KEY POINTS

  • "Team Fortress 2" breached the 150,000 concurrent player mark after the latest patch
  • The patch introduced new cosmetics and anti-bot features
  • Bots are still present but are less prominent now, according to players

Even after 14 years, Valve’s free-to-play team-based shooter “Team Fortress 2” is still attracting players by the droves. The game has had a steady stream of players since its release but recently, “TF2” just broke its record for most players online since its launch.

A spike in “Team Fortress 2’s” player count was observed shortly after Valve released a summer update for the game, according to EuroGamer. This bump in concurrent players caused “Team Fortress 2’s” to breach its previous peak player record to a new high of over 150,000, which is an impressive feat for an old online game.

“Team Fortress 2’s” new summer update added new community-made cosmetics, quality of life improvements and sweeping security changes to fight the large amount of bots plaguing servers.

Team Fortress 2 is a team-based shooter based off a classic Half-Life mod
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based shooter based off a classic Half-Life mod Valve

The strong presence of third-party bots in “TF2” lobbies is one of the game’s biggest pain points; bots can block players from entering matches and ruin the actual in-game experience. Valve has been trying to deal with the rampancy of bots for years and this time, they may have just dealt both makers and users a huge blow.

Changes to the game’s commonly abused systems were implemented in the summer patch, preventing bots from avoiding detection and allowing players to take matters into their own hands, PC Gamer reported. The official patch notes were deliberately vague about what these changes are to prevent bot makers from working around them. A few notable changes include stricter vote-kick rules and the removal of mid-game name changes.

However, the new changes broke mods, rendering custom servers unplayable. Fans won’t be able to use any mods for “Team Fortress 2” unless the mods in question are updated by their respective authors.

Unfortunately, this patch does not completely solve the bot problem in the game and it’s likely that a sizable chunk of the player count is still made up of non-human players. But player reception of the patch in the “Team Fortress 2” subreddit has been generally positive despite its flaws.

“Team Fortress 2” hasn’t had a major update in months, but Valve is still supporting the game via small patches with bug fixes and other similar changes, which ultimately sustained the game for decades.

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