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Team Fortress 2's big new update has cracked down on bots messing with the game

There are not only new built-in settings, but also variable settings built to limit the issues caused by bots in the latest Team Fortress 2 update.

TJ Denzer

June 24, 2021 8:52 AM

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Over 13 years and still going kicking about, Team Fortress 2 has just gotten another big update after a several month drought in improvements to the game and this one’s a doozy. Team Fortress 2 has long been infested with bots that mess with various aspects of the game, one of them being votes. The latest update not only makes some tasteful quality-of-life improvements, but also heavily limits bot influence in casual play, something the community has seemingly been rather happy with.

The new patch for Team Fortress 2 rolled out on June 22, 2021, alongside a hefty set of patch notes to go along with it. Perhaps the biggest headline to this update is the inclusion of new security fixes that targets bot influence. Outside of an “numerous security and stability improvements” line, there are also new rules to stop vote spamming. Now, players that join a match in-progress must wait 5 minutes by default to start. Moreover, if a player in a vote kick leaves the server, it will automatically pass the vote, and now, vote kick dialog shows how many times a player has connected to the server and server owners can set rules on name changes.

In addition to the in-progress vote cooldowns, vote kick improvements, name change settings, and security improvements, Team Fortress 2’s new update also features official inclusion of 18 new community-contributed items and 6 new community-created unusual effects in the Summer 2021 Cosmetic Case, the Steam Workshop items of which have been compiled on Reddit.

So far, the changes to Team Fortress 2 are well accepted by the fans and proving to work for the time being. It will remain to be seen if bot makers work their way around the changes, but for the time being, it seems casual play in TF2 is bashing the bots harder than it has in a long while.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.