ah yes, because everyone has to pay money to use a basic function every other fucking shooter has, quite a remarkable feat for the dev team to monetise something that hurts real players more than the bloody bots, get your face away from that boot.
@@massgunner4152 The only boot here is my boot kicking the annoying children who do almost as much harm as bots. Noone wants to play with children and the majority of F2Ps have always been children.
There's something kinda creepy about it idk. It's like being in a mall food court and you look around and only see 4 people scattered about, eating alone, but you hear this loud chatter, people laughing and having a good time as though the place were full with hundreds of people.
Like idk, I always played TF2 assuming there were tens of thousands of other people along with me, but it's just an illusion.
also among all of the chatter there’s several people with the same voice that are trying to address everyone in the room except for each other
Same.
Feels like being in one of those gmod maps like gm_bigcity, where there's this noisy ambience, but really you are the only one in that map.
there's still tens of thousands of players, just divide the number you expect by 3
Bro, wake up. New creepypasta just got cooked up.
Active 'developer' support, as in a single developer assigned to it.
There's one angle that has yet to be examined. One explanation of why this hasn't been fixed is that the bots benefits valve.
How?
Valve has a very unusual flat structure, and employees choose what they want to work on. Employees seek to work on projects with the maximum productivity possible for the time put in. This encourages moonshots (VR headsets, SteamDeck) or new forms of monetisation (Crates in tf2, the Steam marketplace, Proton bringing games to Linux, games built around microtransactions like Artifact, CS:GO's item grades, and knives, which create insane value due to scarcity).
There's no person at the top guiding the ship in a single direction, and valve exists to produce value (read: money), so how are the people there motivated to work on project A vs project B? What if value employees are ranked based on the amount of money their total man-hours have produced? As long as the tf2 marketplace prints money, no employees want to work on the game for any other reason, as it'll negatively impact their productivity ranking. TF2 might be seen as the golden goose for those employees who initially worked on it - no effort involved and a stable source of positive ranking while they do other things they're interested in that will also boost their ranking further. Working on the game in any way is likely only going to serve to reduce your ratio of hours worked to the revenue produced. Most bots revolve around the marketplace, essentially contributing to it. Removing cheating bots wouldn't 'produce' much, and as Zesty points out, the number of 'real' players has largely remained stable for years, so you might see removing those bots as a waste of time and will likely only harm your ranking if you've worked at Valve for awhile. On top of that, you would be working against yourself to try and remove idling bots as they contribute to the game's marketplace; your work would REDUCE the revenue the game generates. You might even be incentivised to ensure they AREN'T removed.
Newer employees would stay far from it - why fix TF2 when your ranking will be helped much more by working on Steam or the Steam deck? If you haven't worked there for long, improving TF2 won't harm your long-standing ranking, but it will only do little to increase it.
It may also explain why CS2 is getting infested. However, I suspect those cheaters will be fixed, as that marketplace is worth much more, and you run the risk of driving away big real spenders to games like Valorant or simply alienating them entirely.
Assuming this is how things work and you're a Valve employee, would you work on TF2? Remember, Valve is a privately owned playground for some of the most competent people in software with otherworldly employee benefits, incredible pay, and free rein to work on some of the most interesting problems around. Valve spearheaded the entirety of modern VR (a very interesting story in and of itself). Getting to work there is one of the most prestigious things you can achieve as a software engineer, and it's incredibly competitive. Valve makes more money per head than Facebook and Apple by country mile. Valve is not a games company anymore; it is a crucible for extremely talented and intelligent people with the loose objective to produce value. If you aren't constantly working towards that, you probably aren't going to work there for long. In an environment like that, who *would* care about making a 17-year-old game more playable? The idea of putting your job at risk to do that is probably insane to most people working there - I doubt they even give it much thought.
I ain't reading allat
Makes sense, i woild go as far to say we won't be getting even an actual update, much less a botfix. Saying that tf2 will persevere through this and the bots will go away and there will be a x update, is just copium to me. The game is over
This is such a great analysis of the situation. I think you're right on the money.
Nah
Dead internet theory
Dead TF2 theory
i’ll show u a dead internet theory 👅
@@coolersnoipah173 CS2 has a lot of bots farming cases because it's actually profitable.
It was always true... now yuo see...
I never understood why a dying internet was such a dreadful idea. It just means mfs are touching more grass fr
> One of favourite youtubers finally uploads after months!
> Watch the video
> Depression
A good video is a good video regardless.
@@myboyfriend95 of course but this is sad
Excellent video, just a damn shame it’s true 😞
I am convinced that i've seen the same 4 players in casual than in any others i met in community servers.
Tf2 is an ACTUAL walking corpse.
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672 call TF2 William Afton the way it's somehow standing after years starving
Yeah.
Wsg Samwiz
BUT BIG STEAM NUMBER COMMUNITY GOOD OVERWATCH BAD GAME NOT DEEAAAAAD!!!!! WAAAAAAAH IM A COPING INFANT WHO WON'T FACE THE FACTS WAAAAH
We will die on a hill of delusion, with a gravestone that says " Some people can t let go of their past, so they make it their future".
This is the reality check that the community desperately needed
The tf2 community is one the most delusional and annoying communities ever. They won't accept this.
sadly I feel, like every video Zesty makes, that this one will be ignored or shunned because like he said, not a lot of people talk about TF2’s issues
Because we march, we marched across 2fort, badlands, dustbowl, turbine, oh so much more. We laughed and cried now we are afraid of falling, our path became a tight rope. So we march and march, never skiping a beat, echo our songs, echo our joys, we are alone in empty servers, none will come.
We march and march till we can no more, few remaining now huddled in corners of our world. Apoclapyse has come and armagedon shall reign, still we march and march and march till we can go no longer.
So says who will shoulder more burden, who worries that a game will be smouldered and he will worry and worry till he can no longer.
To think that not even a lot of people care... It's simple to see that videos about tf2 gain more engagement than the game itself. I'd say it's more that the content creators that have a tf2 background are really awesome people :v
And my exit ticket.
Why play a game where there are no players?
It's over...
ඞ
ITS NOT OVER!!
ITS JOEVER
@@StoneBox_761a Could it possibly be more over?
It's ok
Dang. He just cut off the copium the community has been taking for years.
I thought I was gonna get a quick description of TF2‘s declining popularity, turns out I got a extensive lesson in data analytics
“Casual is a casualty and complaining is a crime”
-hintshot, like 4 days ago
Everything and anything all of the time!
"How would you rate your last game? Like we give a shit!"
“Your killstreak would look better if it had a random crit.”
@@baconlettucepotato3726 I was literally about to say that
This video is the 9/11 for tf2 players
It's more like the cameras filming it. He didn't create the disaster, just reported on it.
what? TF2 is less popular than Overwatch? (without Battlenet, PS and XBOX) But it was our only argument... I can't live anymore...
*SHOT SOUNDS IN THE EMPTY ROOM*
@@ncrranger6861 if we assume that right now (as of writing this comment 07.05.2024 - 16:06 - tuesday) 50% of tf2 players are bots, then Overwatch 2 is ahead by 3 thousand players. I was expecting tf2 to die in 2018 but statistics like this are acceptable too.
@@secretname2670 The funniest thing still this is only steam online. Without BNet/PS/XBOX/NinSwitch
@@secretname2670 But it's probably More than 50% as Zesty shows on the video.
Why does this feel like someone examining a sick animal?
Buddy, i have bad news for ya...
You answered your own question. This puppy's been rabid for a good while now.
amusingly, it would probably be in valve's disinterest to ban idlers or represent the data more accurately, for the panic it would cause
Remember guys: Valve is just a small indie multi-billion dollar transnational tech hegemony with a stranglehold monopoly on digital game distribution.
Fixing bots is simply beyond their means.
Shounic did a video explaining that getting rid of bots is NOT as simple as people think. They have thought of and tried everything and none of the solutions worked or would result in punishing players more with bots returning in a short time. I say get rid of the free drop system as it is from a bygone era and replace it with a weekly challenge system to at least fight off the idle bots.
@@Labyrinth6000 and yes that's true they absolutely have the recourses to at least TRY...
(once again MULTI BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY WITH A NEAR MONOPOLY)
@@Labyrinth6000zesty says later on how fixing the hit may be treadmill work but most jobs are treadmill work, I imagine the reason most anti cheat’s work is because they are constantly updated to prevent cheaters and bots from invading games, cause of course you need to, they’ll find exploits all the time if you don’t update consistently, you’re telling me that a multi billion dollar corporation can’t hire people to constantly update their anti cheat?
They don't fucking care lmao
I believe the reason for inaction is complete lack of incentive. What benefit does Valve gain from battling the bots? Even if we ignore the cost of "treadmill work", how could it ever be a profitable move? If Valve managed to remove ALL bots from the game, all it would accomplish is reduce Steam's player numbers by 70-80%.
The truth is that Team Fortress 2 is in a paradoxically stable state. A game from 2007 with around 20-25000 concurrent players with basically zero maintenance is a miracle. It would be foolish, even if morally correct, for Valve to do anything about it as long as the passionate community holds just as well as it did this last decade. AND it gets to stay in Steam's top 10 most played games.
The cope of “Tf2 players just play at weird times and stop playing at bizarre times!” Is truly wild. Like hypothetically imagine thousands of human being in sync who have the weirdest hours at their jobs all coming home and playing at the same time then going back to work.
They do share a single brain cell for their jokes so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. The hivemind is real
I work graveyard and it's hell to not have people active at 5am when I wanna chill. Nothing but bots and Chinese servers with horrible ping.
Its just coping. And i dont mean it in an evil way, i mean it in a "im sorry, but youre making things up to not deal with the issue. Same as i"
That thinking is quite similar to that of staunch flat-earthers. They believe they are special and will dismiss any source that undermines their point of view.
For me, the game will probably close sometime between now and 2025.
If the gaps gets too big, tf2 playerd and even other fps players will see how dead this game is.
When that happens, valve will simply shut down tf2 for good and erase everything they made from it. There can be no mistake if there's nothing to reflect upon.
From there, the industry becomes worse by the day.
tf2 has fallen.
millions must ban idle bots.
I watch a lot of horror shit on youtube and I dont think any of them filled me with nearly as much dread as this video has.
The matrix type of dread
Everything you belived is a lie
I am 100% convinced that the TF2 "Fanbase" are just people that consume the game through reddit and twitter
Guilty as charged, I haven't touched the game at all. Just like watching people talk about it on UA-cam.
I've put in about 500 hours now since starting last year, but I kept watching for many years without playing so I get it in a sense.. TF2 has a great number of good content creators and the game was massive in the early 2010s so most people understand it even if they haven't touched it in a decade. It sucks though because I ended up loving it even more now than I did back in the 2010s just because I gave it a try again, but most people probably aren't bothering and are just watching content on it.
Personally, I've got many hours in TF2 and I consider myself part of the community or fanbase to a certain point, but it's been a while since I last booted up the game, the conditon of the game, the experience of playing it... it's easy to burn out and only ever play the game for a few months every year and then taking a rest, I still like the memes and the characters, but I play the game less and less... I love the game and I want to love it more but the curret circumstances just don't lend themselves.
Haven’t touched vanilla tf in years. TF2 Classic for me
Yeah I only hop on once every few months now and thats because casual is unplayable and community is laggy.
The analogy of a beating heart introduced at the start of the video personified tf2's state in a genuinely touching and sad way.
That was a very interesting way of looking at it. Makes sense too.
I agree, TF2 feels like it's in a coma with a hat perfusion that is slowly killing it
Stuck on life support and slowly dying
Tio paulo. Being used for money, long after being dead
@@Le_runtus4000 acho que ninguém vai saber quem é o tio Paulo num vídeo gringo '-'
An excellent video and in depth view of TF2's bot crisis. I first started playing TF2 back in 2013 and I have nothing but fond memories about it. The wacky and zany lore and characters as well as the friendly players kept me coming back. I don't think I really realized the game was going downhill until a few months after Jungle Inferno when I noticed a definite shift in the community's atmosphere. People were tense and even standoffish at times, and I kept hearing people complaining about bots, all the while I played the fool because I had yet to have my first encounter. Soon after I remember having any enjoyment in the game crushed when an aimbotting Ambassador Spy with a pocket medic and wall hacks (as in he was shooting us through walls) mowed down my team while the opposing team refused to kick them. I think the last time I booted up TF2 was in 2020, and the sheer amount of cheaters and micspam bots made the game completely unplayable.
I never realized how irregular TF2's Steam Charts were before this video since I never bothered to compare it to another game's charts. I also didn't realize how bad the botting problem was, that it's not just cheaters and traders, but basically an entire industry built upon farming digital items. 4 year ago TF2's economy was a wet fart of a joke, so I can only imagine that the idlers are only making chump change by eventually selling all that refined for actual money. The most likely reason why they do it is because it's money they can make for free, and Valve doesn't give a shit. Hell Valve can't even be arsed to release a proper game anymore. Half-Life: Alyx was doomed to only reach an extremely niche audience by making it exclusively VR, and I remember people being extremely pissed when CS2 came out, so they must have screwed up epicly.
I don't understand why the modern TF2 community treats any critiscism as taboo, especially any talk about the bot crisis. The fact that their solution is to smile and make funny videos ending in a hashtag makes it seem like even the people who are "protesting" don't want you to know how bad the situation is, as if their actual goal is to advertise the game to new players in a desperate attempt to increase the true player count. It's like TF2 is dead and the only reason the coroner hasn't declared a time of death yet is because the community and those at Valve who still benefit from the game's microtransactions have barricaded the door to the room.
I know this is an extremely long winded post but one last thing: I love the use of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes' ost for this video. The soundtrack for that game is extremely unnerving, especially since you're basically trapped all alone on an alien planet with long moments of tension that are interrupted by major threats that jump out at you. Playing that game late at night was the catalyst of several nightmares when I was younger. The soundtrack does a really good job of highlighting how messed up the bot problem is and how deep it goes.
damn i guess i just read a middle school length essay.
I used to make tf2 shorts and got over 5k subs. My most popular one is almost 3 years old and it's about how nothing changed in an update (the one where they removed sprays).
The worst thing is - it is still being shown to people. And it's still relevant. Cause nothing changed.
The heart beat comparison is such a great analogy.
If you were put on a heart monitor, and your heart beat looked like TF2's player count, there would be something *seriously* wrong.
I can't believe i am sad about game that have heart disease. OUR TF2 IS FLATLINING ;~;
@@CoolSs Well no, its not. It has a pretty dedicated playerbase of around 20-30k players. I don't see whats particularly wrong about this. I'd trade the stupid bloated player numbers if it meant no more bots.
tf2 has arrhythmia
Bro if your EKG looked like the Steam playercount they'd be wheeling in a crash cart.
@@OizenX 20-30k still put tf2 in top 50 games on steam. What is good number
tf2 is literally evidence of dead internet theory and it’s pissing me off
Just an fyi dead internet theory is 100% true. And anyone who's been on the internet for the last 2 decades or so can easily point it out.
@@TannerLindbergBeep boop I am a robot.
What is dead internet theory? That the majority of the people online are bots?
@@TannerLindberg It's never been a theory, even in the early 2000s people thought it was very funny that 90% of all internet traffic is just pron consumed by a fraction of the remaining 10%. The trick is that people now believe that the addition of AI makes low-brow content more prevalent, or bad, or that they are forced to interact with it all the time. You ignore it in the same way hand-crafted content slop has been ignored since the days of pop up ads.
@@slyseal2091 i refuse to believe that 90% of internet was just pron
40% okay, 60% a little much, but 90% come on man that has to be made up
This video would mean Overwatch 2 was had a higher player count the whole time!
I mean, obviously? TF2 is completely dead on consoles while Overwatch is most popular on console. Not to mention steam isn’t the primary launcher for Overwatch, it’s BNET.
I've always been of the opinion that Valve's praise among the gaming community is completely undeserved, they were PIONEERS on some of the most dogshit monetization schemes in games (lootboxes in TF2 and CS and even battlepasses with TF2 contracts to some extent), their neglect for TF2 and honestly gaming in general (seriously when was the last time valve made an actual new PC game?) is laughable, Valve today is STEAM and nothing more, they are a shadow of what they used to be.
You're right on the money. Valve actually invented the first battle passes EVER with the first Dota 2 Compendium in 2013, like 3-4 years before Fortnite had one and the battle pass avalanche started. Granted, that was only on an annual basis at first, but Valve pretty quickly got seasonal Dota 2 compendiums (battle passes) going, complete with "Get this super duper epic rare skin for $100 of compendium levels, or grind Dota 2 for 300 hours to get it - but be careful! The Battle Pass is only active for 60 days!" scarcity tactics.
this. Its one thing to look the otherway on these issues when Valve is actively providing the goods. they arent anymore so its impossible to ignore what issues they have actively contributed to or invented.
Im thankful valve exists no matter what. portal 2 tf2 half life 2 and gmod wouldnt have existed. I dont care if they do the worst thing as humanely possible on something. the things they have made are amazing.
Old Valve is constantly getting praised by the wider gaming community because they made some of the best video games ever made
Current Valve is getting constantly praised by the wider gaming community because they are the one of two corps out there to make a feature rich, functional and GOOD digital video game marketplace
The other being GOG which doesn't have as many features as steam but is still great because of their DRM-free focus
All the other launchers though? Literal dogshit. So much compared to Steam that gamers are willing to give them a pass on the lootbox & battle pass stuff because of it
It is not that hard to understand lmao
@@malif1279 Sorry, i won't bootlick a company that ignores one of their most popular IPs and is responsible for a bunch of terrible monetization schemes because they do the bare minimum of having an usable game launcher and marketplace, yes EPIC, Origin, EA are terrible, but if your redeeming quality is that you are better that the literal bottom of the barrel, are you really that great?
sorry, my army of Chinese sweatshop workers are playing tf2 rn and they are told to log on and off when I say. I have about 100,000 of them.
No cause only the Chinese government is allowed to enslave their citizens!!!!!1!1!1!1!!!!😡😡😡😡😡🥵😡😡😡😡😡
me too
Why even copy another comment? @SnipingIsAGoodJobMate made basically the same joke, 4 days before you. Why even do it?
@myoak108 why do you even care
@@myoak108 plus I don't think he actually cares, your cry of me making a similar joke is for what?
It's 2036. The last two players duel against each other on a 24/7 2Fort server. One is a veteran and is dressed in unusuals while the other only has stock. The default player asks, "What were Gibus players?". The veterans says, "They were players, usually new, who wore this hat called a Gibus, which you can get even as a F2P player if you dominated someone wearing it." He said longingly. "Could I get it?" The newer player asks. "Sorry. I traded away mine years back." "Oh. I see." They then fought on silently afterwards till logging out.
Corny ass comment lol
Alas, this glorious end to tf2 will not happen. Rip the item server crash of '28
2036 will be the year that Dracula wakes up
erm akchually you cant trade the achievement gibus hat 🤓☝️🍓
yea I ended up scrapping mine which is even fking sadder@@SaintRedFox
For your next video, you should discuss the toxic positivity of the TF2 community. They need to hear this.
Valve could just make remove the case weekly drops. Instead make them part of the random item drop pool. This would absolutely kill the botnets since their reason to bot is mostly gone.
Wouldn't fix the issue completely, but it would still help a lot.
There's so many playercount inflations, Pyrocynical would go crazy
who do you think is behind the scenes inflating the game. it certainly can't be le furry inflation youtuber
I see investor inflation and I have for years, I know you've been given a form to complain right now but I've been complaining about this exact issue for 10 years and nothing has happened and no one has become the wiser it's because it makes the world go round and I know you've been given a form to complain right now but I've been complaining about this exact issue for 10 years and nothing has happened and no one has become the wiser it's because it makes the world go round.
Every game is like 200 to 2000 players and no more than that I'm not exaggerating maybe on release for a AAA title sure, but a week after - I'm right, and ended so flayed and designed to hurt you that you can either agree with me or you can just purchase the next game and get scammed and figure it out for yourself until you hate games.
Lmao
Mein herz brennt lmao
The hardest pill to swallow is that your favourite game of all time is slowly rotting away due to bots, and somehow everyone accepted that... Man...
I love mvm
I honestly think its time to quit.
I played this game for barely one year, yet it feels as if i played for much longer and as if it's death is too close for confort.
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672 its not dying just play community servers
n Co...
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672 I had some good fun on TF2 Classic for a little while after the source leaks. The main client honestly feels really bloated and sluggish nowadays, but under all the junk and rust there's still a good party game for a small clan or social media personality cult.
Trade bots being in-game is not only for aesthetic purposes it also makes them appear higher up on your friends list so that you can find them more easily
the house x tf2 intro is a banger wtf
56:37 "It's Valve's responsibility to maintain this game, so long as it's being offered as playable with incentivized microtransactions. Yet they consistently fail to meet their responsibility."
Well said. If Valve took care of TF2, content bloat, botting, lack of updates... None of these would exist. At least a much smaller magnitude.
Maybe this video is a tough pill to swallow for some, but what must be said must be done. Good job, man.
+ But still nice to see the around 20,000 consistent real player count. Showing that this game really has some die-hard fans which Valve doesn't deserve.
Its one thing for a student to do their homework. Its another for them to actually do good.
content bloat and lack of updates in one sentence feels weird, but yeah
@@Meladoom2 let's face it, they aren't proper updates
they cant even get csgo straight, every match has 2 cheaters
They don't even bother doing quality check. Every update now has a buggy map, clip art or pride flag warpaint, reuse cosmetics.
The data isn't surprising at all - the game hasn't had a major update in 6 years. Nothing bringing new people in, the f2p restrictions have only disincentivised new players trying the game out.
@@Chimpywashere yeah we don't need an update that fixes the terrible issues that tf2 has if the community keeps talking about the game 😂😂😂
@@somefries3101then maybe you can explain why teamwork.tf’s statistics have been relatively consistent for over 6 years despite their being no update? Do you think it’s been the same 10k people playing for 6 years? No, the playerbase constantly rotates. New people come in, old people leave. Just because a game has stopped growing doesn’t mean it’s dead or broken.
We’ve had over 6 six years of consistent player numbers. The game is fine.
@@Chimpywashere You've actively missed the point if you can point to the current state of TF2 and say that the game is fine. Log into a game, and tell me how many times you have to kick a spinbot, or the new player experience, or anything. Or that the only kind of updates we get are community made slot machines anymore.
But fine, let's pretend for a moment that the game is fine because having a stable actual player count is this wonderful silver lining. That in no way means players shouldn't be able, and willing to demand more. Hell, CS2 is going through it right now with their own cheater issue, and they get more love than TF2 at a base level.
In its current state, why would Valve bother putting in more effort into TF2? Updates don't matter since the player counts are largely botted, gambling addicts will spend money anyways, players deal with the bots and just kick them or play on community servers, and any negative PR is self policed anyways within the system. So genuinely, what is the incentive to put any effort into making TF2 better?
Valve is a billion dollar company, and it's long past due that the TF2 player base gets that treatment rather than community wide cope that everything is fine, and Valve will come back someday if we all just stay the course.
@@skrubstar9056 you know what, yeah. The game is fine. Because there’s always been consistent player numbers. If the game is really dead/dying the numbers wouldn’t be so consistent even on teamwork.tf. If the game really had major problems people wouldn’t be playing it. So who is playing it? Answer me that question.
And I’ll tell you something that’ll piss you off, we don’t deserve Valve.
@@Chimpywashere Honestly, the fact that you can say "Looking at the player count" and claim that the game is entirely fine without acknowledging any of the major issues really tells me all I need to know.
As for "pissing me off", I quite frankly don't care about your opinion. I've disliked Valve for years due to them running a Grey Market Casino while not even having the decency to support said games. I don't have loyalty to a Company, and you shouldn't really either, but it's your life at the end of the day.
I havent touched tf2 since the summer "update-sized update", but I have still been watching a lot of videos about it. The part where you said this is the game everyone loves to talk about but nobody wants to play is so real man, I love it, but it's gotten boring to play due to valve's disgusting inaction.
This explains why Valve is no longer interested in updating this game any more and why you shouldn't spending more money on keys and skins in it.
Absolutely killed r/tf2 users with this one, despite being a member, ngl they have been very delusional regarding valve and bots.
Can’t really blame em. A large piece of the community that still continues to play today have probably been playing the game since release so it must be hard for them to accept the fact that their most loved game has been “dead.” The game hasn’t been dying or growing in the 7 years so that’s nessessarily not a bad thing at all.
I remember when they were defending valve when they changed their statement on the summer update. Pathetic
redditors aren't people
r/tf2 is so in denial about the game's state that it legit gaslit me into thinking the game was in a better state and trying it out again in late 2023 after a 2-year hiatus. yes, the game is still very fun but it wasn't long before i was reminded why i quit in the first place. and it's so much worse than ever now. even on peak hours the game can be completely unplayable.
Redditors are not people
"Small traces of the original soul can still be detected in the body, but the corpse itself is animated and controlled entirely by the snakelike Parasites that he once commanded."
- ULTRAKILL; the Corpse of King Minos' terminal data
Never thought ULTRAKILL lore of all things could be used to accurately describe TF2's current state.
TF2 Prime is still in there
why i cant read?
@@StavDev tf3 is just a bossfight as scout and you fight an a pose yeavy with a giant mouth
Oh my days the description of the corpse king minos’ actually fits perfectly 😭
But just like the corpse of king Minos, the prime soul of the corpse remains buried deep within a prison, needing something else to break it free and release the soul. In that case it was V1. I’m just not sure who it could be in the case of tf2. It can’t be valve, as like God in the ultrakill universe they abandoned their creation and left it to rot. Maybe someday, someone or something will come along and dismantle this “flesh prison” the soul is stuck in… and maybe once the prison is killed what comes out is the manifestation of willpower too strong to fade.
I didn't know there was a TF2 player that wasn't on copium
well that explains the market oversaturation
This went from "TF2 is dead (Humourous)" to "TF2 is dead (depressing)" real fast
Edit: wasn't expecting my fanart to be featured at 58:52
IT'S OVER... It's over not... IT'S OVER.. It's over not...
this is not 100% mudskipper.
@@CoolSsmudskipper 🤤
Minecraft is real
I liked your last video
*IT'S FUCKING OVER AGAIN*
Imagine the amount of copium Twitter is gonna need after seeing Zestys video go viral
Watched the whole thing. Thank you for talking about this. I hope more people choose to watch it as this needs to be said
it's fucking depressing that THIS is the truth about TF2's real player count. more people really should be addressing this issue. screw the portion of the community that doesn't want people talking about issues like this, we need to spread the word.
This has been a longstanding issue and is now emblematic of just how fucked up digital right/law is nowadays, imo.
In general, we lack privacy rights and digital ownership rights, which makes 0 sense, and to top it off there's a TON of crime happening online that is going almost-completely ignored. People HAVE to be laundering money through these bots, Valve is MAKING MONEY off of it, and this would lead to worldwide controversy if it was done through non-digital means. This black market is big enough to gross millions USD collectively at this point (assuming these bots make a few years of profit before shutdown or VAC ban), or just shy of it, which means a LOT of bad-guy money is potentially getting cleaned and a LOT of scammers are bleeding honest consumers dry, taking their money out of the legitimate economy and stealing it away into the pockets of Shen Chung the vape addict who's too smart to work at the iPhone factory in China, not when he could make more money scamming people from home.
@@Supercohboy the bots are easily a billion dollar industry or greater at this point; probably large Chinese-based cheap laptop setups in a dirty warehouse somewhere in hong kong or some shit, running 60 bazillion instances of TF2 in text mode; farming items; selling them to some trading website for cash, and either laundering it, or using it to fund larger illegal activities.
What exactly it would be funding idk; some mob or mafia shit in china probably; or even the Chinese government for all we know.
Regardless; the bot farms are 100% being used for money; as to fund something.
Spread what word? We literally screamed and had huge UA-camrs talk about us until valve finally woke up and went on Twitter and STILL nothing happened, what more do you want us to do?
Zesty's just grifting here lmao because people have been bitching about the bot problem and by extension as the real cause of the problem, Valve's abandonment of TF2, for YEARS. Since before even Jungle Inferno released. No one is hiding the issue, some people have just moved on to other topics as it's sadly clear Valve won't do anything about it.
@@TheRedKing247 Pessi-ception. I am aware but even voicing out with voice and wallet does nothing anyway. Too rich to lose anything. Too ignorant to talk to their own playerbase
Don't get why no one addressed the coalmining toaster army in the room for this fucking long
Best sentence I'd never expect to hear this week
Lmao
What can the community do now that this game is starting to fall apart overtime.
They make Valve lots of money through SCM case sales
@@evagineer9165 it didn't START to fall apart
It's already been falling apart since 2016
You could make the savetf2 movement more harsh and apprehensive
Instead of screaming how much you love your house that is burning down, scream how hard it's burning down, who set it on fire and for the fire deparment to get off their arses
I seriously don't know why you get so much hate, your videos are well put together and you actually care about the game. keep up the great work, zesty!
Guts and Blackballs
There’s like 3 people in a dark room who fix bugs, there is no update, there will be no update
i dont think the 2 developers left even have much power. look at their updates. like, vs saxton hale was implemented whit vscript and is not its own thing. or when all they did was restrict free to plays instead of implementing proper solutions into the game. their updates seem to be always narrowed down to some areas. and that seems to include many areas that makes people come back to the game. i wonder why.
It's actually 2 people.
@@leafofyume7838the heart of TF2 will always be a server full of people either engaged in the game or shitposting, nonetheless people having fun. VSH and community servers, while not being the original beauty of TF2 by any means, are some of the last vestiges of the heart of it now that casual is kinda dead due to bots and alternatives being sweat central. It’s harder than ever for some kid with a cheap computer to download and fuck around on a choice of fully populated casual servers, as well as community servers that aren’t so toxic as they are now. There was a charm to those Minecraft maps back in the day but I think those are about as dead as casual in terms of the charm of TF2
When the 64 bit switch arrived, I really got my hopes high NGL. It was a huge work in the background probably. I am a bit confused on why it wasn't followed up by something. Relaunch for Macs, Source 2 "Reborn" like in Dota 2, or just additional performance boosts that are only available with the 64 bit version (precompiled functions that are not runnable on all CPUs but at least on most, and detected by the program to be runnable), like different extensions being used like SSE2+, AVX-s etc. Not to mention other advanced stuff becoming easier in the future. TBH, I kind of don't understand, why TF2 only had the 64 bit now, when the technology was there years before the game came out. I guess requiring a 64 bit OS was a bit steep back then.
2-3 people who work on TF2 on their FREE TIME!
They literally are doing it FOR FREE while actively working on OTHER PROJECTS!
I could handle hearing that most of tf2s player count is bots. I can "somewhat" handle hearing that the player boost during updates is also mostly bots. But hearing that during said updates the number of real players barely changes that is soul crushing. Its normal to hear bots coming in but to hear that real people arent that there is just sad.
Hope no weirdo comes out of the woodwork to spin this as a good thing. All the drama, hype and crash of "update-sized update", seasonal update churn and new stuff, but we are all just nearly the same ~20k people that actually engage with the game.
I thought that most where cheating though (don't ask me how it wasn't pure hell)
Devil's Advocate: The "Updates" are usually all cosmetic, and most of our F2P population dont care because they arent gonna buy cosmetics anyways. Thus theres no reason to care about the update, even if it adds the odd map or two
Every time I try it - I get classic quake problem. TF2 players are not fun to play against.
As person rarely played tf2 from time to time over more than decade it's just sad to not have guns, and play against those who cheat or simply spent years perfecting own skill. That's not fair nor fun
The last seasonal I was excited for and enjoyed was scream fortress X 2018. Every seasonal since hasn’t kept me playing more than a day.
Man tf2 is one of those games that you never stop playing but instead take long brakes
Legit been saying this but tf2 fans are so insecure that dont wanna feel like there wasting a ton of money on a dying game
There's nowhere to go that isn't either AI slop or military suckjobbing
“They hated him, because he spoke the truth” - blue soldier tf2
Sun tzu said that!
Damn, so TF2 is actually dead, and we've all been this far into copium. Rip.
"JUDAS!"
-Soldier to Scout
"Only the true disciples would listen, follow, and get change."
Red Demoman TF2
@@ziphy_6471 And i say he knows a little more about the Bible than you do pal, CAUSE HE WAS MENTIONED IN IT, and he protected it so that no living man could erase him from the bible!
man if the steam charts are a games heartbeat then tf2 is fucking flatlined 💀
It's joever
@@ziphy_6471 we are so bidone
@@thenumber24 We truly are bidone 😔
we can never go barack
TF2 is just one life support at that point
Hearing people speak about this game like its doing fine feels like being in the fucking truman show and hearing your wife advertise coffee to the walls and ceiling.
"You're not meant to feel good, you're meant to feel informed" is unironically a fantastic line.
Gonna use this in the future, cheers mate
(Props for making me enioy a video about math)
I guess Gray man finally succeeded in taking over Mann co and had his bots be the majority that plays TF2.🐱
the lore was prophetic
The real final comic was within us all along
@@a.person1805 nah this is actually poetic
@@a.person1805 Absolute cinema
Turns out the comics is not parodying reality, reality is parodying the comics
This is probably the most important video ever released about tf2 and I'm hoping it causes people to actually do something.
What’s there to do? The first savetf2 movement did not work. People tried for a second one,a third but after seeing the failure of the first one they just gave up
@@Pinkman999 Tell people to just play on community servers which have 0 problem dealing with bots
@@Pinkman999 It was mostly because the SaveTF2 movement was nothing more but the community praising how great the game is and that’s it instead of addressing the actual issues with the game at face value.
@@rowedahelicon well that won’t really make Valve work on the game,yeah maybe the aim bots will go but we will be left with like 10k people playing community servers.
Valve will have 0 incentive to do anything,not that they do now but you know
@@Pinkman999 That's the point, they don't need to work on the game. The community has the power and tools to provide content and servers. Most of the updates that come out now are just community content added into the game.
tf2 fans are the abused housewives of gaming
Dead internet theory but for games, concerning to see
A tough pill to swallow, we are NOT making it out of 2fort with this one
The unironically most reasonable option is to just cashout our entire inventories and wait for the shit to collapse due to the impending armagedon for the trading community. And after that we will have had around a year before valve pulls the plug.
@@mentlegen1632 The catch is that only the ones who cash out FIRST get away scot free. Once people start cutting and running, the market will start crashing FASTER.
@@mentlegen1632oh absolutely. If people quit trading, the bots would die out, due to the costs not bringing back anything
🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊🧊
Sooner or later, we WILL get out of 2fort, don't worry, whether you like it or not, you'll leave.
"What inspired you to become a master of digital forensics?"
Are you farmilliar with hats?
gooden
JERMA WAKE UP THEY HIT THE PENTAGON
The reason why people haven't realised It years ago is because people are confusing idle bots with in-game cheating bots. People think when we speak about bots It means the one cheating. Wrong. TF2 is not as popular as you think, just deal with it TF2 nerds.
Normalize Valve hate. This company doesn't deserve the TF2 fandom
Valve is no longer a gaming company.
They're more interested in making useless tech than any games at all.
Also, the "community" is an exageration, "group" is more fitting.
aka vieo companies are never your friend, they just wanted your money and hooked side of your personality
Unfortunately, nobody has ever read the Steam EULA.
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672
>making useless tech
>creates Valve index which in turn create Half Life Alyx
>creates Steam Deck which was globally praised by everyone to be a revolutionary tech for mobile gaming
Bait or mental retardation, call it. I'm all for calling out Valve when they actually fuck up, but to say they're making useless tech is horribly disingenious
@@JoNarDLoLz
HL: Alyz was created bcs of VR.
They didn't create a game for VR, they created it to SHOW VR.
They don't want games, they want tech demos.
Please, whatever you do, my good sir, do not delete this video. A TF2 UA-camr that I will not mention by name went as far as to interview bot hosters, to do a similar thing that you have done: bring the truth to light. He was shamed and discarded to the point of taking the video down out of fear. DO NOT TAKE THIS DOWN. You have done this community a great service by speaking what needs to be spoken about, regardless of the negative reactions you might receive from it. You've received my like for this, sir, and I wish I could give more.
Happy hunting.
why in the seven layers of hell would anyone shame someone for more or less doing an expose on one of the factors that killed the game? Is TF2’s “community” so dedicated to positivity that they’ll shoot the doctor trying to cure a patient?!
@@darthgamer9861Fun fact: People do that in Türkiye
@@darthgamer9861 Unironically, yes that is exactly the case.
@@darthgamer9861 sadly, most would rather ignore the problem than address it. thanks to guys like megascatterbomb, who do take major action, it's an encouragement for the rest of us
lon'qudor?
Wow. This is horrible... im glad this video exists, it's crazy nobody else has brought this up yet
People apparently have, multiple times. TF2 players just don't want to hear it. But it's impossible to ignore when a well respected UA-camr in the community puts out an hour long video about it.
I think bots in servers are worse than you think, and they're not all "cheater" bots.
I've noticed a lot of community servers that, when you join them, redirects you to some other server that is always mostly-full. But a majority of these "players" are bots. They don't explicitly cheat, they more or less play like a regular human. They'll type random seemingly-legit messages in chat to add credibility, but they ARE bots. Many of these servers operate under the name "fastpath" and there are tons of them.
It sounds like I'm schizoposting but this is confirmed when they all simultaneously bug out and start running into walls. And you can join the server at any hour of the day and see the names of the exact same "players", again and again. Not sure what the motivation behind this is, I would guess maybe it's just a less-obvious way to "idle" with your bots.
While this is a particularly egregious example, it would not surprise me at all if most servers are peppered with these stealthy bots.
30:37 i love how some random guy is just singlehandedly preventing all of this data from becoming lost lmao
gotta find and kiss the homie for his service
Media preservation is a necessity
He's the hero this thread needs!
Unspoken hero
Not all heros wear capes
Believe it or not, this game is no longer a game about two teams fighting each other with a small but popular economy based around hats. We are now the minority all 18,000 of us, the rest is just trading and farming bots, this is a hat trading gacha game disguised as a class based shooter, and your proof is how Valve acted with the crate depression.
That's an insult to gacha games. At least with gacha games, there is no possibility of getting money, keeping them from being gambling games. It's more like a sinister crypto-market wearing a videogame as a mask.
@@Choco____1 The best analogy i can think of is that this game has become the PC equivalent of Monopoly GO. Yeah, it's THAT bad.
Holy shit you cannot be this delusional, and I thought zesty was already bad.
It's just a glimpse into the future where every tech company wants to make a "meta verse", and you won't be playing to have fun, you will be the bot, spending time to earn a slave salary in a fake virtual economy.
@@Choco____1 Yea hol up bud lets not pretend ur precious waifu collecting gacha are fully innocent either. Sure there's no incentive to make money but all the other aspects of gambling tactics to make you lose ur money is still there.
I feel so consistently bad for the TF2 community, despite having not been a part of it for several years now. They're so dedicated, but they just don't understand how dire the state of the game is, because they're not used to playing games by developers that actually care about the game. They're right: TF2 isn't dying. TF2 is dead, and it's been puppeted around like a zombified corpse for actual years.
TF2 is a good case study for “Dead internet theory” since bots are a plague across it and many social media sites
Team Fortress 2, "The most fun nobody's having online."
Nah, TF2 is fun
Nah, TF2 is fun
@@ziphy_6471 that's not the point, cope
@@ziphy_6471not if nobody's playing it
@@ziphy_6471PFP checks out, cope
I think people are so depressed about the cheater bots, the positively is a coping shield.
I'm not coping tho
@@somedesertdude1308 If your watching Zesty your not the kind of person im talking about.
in actuality, its odd that we are surprised by this. well, at least i was surprised... despite how obvious it was. kinda shows how desperately we grasp at the thinnest of hope straws.
@@D-N-0 I think its because the game feels like theres more people.
@@D-N-0 I'm not sure it's odd, considering how many people don't really understand how to view and interpret data, let alone the analytics that TF2's community has come up with the be able to analyze the situation. Tbh, the size of the current actual playerbase isn't even actually that bad (I'm honestly impressed it's as high as it is under the current circumstances of the game), and the number Zesty came up with definitely feels pretty accurate for how many real players there are
I quit january this year after playing since 2015. I had a ton of war paints, several australiums, and even an unusual which was my first unusual that I got in 2023. But near the end of 2023 I realized that it wasn't going to be fixed because the bots at some recent point started to make their own custom steam profiles; names, profile pics, etc. There would be like 20 bots on your team as opposed to the couple bots that were just chat spammers in like 2021 or so. I was never one for community servers either, they just never felt like real matches to me. The bots got so much worse in just a year or two and it got to a point where I was like enough is enough, I'm just counting kills on a fake gun, this isn't worth my time. But it was still heartbreaking because I really used to love getting home from school and hopping on, and now it's a ghost town pretending it isn't.
Mannn, as a newbie that’s been playing since august, it’s the most brutal welcoming to a game I’ve ever had for any game I’ll ever play
But yet, I still play the game a lot, even if I must accept I’m walking in a ruined kingdom, because when every negative aspect is no longer there, it’s one of the most fun shooters you’ll ever play
It’s like, I want to keep playing but I have no reason to