Did Valve ban 70-100k trading bots?

[k4far]

I noticed the player count has fallen today. Does anyone have any information regarding this or is it due to some maintenance?

[Karam]

Could be the bots going down for maintenance to prepare for the summer update, or it could be another valve W.

Bots have a limited amount of drops they can make in a week just like us, so they may be bringing them offline so once the update drops, then they can boot them back up and have them start collecting summer 2024 cases to sell for big bucks

[k4far]

These idling bots are not harmless, they are extracting the value by flooding the market with inorganically farmed cases. #SaveTF2, #FIXTF2 should now focus their efforts on getting Valve attention to ban for farming content update cases via idling bots. The value that should go to the players and is instead going to bot hosters.

[A Distinctive Lack of Hoes]

Steam went down for a few minutes and so did the idle bots. The playercount after steam went back up was 45k for about 10 mins until the idle bots started up again.

[k4far]

Originally posted by imo:

Steam went down for a few minutes and so did the idle bots. The playercount after steam went back up was 45k for about 10 mins until the idle bots started up again.

I am referring to a different phenomenon

The player count was reaching 150k and it halved

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Originally posted by k4far:

These idling bots are not harmless, they are extracting the value by flooding the market with inorganically farmed cases. #SaveTF2, #FIXTF2 should now focus their efforts on getting Valve attention to ban for farming content update cases via idling bots. The value that should go to the players and is instead going to bot hosters.

There is nothing VALVe can do, even CS2 has case farmers, and VALVe often bans them.
It doesn't make any change.
And worse part is, unlike TF2 they have to pay moneyy to trade. So each bot costs 5$ and there are thousands of them.
I wonder what those chinese case farmers thinking sometimes.

But considering their monthly income is about 100k or 600k $, it's nothing.

[k4far]

Originally posted by Lady Alcina Dimitrescu:

Originally posted by k4far:

These idling bots are not harmless, they are extracting the value by flooding the market with inorganically farmed cases. #SaveTF2, #FIXTF2 should now focus their efforts on getting Valve attention to ban for farming content update cases via idling bots. The value that should go to the players and is instead going to bot hosters.

There is nothing VALVe can do, even CS2 has case farmers, and VALVe often bans them.
It doesn't make any change.
And worse part is, unlike TF2 they have to pay moneyy to trade. So each bot costs 5$ and there are thousands of them.
I wonder what those chinese case farmers thinking sometimes.

But considering their monthly income is about 100k or 600k $, it's nothing.

I do not recall case farmers in TF2 ever getting banned maybe its just me

It seems like a good time to ban all of the idle bots who went offline today

At least try to deny them some revenue from idle botting

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Originally posted by k4far:

Originally posted by Lady Alcina Dimitrescu:

There is nothing VALVe can do, even CS2 has case farmers, and VALVe often bans them.
It doesn't make any change.
And worse part is, unlike TF2 they have to pay moneyy to trade. So each bot costs 5$ and there are thousands of them.
I wonder what those chinese case farmers thinking sometimes.

But considering their monthly income is about 100k or 600k $, it's nothing.

I do not recall case farmers in TF2 ever getting banned maybe its just me

It seems like a good time to ban all of the idle bots who went offline today

At least try to deny them some revenue from idle botting

I mean I do agree with you, but VALVe wouldn't do it

It hurts their economy more than us tbh.

[LEVK1NG #fixtf2]

yes

[SkullKid0155]

Originally posted by Karam:

Could be the bots going down for maintenance to prepare for the summer update, or it could be another valve W.

Bots have a limited amount of drops they can make in a week just like us, so they may be bringing them offline so once the update drops, then they can boot them back up and have them start collecting summer 2024 cases to sell for big bucks

Valid. Valve is unlikely to do anything about the trading bots unless we explicitly mention them as well.

[A Distinctive Lack of Hoes]

Originally posted by SkullKid0155 #FixTF2:

Originally posted by Karam:

Could be the bots going down for maintenance to prepare for the summer update, or it could be another valve W.

Bots have a limited amount of drops they can make in a week just like us, so they may be bringing them offline so once the update drops, then they can boot them back up and have them start collecting summer 2024 cases to sell for big bucks

Valid. Valve is unlikely to do anything about the trading bots unless we explicitly mention them as well.

It would be much harder to make an argument against these idle bots as they do not affect the game directly, rather it's economy which is still more or less fine even with them here.
If it weren't for them, most items would probably cost much more. They affect Valve mostly, since without them cases would cost more ergo more revenue for them.
I agree that Valve should take action against these bad actors but I just don't see them doing it.
In the past there were ban waves against them, but they came back quite quickly (see Uncle Dane Valve visit video where he talks a bit about this issue).

[k4far]

Originally posted by imo:

Originally posted by SkullKid0155 #FixTF2:

Valid. Valve is unlikely to do anything about the trading bots unless we explicitly mention them as well.

It would be much harder to make an argument against these idle bots as they do not affect the game directly, rather it's economy which is still more or less fine even with them here.
If it weren't for them, most items would probably cost much more. They affect Valve mostly, since without them cases would cost more ergo more revenue for them.
I agree that Valve should take action against these bad actors but I just don't see them doing it.
In the past there were ban waves against them, but they came back quite quickly (see Uncle Dane Valve visit video where he talks a bit about this issue).

Not really, the idle bots are stealing from organic players. Update drops they get the most cases immediately flood the market with it and tank the price. Organic players do not get to sell those cases whilst the price still has not collapsed.

[A Distinctive Lack of Hoes]

Originally posted by k4far:

Originally posted by imo:

It would be much harder to make an argument against these idle bots as they do not affect the game directly, rather it's economy which is still more or less fine even with them here.
If it weren't for them, most items would probably cost much more. They affect Valve mostly, since without them cases would cost more ergo more revenue for them.
I agree that Valve should take action against these bad actors but I just don't see them doing it.
In the past there were ban waves against them, but they came back quite quickly (see Uncle Dane Valve visit video where he talks a bit about this issue).

Not really, the idle bots are stealing from organic players. Update drops they get the most cases immediately flood the market with it and tank the price. Organic players do not get to sell those cases whilst the price still has not collapsed.

Significantly less cases available = Significantly higher case/item prices. That would probably hurt the average player looking to buy a cosmetic from let's say the latest case.
I still want them banned however I am just pointing out that there's nothing we can really do against these bad actors. It's entirely up to Valve to take action, whereas with the bots we were able to start a petition and bring attention to it since it was a major issue that made the game unplayable. This is not as significant unfortunately, therefore the same method wouldn't work against them as it did with the automated cheater bots.

[Guilion]

I don't think they did unless the hosters of trade bots were also using them to farm items.
Trade bots don't work the same way as in-game bots and only require an online steam account that doesn't require to be in-game and doesn't add to the in-game count. There is a guide on how to set one up somewhere in the guides section.

[A Distinctive Lack of Hoes]

Originally posted by imo:

Originally posted by k4far:

Not really, the idle bots are stealing from organic players. Update drops they get the most cases immediately flood the market with it and tank the price. Organic players do not get to sell those cases whilst the price still has not collapsed.

Significantly less cases available = Significantly higher case/item prices. That would probably hurt the average player looking to buy a cosmetic from let's say the latest case.
I still want them banned however I am just pointing out that there's nothing we can really do against these bad actors. It's entirely up to Valve to take action, whereas with the bots we were able to start a petition and bring attention to it since it was a major issue that made the game unplayable. This is not as significant unfortunately, therefore the same method wouldn't work against them as it did with the automated cheater bots.

Adding to this, the best solution against these bad actors that take advantage of TF's free economy. would be to restrict item drops to seasonal contracts or casual level up drops. This would make the bots much harder to run in such high quantities and would result in a healthy economy for the game. On top of these, they could also remove any form of item drops in while not in a server and add certain restrictions to how the game needs to behave to connect to a server ( so that bots can't go on community servers while in a low power text mode and idle for weapons).
I hope at some point Valve does the same to them as they did to the automated cheater bots.

[A Distinctive Lack of Hoes]

Originally posted by Guilion:

I don't think they did unless the hosters of trade bots were also using them to farm items.
Trade bots don't work the same way as in-game bots and only require an online steam account that doesn't require to be in-game and doesn't add to the in-game count. There is a guide on how to set one up somewhere in the guides section.

Some trading bots do have TF "open" 24/7, but I doubt their number is high enough to really influence TF's playercount that much.