Team Fortress 2, Bots, Mods & News - A Tour of Valve Software

A member of the Team Fortress 2 Classic production team was given a tour of Valve Software by Eric Smith, the sole remaining TF2 team member. What ensued was a wealth of new information and insight into the state of the game, Valve, and how the two interact in 2024.

Valve News Network (VNN) is now Tyler McVicker.

#VALVE #TF2 #teamfortress2

[TylerMcVicker]

Today's video had to use some Speech to Speech replacement AI in order to hide the fact that I've got a really bad cold right now.

I recorded the video normally, however this is how it sounded after editing.

I'm seeing people saying that the entire video was just text-to-speech, it was not. It was still me, I was just kinda embarrassed that I sounded so stuffed up in the latest recording.

[TheXBoy]

So Hank survived, quit the DEA and is now working at Valve. The more you know.

[Alxium]

Just the mere fact that Eric is so enthusiastic about the game and the community boosts my morale 10 fold.

[BrightPage]

Communication. Thats all we've ever wanted. Please just let us know what is going on. Just about every single problem between Valve and the Community boils down to a complete refusal from them to communicate.

[jackinblack]

I feel like everything could be solved by hiring live 6 kids out of college and having them do what ever Eric needs from them

[TotalChaos]

Eric is truly the janitor and office plant. Praise Eric

[haazmat]

Jesus- how refreshing it is to actually hear from the developers for once.

[the_hiroman]

Never calling him the Janitor anymore.

[Noah_Levy]

It's nice to actually see communication. Not surprised that the bot issue is on the back-burner for Valve, but it's heartening to see at least someone over there still cares. Kudos, Eric.

[mr.master]

I think that the time between Meet your Match and Jungle Inferno really did something in the Team Fortress 2 Developer Team...

[TrueKingOfDucks]

WE ARE GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!


…hopefully

[flamingscar]

Hearing how enthusiastic Eric is only for him to seem so frustrated with the bots is really starting to raise the question

Should Valve restructure, become more like traditional companies

Imagine if Eric had the power to hire a dedicated bot crisis team, they cant do as Valve devs do and work on something else, they are hired to fix the bots and thats their job

Maybe even just something where new Valve devs for the first year have a manager, are there to act as labor workers essentially, and only after that year time frame do they get the freedom Valve wont stop talking about

[FlipZFox]

Now that we have the most solid proof that what’s exactly speculated about the situation is straight up hitting the nail on the head of what’s going on over at Valve, now it’s obvious that Valve really should consider biting the bullet and try to hire a lot more help with VAC, at least for awhile, until the problem is mostly taken care of. Even if it’s a botch job with porting the VAC on CS2 to TF2, it’s better than being left in the dark at this point.

[RandommBoyo]

As Tyler correctly noted in the vid - Just because they don't have a lot of people HIRED doesn't mean they can't CONTRACT MORE PEOPLE with how much money they effortlessly get every year without the need to keep making new stuff, literally probably more than most triple A devs nowadays

[ribbrana]

hearing that TF Comics #7 may never happen is honestly incredibly crushing. a lot of us really want to see the conclusion to that plotline and at this point I believe we would be happy to receive that final chapter independent contractors of any larger update to the game (I would be, at least). obviously we all want the bots gone, obviously we want the Heavy update to see the light of day - but ultimately, speaking personally, the thing that is most upsetting to me is that we will potentially never seen a conclusion to the events set up in the other TF Comics. it's just really unfortunate and unnecessary.

[Dazerazerr]

Getting rid of bots and cheaters are a must if the game wants to have a future

[VentriciAnimations]

Thanks for showing our stuff off, I'm working on the animations for this update, very excited to see it.

[dxcikvu]

The bots have been an issue for 4 FULL years by now for anyone that has forgotten, if it was never a viable priority and still isn't, it's most likely never going to be.

[ShwintyKat]

The idea that the comic is likely not going to happen just
It breaks my heart more than it should

[hapyjoy]

While a lot of this is great, I still call bullshit on lacking the man power to fix the bot issue. Yes, it’s understandable because it’s an old game. Who wants to work on that? But the problem is that they still expect us to pay money for cosmetics when their core game doesn’t even work outside of community servers. This is no dis on Eric. His passion for the game warms my heart. It’s Valve a corp that I still have issues with. While this is all nice to hear, we can’t stop until they finally do something about the bot crisis.