TF2: Nobody's Home 

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.

I have "voice communication is not avaliable for this account" and i must scream

Sorry guys I accidentally left my 50 thousand computers idling on the main menu of TF2

Dang. He just cut off the copium the community has been taking for years.

Turns out, the growth was a tumor. Damn.

2012: Mann vs Machine 2024: Machine

i cant believe tf2 predicted tf2 being overrun with bots thats crazy man

I thought I was gonna get a quick description of TF2‘s declining popularity, turns out I got a extensive lesson in data analytics

Why does this feel like someone examining a sick animal?

No wonder Pyrocynical comes back to TF2 on streams, the player numbers there are VERY inflated...

People called me crazy when i pointed this out a few years ago

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.

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 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.

Never ask... ... a man, his salary. ... a woman, her age. ... a TF2 player, to select all squares with bicycles.

watching this feels like looking at a pet who hasnt been doing well, but still looks fat, full of life, so at least theres that, and watching them at the vet, and the vet showing me that all that fat was really parasites. worms infecting their flesh.

I have a friend to whom i introduced TF2 a month ago, when we hopped in a match (which was of course filled with bots) he thought that they were super good players, after explaining to him the problem and queuing for 15 mins to find a good lobby he said that he cant bother about the state of the game and that he will not play again, which he did

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.

"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."

JERMA WAKE UP THEY HIT THE PENTAGON

" To anyone who calls this 'treadmill work' [BLEEP] off- " Couldn't have put it better myself, Zest. I hate hearing that phrase, because even outside of jobs and careers, pretty much EVERYTHING can be boiled down to that. One could even call shaving their face or legs "treadmill work" because its just gonna grow back, or mowing the lawn, or changing the oil in your car. It's called MAINTENANCE. If you take no effort to *maintain* something at all, it falls into disrepair. People seem to think these days that the requirement of maintenance is a sign of a bad product when that's just not true. They seem to think that something is only "good" if it runs all the time, with absolutely zero maintaining work done upon it. This is factually incorrect. Most high-end machines and systems require constant maintenance. There's probably not gonna be a quick-fix solution where we "solve" this issue overnight but unless massive amounts of research and development are done in the effort of anti-botting systems (maybe AI-learning to track and ban bot clients but idk) then every single website and game in the world will become openly weak to botnets and botters.

in just 9 hours, twice as many people have watched this video as there are people concurrently playing tf2.

got banned from r/tf2 for pointing it out a year ago lol

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.

true crime youtubers describing real life murder vs ZestyJesus describing tf2's botted playercount (spooky asf)

Name one other game community where ranking virtual skins is toxic and problematic behaviour lmao

All those jokes about TF2 being on life support is true after all. TF2 activity graph indeed looks like constant cardiac arrest...

"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)

The TF2 has fallen. Billions must get telefragged

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.

This is the reality check that the community desperately needed

As someone who is on the backend of trading, I can 100% confirm the botnet idling we've known about that for years. I get cases/weaps from some of them myself, but I had no idea the extent of numbers.

amusingly, it would probably be in valve's disinterest to ban idlers or represent the data more accurately, for the panic it would cause

This video is the 9/11 for tf2 players

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.

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.

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 a 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.

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.

Dead internet theory

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.

sad to think that my giftapult gift probably went to some bot

> One of favourite youtubers finally uploads after months! > Watch the video > Depression

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.

I am not a TF2 player but this was so well put together I sat through all of it

Nah bro I'm sure there's just 10-20 thousand people in a hive mind who get on and off at the same time. :P

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.

“Casual is a casualty and complaining is a crime” -hintshot, like 4 days ago

I find it funny how some people in the community refuse to acknowledge how severe the bot crisis is. The community treats it like the saying “there is no war in ba sing se” “There is not bot crisis in tf2”

THEY HATED JESUS BECAUSE HE TOLD THEM THE TRUTH --- Zesty Jesus has literaly been screaming about few things , people ignore him at first , but then ALL of them became highly mainstream , following were ---- --- nerf sniper --- preservation of the beautiful tf2's cartoony artstyle and graphics and team recognition , and game modes to be added IF they match main tf2 game modes -- large amount of idle trade bots

Absolutely killed r/tf2 users with this one, despite being a member, ngl they have been very delusional regarding valve and bots.

tf2 is literally evidence of dead internet theory and it’s pissing me off

The video that single-handedly put the entire community on suicide watch.

Watched the whole thing. Thank you for talking about this. I hope more people choose to watch it as this needs to be said

“Speak with your mouths and with your wallets” *screams in voice communication is not available for this account*

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.

Man tf2 is one of those games that you never stop playing but instead take long brakes

there is only one solution to this, and it's sad to say you can't have a free game with an economy, you have to make the game cost real money to play $5-$10. Make it unprofitable for the botters and they'll fuck off

It's over...

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...

For your next video, you should discuss the toxic positivity of the TF2 community. They need to hear this.

For me this video has the same vibe as documentary about chernobyl.

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.

I am 100% convinced that the TF2 "Fanbase" are just people that consume the game through reddit and twitter

All the views on TF2 videos are people waiting for Valve to come back and fix it. There's so many of us.

This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism we need more of.

The analogy of a beating heart introduced at the start of the video personified tf2's state in a genuinely touching and sad way.

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.

Fucking vindicated, I quit this game for OW 4 years ago because of this problem, and I got shit on by TF2 players for even mentioning it. Kinda sucks seeing a game I grew up with be reduced to such a state, but I hope this is going to shake the delusional stance that remaining players have, and to at least try to do something.

Community That Thought They Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope They Didn't Even Know They Still Had

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.

"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

well that explains the market oversaturation

been saying this shit for 3-ish years, no one took me seriously and look where we are now

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.

IT'S OVER... It's over not... IT'S OVER.. It's over not...

the house x tf2 intro is a banger wtf

TF2 soldier called this when he said "Unless it's a FARM!"

There's so many playercount inflations, Pyrocynical would go crazy

Don't get why no one addressed the coalmining toaster army in the room for this fucking long

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.

Also, the bit about Unturned is also why the more recent updates have been all focused in singleplayer experiences The latest update that SDG released, '3.24.3.0: Escalation' is entirely a singleplayer focused update, just like how '3.23.10.0: Buak', '3.23.5.0: Arctic (April Fools)' and '3.22.21.0: Polaris'

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

There’s like 3 people in a dark room who fix bugs, there is no update, there will be no update

The lights are flickering, there's a roach infestation, and the ceiling is caving in, but nobody's home.

20:19 That Jerma unusual effect had me checking my sanity

“They hated him, because he spoke the truth” - blue soldier tf2

"no one talks about the bots!" there is no war in ba sing se

why is 32:50 the most viewed part of this great 1 hour long video, huh?

the little devil kinda hot ngl

Normalize Valve hate. This company doesn't deserve the TF2 fandom

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.

the video that made most people not delusional anymore

Hey Zesty, this is your best video yet! Thank you for making such a great piece addressing the issue.

This is probably the most important video ever released about tf2 and I'm hoping it causes people to actually do something.

A microcosm of the dead internet theory, shit’s chilling

At this point if anyone defends this, they are literally a bot

This is the case for steam as a whole. Steam’s increasing player profiles do not correspond to an equal amount of players in every game. There’s bots everywhere, idling everything and anything.

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.

Please, whatever you do, my good sir, do not delete this video. A TF2 RU-vidr 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.

TF2's biggest fans have never played the game