Team Fortress 2’s Summer Update Makes ‘Security and Stability Improvements’ — and Fans Are Hoping the Bots Are Gone for Good [IGN]

Valve has released Team Fortress 2’s big Summer 2024 update, leaving fans hopeful that it builds upon recent efforts to combat the game’s bot problem.

The Team Fortress 2 community came together in June in an attempt to brute-force Valve into fixing a bot problem that had plagued the game for years.

Disgruntled players of the near 17-year-old hero shooter, which remains one of the most-played games on Steam, caused Team Fortress 2’s Steam user review rating to plummet to ‘mostly negative,’ with pretty much all the comments about bots.

Valve released a banwave that appeared to stamp out Team Fortress 2’s bot problem, and published a no-nonsense FAQ outlining its tough stance on the matter. Recent Steam reviews recovered to ‘mixed’, and players praised Valve for taking action.

Now, Valve has released Team Fortress 2’s summer update, and while it includes expected content such as community-made maps, cosmetics, and effects, there’s also an vague line in the patch notes that’s left fans hopeful that the troublesome bots are gone for good: “Security and stability improvements.”

While Valve failed to detail exactly what these improvements involved, the hope is the developer has built upon the good work done last month to keep Team Fortress 2’s bots at bay.

Valve continues to operate the likes of Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. Meanwhile, gameplay leaks have revealed Valve’s alleged next game, Deadlock.

Valve’s last developed game to release was competitive first-person shooter Counter-Strike 2, which effectively replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Before that, in 2020, Valve released Half-Life: Alyx exclusively for virtual reality headsets. Valve has also released a Dota-themed digital card game called Artifact and a Dota auto chess game called Dota Underlords, although both failed to find as big of an audience as the company’s previous titles.

All the while, the wait for Half-Life 3 continues. Back in 2020, a making-of for Half-Life: Alyx revealed a swathe of games developed and shelved by Valve between the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Valve’s latest VR game. That list included details on a version of Half-Life 3 that was in development for around a year, and an open-world Left 4 Dead 3.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.