In a gaming world dominated by constantly evolving battle royales and innovative multiplayer shooters, it’s hard to believe that a game likeTeam Fortress 2sits at the top of any players' game list. Granted,Team Fortress 2is a multiplayer FPS itself, though it’s also been 14 years since release. While receiving updates here and there,Team Fortress 2gradually lost its player count, though it has spiked on occasion. Such a thing occurred this weekend when the competitive shooter broke its Steam record for all-time concurrent players.
To be fair,Team Fortress 2is arguably the progenitor for a lot of multiplayer games seen today. That Valve has supported the FPS with updates and cosmetics speaks to its longevity as an entertaining experience. That’s not to mention the fact thatTeam Fortress 2has an abundance of mods and player-made servers that vastly enhance the number of activities players can involve themselves in. All of these serve as credible reasons as to why the player count spiked, though, on the other hand,Team Fortress 2has been dealing with a bot problemfor quite some time as well.
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Over the weekend, it was reported thatTeam Fortress 2was hitting an all-time high in concurrent player count on Steam. The multiplayer shooter reached a grand total of 151,253 players, topping last December’s record of 147,360. Althoughthe bot issues have been one many players have dealt with, Valve’s recently released Summer 2021 Cosmetic Case may also explain the sudden surge in players.
Additionally, theTeam Fortress 2Snakewater map saw a few tweaks that improved general movement and prevented clipping. Despite also tackling the bot problem, it’s clear that the update hardly made a dent in that regard. In fact,Team Fortress 2bots returned one day after the update, making it virtually moot. Even if Valve continues to update the game after this, one thing is for sure: it’ll need a more permanent solution to address the growing number of bots.
This wouldn’t be the first time thatTeam Fortress 2saw a massive spike in playersthat could possibly be tied to bots. Back in October 2020 during theScream Fortress XII Halloweenevent, the game spiked to roughly 130,000 concurrent players. However, it was later revealed that only 25,000 were non-bot players. The bot controversy has only grown since then and while it would seem that Valve has made some headway in implementing a fix, it still has a long way to go.
Team Fortress 2is available now on PC.
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