Team Fortress 2 Becomes First Valve Game to Hit ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ on Steam
If you’ve ever bought Steam accounts for sale, chances are pretty high that it also had Team Fortress 2 attached to it. This highly regarded free FPS was the ‘hero’ shooter for a while. We are pretty sure that Blizzard got many of their ideas for Overwatch from it. Even now, well over a decade after release, people love Team Fortress 2, and it has thousands of active players each day. However, it has recently become the very first Valve-produced game to hit ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ in Steam reviews. Does this mean that it is terrible?
It’s a Protest
Team Fortress 2 is a great game. We all know that. The gameplay hasn’t magically changed in the last five years or so. In fact, Team Fortress 2 barely gets any updates nowadays beyond a couple of bug fixes. However, Team Fortress 2 fans have had enough.
Team Fortress 2 is completely overrun by bots if you’re in the matchmaking. In fact, chances are that it’d be pure bots. Recently, bots have been developed that kick all non-bots out of the game. It’s not a very pleasant playing experience although, thankfully, if you play on the community servers (the one individual players pay for), then you’re fine.
The problem is that Valve knows about these bots, but is doing absolutely nothing to get rid of them from the game. The only updates Valve seems to add are one that will bring them money in (basically, microtransaction hats, as the game has now become known for), and players don’t think this is right. They think that if the game is making money, it should be updated.
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So, many Team Fortress 2 fans have decided that the best course of action is to leave a ton of negative reviews on the Team Fortress 2 page in the hope that the game that they love is made playable again. They felt that it is the only way that they could possibly reach out to the team at Valve. Before long, hundreds and hundreds of people started to do the same, and the review score on Team Fortress 2 plummeted to ‘overwhelmingly negative’, and it looks like it’ll be staying there for the foreseeable future.
How Will Valve Act?
Truth be told – we doubt they’ll end up doing much. The code for Team Fortress 2 is old. While they may tinker around with it for a bit to try and get rid of bots, we doubt they’ll be able to do anything that the reviewers hope they’ll do. So, the review score will remain low. You may get a quick note from Valve saying they are trying to fix it but, honestly, it won’t ever be fixed. It’s a great shame too, since Team Fortress 2 is fun. Thankfully, those community servers remain.
Still, at least you can still buy a Steam gift card online to continue to buy hats in the game. That part is fun!