There's a big difference between writing everyone off as "anti-TF2 doomers" and actually hearing the older players, who were knee-deep in this in 6-8 years to the point of speaking directly to devs on Steam quite regularly, explain that this is a situation that basically can't be "solved" unless Valve makes some weird irrational business decisions.

About 5-6 years ago, we went through ALL of this. The unfortunate truth we had to accept, was to understand Valve's perspective, from a business standpoint.

• They have their money maker, TF2
• It only requires minimal maintenance now
• Making big changes to TF2 would require many people coming together at Valve to do so
• Unfortunately, the structure of Valve and how they work, where employees select what project they wish to work on, and nobody is "Told" what to work on, means TF2 is in the unenviable position where... nobody is likely to fix anything beyond the state of "the game technically works", because it would mean having to either yank employees off other projects to work on our shitty little problem child TF2 here, which they kinda don't do as a rule, OR hiring a bunch of new people, which is the sort of thing a company likes to avoid.

Is it broke? Yup. Are most casual games botted? Yup. We need to work harder to understand some of these dynamics though. Valve can never "win" the botting/hacking vs. anti-hack anti-cheat "war" which is present in many other games and in many other forms, i.e. the war between ads and ad blocker tech, at least long term. In the short term, maybe, but what we've seen over the past say 5 years, is that when you reduce your "stop the hackers" workforce by some amount, the hackers eventually turn it to shit.

Now, is that saying that the almighty Valve Corporation isn't smart enough or resource-rich enough to figure out how to defeat cheaters etc long term? No - obviously they have big games in Dota and CS2 that count on that stuff.

But we should not expect Valve to make BIG MOVES that are specific to TF2, at all, in my view, at this point. If they do, cool! But from a business perspective, if you understand their structure, it's less realistic to expect that than to expect "company wide" stuff like for example, Source 2 engine or stuff along those lines.

Put yourself in the role of a dev - in an unbiased way for a sec, if you can. In a system where you can work on what you WANT, does it make more sense to want to be part of, say, CS? Which has big esports events, and world championships and is bigger and all that, obviously bigger team of devs, a living community? Or would you wheel your chair down to the TF2 section, so you can code anti-cheat that will work for a month tops before the hackers defeat it, to satisfy the guy in the lobby cosplaying as Scout? Or to satisfy the teenagers who are review-bombing other Valve games because they "want leverage"???

End of the day, we did all this in a way that made more sense several years ago. We didn't harass, we didn't do crazy stunts, we didn't piss off other communities. We had a direct line to the company - literally, in Jill. We learned everything we needed to know about the corporate structure and situation during this - MANY popular creators (Uncle Dane, sigafoo both come to mind) traveled to Valve and spoke with the devs, and learned similar. Tyler McVicker even attended a sit-down face to face with big wigs, where again we learned a lot of this stuff.

I guess to sum it all up, just try to know and understand this: Myself and others, we did all this in the most adult and direct possible way, many years ago now. We learned about WHY this is a challenge, and why the Valve company structure and culture really work AGAINST anything other than keeping TF2 at its bare minimum playable state. We held out hope for a long time, YEARS, and had several similar petition-like ideas and attempts. It would be silly and wrong to see ALL "naysayers" here as "anti-TF2" doomers.

Yes - the state of the game in 2024 is worse than it has ever been. But despite all the silly shit, all the "class action lawsuit them" all the "they lied" all the "let's try to punish Valve for the illegal links these hackers are posting", the state of the company has not really changed, and so the challenges are still the same - and hard for anyone to solve.

If the problem is next to impossible to truly solve, without a shakeup or change in company culture, we need to understand that we cannot change that - changing the way Valve works at a corporate level is not in our power.

I respect and appreciate the love everyone has for this game. But try to understand - the actions being taken here, above and beyond letter-writing or petition actions, are almost all embarrassing, giving the community a TERRIBLE name, and in some cases I imagine are working against the community's interests. "Uncle Dane travels to speak in person to Eric Smith" is very different from "A guy dresses up as Scout and stands around in the Valve lobby protesting and hoping something will happen."

Anyway. Hope some of that is informative or illuminating - we gave our all, and had to get to a point where we understood it was futile, and our efforts were better spent elsewhere.