Over 340,000 Group Fortress gamers have amassed as a part of the continued #SaveTF2 marketing campaign, lending their signatures to an anti-bot petition that has now been lovingly assembled right into a hardback tome and hand-delivered to Valve’s places of work in Washington.
#SaveTF2 was born in 2022, amid a bot scenario so extreme, it was threatening to make Valve’s traditional team-based shooter actually unplayable. The group confronted day by day battle bots utilizing game-ruining hacks, racist usernames, disruptive noises in voice chat, and worse – and with Valve doing little to assist, gamers even took to preventing bots with bots of their very own.
Fortunately, although, the group’s first orchestrated #SaveTF2 marketing campaign was successful, drawing Valve’s consideration and a pledge it was “working to enhance issues”. That promise culminated in a mass bot ban, however the nuisances ultimately returned – resulting in a second #SaveTF2 marketing campaign in 2024, this time within the type of a petition calling for the sport’s “persistent and steady repairs” to make sure these naughty bots stay in examine.
And spherical two of the marketing campaign has had a equally optimistic impact, with Valve initiating one other wave of bot bans earlier this yr. However with the petition ultimately attracting over 343,700 signatures, its creator – YouTube TheWhat – determined it might need extra of an influence in bodily kind, serving as a everlasting reminder of the Group Fortress 2 group’s enduring love of the sport, if it could possibly be positioned in Valve’s palms.
And so these signatures (thanks PC Gamer) have been was a literal hardback tome spanning a whole lot of pages – a “image of the astounding quantity of people who love TF2 and need to see it flourish”, as TheWhat put it on social media. The guide then received its very personal flashily cinematic reveal video earlier than being whisked off to Washington, the place – as seen in TheWhat’s more moderen replace – it was deposited in a conspicuous place someplace in Valve’s foyer.
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Whether or not the guide has now made its method upstairs and into Valve’s inside sanctum is unclear, nevertheless it’s arduous to not admire the mere existence of the factor, and the type of ceaselessly passionate fandom it represents. As for the Group Fortress 2 group, there are combined opinions on how the guide shall be obtained. “It is going to almost certainly be cherished by the folks at Valve,” one poster on the TF2 subreddit wrote. “They’re going to use it as rest room paper,” one other much less optimist soul added, “I hope my identify touches Gabe’s asshole.”
