Team Fortress 2 fans are coordinating on social media to put pressure on the game’s publisher, Valve, to ‘fix’ the title and make it playable again. According to a popular image circulating online, the game is currently in an ‘unplayable state’ and both players and creators have come together to ask Valve to fix it.

According to reports on the issue, problems with Team Fortress 2 range from a bot invasion to a slew of hateful messages being sent to players. Valve have never been overly pro-active when it comes to toxic behaviour in game, but it seems as though issues in Team Fortress 2 have reached heights not seen in other titles.

Now though, the campaign is beginning to gather steam on social media, and the pressure on Valve will increase, but with the game having gone free-to-play recently, there may not be a huge amount of motivation to act unless the players affected can create a situation where Valve feel there is potential for financial and reputational damage.

TF2 has had problems for over a year

The campaign began with a slew of emails sent to gaming outlets after a YouTuber known as SquimJim made the video below, titled “Maybe It’s Time We Get Valve To Do Something About TF2” which was posted on May 7. In it, he claims he actually made the thumbnail for the video over a year prior to posting, to demonstrate just how long this problem has existed, which lines up with other reports from players.

He also encouraged his viewers, of whom nearly 180k have already watched the video, to put pressure on Valve via email, as well as emailing large outlets like IGN to bring the attention they want to the topic. This clearly had some success, with #SaveTF2 trending today, May 25, although Valve are yet to respond. 

The Half-Life makers are far from the only company to face such pressure, with Titanfall 2 makers Respawn seeing their battle royale title Apex Legends hacked by players wanting the company to fix issues with Titanfall games. So far this has not resulted in any meaningful positive change for that player base.