This is a "with caution" review rather than a straight up positive recommendation as while Valve has indeed taken real measures to combat the bots since July, there is no guarantee that this level of maintenance will last for years. Every since Valve has silently moved on from Team Fortress 2 after the Jungle Inferno update, cheater bots have been infesting Casual servers in groups to make it difficult to play the game. These cheater bots would mainly use the Sniper class to instantly headshot all players through a match, frustrating the playerbase with having to kick bots constantly or leave servers because they are infested with bots. Despite the rampant cheater bots, the playerbase did hold out but the frustrations towards Valve only grew over the years.

Since July 2024, Valve has actually taken measures to manually ban the cheater bots as well as other notorious players who have been caught cheating, finally allowing the game to be playable without worrying about constantly running into bots in Casual. However, for Casual to remain playable right now, Valve needs to continue doing manual bans and given their treatment of TF2 for most of its life since Jungle Inferno, I am still a bit cautious that TF2 may come back to a bot infested era again.

As for the game itself, it has seen more bug fixes and content updates regularly, now having summer updates since 2023 in addition to Halloween and Smissmas updates. It's usually more maps and cosmetics but a number of maps and modes have been more unique. We have seen the release of VS Saxton Hale, Zombie Infection, a map featuring Krampus, and many more stand out maps over the years so it's always a good time to play with friends to try these maps out. The game has also been updated to run on a 64-bit executable which has allowed higher-end PCs to use more computer resources (particularly RAM) to gain better performance for TF2, so the game now also runs better without past 32-bit constraints.

Team Fortress 2 is still a game worth playing even after more than a decade since its release, and while I can't say I fully trust Valve to continue manually banning the bots, I would still recommend giving the game a try or come back to it for a seasonal update at least. It is still one of the most fun games you can play online and one of the few PvP games with a more casual environment despite being an old game.

This is a "with caution" review rather than a straight up positive recommendation as while Valve has indeed taken real measures to combat the bots since July, there is no guarantee that this level of maintenance will last for years. Every since Valve has silently moved on from Team Fortress 2 after the Jungle Inferno update, cheater bots have been infesting Casual servers in groups to make it difficult to play the game. These cheater bots would mainly use the Sniper class to instantly headshot all players through a match, frustrating the playerbase with having to kick bots constantly or leave servers because they are infested with bots. Despite the rampant cheater bots, the playerbase did hold out but the frustrations towards Valve only grew over the years. Since July 2024, Valve has actually taken measures to manually ban the cheater bots as well as other notorious players who have been caught cheating, finally allowing the game to be playable without worrying about constantly running into bots in Casual. However, for Casual to remain playable right now, Valve needs to continue doing manual bans and given their treatment of TF2 for most of its life since Jungle Inferno, I am still a bit cautious that TF2 may come back to a bot infested era again. As for the game itself, it has seen more bug fixes and content updates regularly, now having summer updates since 2023 in addition to Halloween and Smissmas updates. It's usually more maps and cosmetics but a number of maps and modes have been more unique. We have seen the release of VS Saxton Hale, Zombie Infection, a map featuring Krampus, and many more stand out maps over the years so it's always a good time to play with friends to try these maps out. The game has also been updated to run on a 64-bit executable which has allowed higher-end PCs to use more computer resources (particularly RAM) to gain better performance for TF2, so the game now also runs better without past 32-bit constraints. Team Fortress 2 is still a game worth playing even after more than a decade since its release, and while I can't say I fully trust Valve to continue manually banning the bots, I would still recommend giving the game a try or come back to it for a seasonal update at least. It is still one of the most fun games you can play online and one of the few PvP games with a more casual environment despite being an old game.