"It's sad to see them just rot": Ludwig shares his take on the issue with Valve's Team Fortress 2

Ludwig, one of the biggest names on YouTube, recently sat down to chat about Team Fortress 2 and how Valve is letting one of their most popular creations die out. This came about as a result of the #savetf2 trend on Twitter. Many fans of the series have come out to show their love for the franchise, hoping to see it improve. The game is currently being overrun by cheaters and bots, ruining the fun.

“It’s sad to see them just rot and steal the souls of the people who put so many hours into the game.”

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Team Fortress 2 is being left to rot by Valve, and Ludwig is voicing his concern for the same

At first, Ludwig just complained about the time he spends on Twitter, but then switched it up, talking about the hashtag savetf2, which is growing in popularity on the platform. The trend on Twitter was focused on getting attention to the game, in the hopes Valve will fix some of its problems.

“My first question is, how old is this game? I feel like I heard about this game a decade ago. Turns out, 15 years old, and there are people who still play this.”

Ludwig was not surprised by the information because he is a former Smash Bros. Melee fan, which has way fewer active fans than Team Fortress 2.

“That got me thinkin’. What is the major problem? What are people having beef with, and what’s wrong with TF2, and it turns out the answer is simple, bots. The game is rampant with bots.”

Back in 2020, there were roughly 80,000 people playing TF2 everyday, according to an article Ludwig was reading. Even back then, there was a problem with bots plaguing games, and Valve at the time was doing nothing about it.

The same year the source code leaked was the same year the bots started showing up. Even to this day, bots are ruining the game.

“This month, there was a post about how trading isn’t safe! You can’t even trade the s**t that makes Valve sweet, sweet money, all those little keys they get little dollars on, because there’s an exploit!”

Ludwig shared a video from YouTuber OrangeGlazer, who highlighted the problem in about a minute. He discussed the bot issue in detail, and though Valve has known about it for years, they have done nothing about it.

The streamer is all too familiar with cheaters in online games, but he was blown away that people were just creating bots to cheat with, instead of playing the game and cheating as themselves.

People just want the game to be playable, and the YouTuber definitely understands that. He watched another video about how the DOTA 2 fanbase complained on the internet until there was a Diretide event added one year. The point of the video was that maybe this should happen again, to get some changes made for Team Fortress 2.

“I don’t think wanting the game to be playable is Karening, in any sense of the word. It’s the minimum expectation you should have for your game developer.”

The video wound up leading to the hashtag “SaveTF2”, and even one of the game’s voice actors reportedly reached out to Valve about it. The movement hit Reddit, where it blew up, leading to the #SaveTF2 movement hitting Twitter en masse.

Ludwig said that even if people don’t care about Team Fortress 2, they should respect that without it, many popular creators on Twitch would not have gotten their start.

However, there is good news for fans. Towards the end of Ludwig’s video, he highlighted the Team Fortress 2 tweet that said the developers are looking to improve things following the fans’ criticisms. Ludwig's final words may have come from a meme post, but they still ring true.

“Even if the effort is fruitless, there ain’t no shame in tryin."

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Ludwig’s community and Twitter respond to Team Fortress 2’s ongoing crisis

The Team Fortress 2 community has overwhelmed the internet with love and appreciation for the game. Ludwig’s own community talked about why they love the game in the comments section, highlighting their own experiences. Some also talked about the origins of the bots. While they did not start at the source code leak, that did make the problem worse.

The streamer's comment section talks about the days when TF2 was playable (Image via Mogul Mail/YouTube)

Others were confused as to why Valve and Nintendo would do things like this, despite being powerful companies.

Why do these things happen? YouTube commenters discussed this as well (Image via YouTube)

On Twitter, fans talked about the game, dropped memes, and kept the #savetf2 movement going.

Even other classic online games kept the hashtag alive, such as Payday 2. Voice actors, streamers, and others also spoke on what Team Fortress means to them.

Fans will just have to wait and see what, if Valve does anything about the game. Regardless, the community has made its opinion very clear: Valve needs to save Team Fortress 2. Although Ludwig did not start this movement, he was instrumental in getting the message out through his platform.