add 3900 hours to whatever it says at the top - this is my second account. i love this game so much that i was more than willing to start over again.

i love this game so much, and i cannot recommend it to new players. reviews are for people considering getting the game, not for people who have already sunk thousands of hours in - and with that in mind, i do not recommend this game to new players.

casual mode - valves own OFFICIAL SERVERS - have been in an unacceptable state for several years now and completely unplayable for about a year due to automated cheating on an industrial scale. every single match you try to queue in to will have at least like 8 bots that lock the server down and votekick real players until they are all thats left. this is an embarrassment of a game and it is shocking that valve is still pretending that this game is in a remotely acceptable state by still pushing gambling to the playerbase through seasonal cases.

on top of the servers themselves festering with bots, the actual default settings of the game are an active hindrance, kneecapping new players who simply dont know whats wrong.
this goes beyond default binds and fov settings and weapon switch settings. the default connection settings are 16 years out of date so they add a significant amount of latency to all of your actions and you have to activate a console and type in commands to fix them because valve cant be assed to do it themselves.

as well as this, while many stock weapons are alright, there are many vital unlockable weapons but you have like a 1/50 chance per week to get the weapon you want from a random drop. the in game store is also a trap for new players who dont know the value of the weapons - each being sold for about $0.99, when they are actually worth ~US$0.001 - a markup of around about 990x. this is predatory, and this game is only "free" because it costs nothing to download - in practice, the most basic of functionality in a team based game is locked behind a paywall.
accounts that have not purchased something from this in game store are not allowed to use the in game voicechat or textchat in any official servers to talk with their teammates and they are also not allowed to call for medic - communication is, as im sure you can guess, quite important in a game with the word "team" in its name. this has been the case since the 16th of june 2020 and was done in order to dissuade the heat from the media who were reporting on the bot crisis spamming chatwalls of slurs and micspamming extremely loud sounds. instead of actually fixing this, they just muted all free to plays. this has not stopped anything, as bots are just stealing premium accounts and micspamming and chatwalling and cheating on them.

valve has shifted the responsibility of providing a playable experience to community hosted servers such as uncletopia, where cheaters actually get banned. while i am extremely thankful for the existence of these servers, it is ridiculous that they are a NECESSITY - not a choice.

on 27th of may 2022, valve broke a 2 year long total radio silence streak in response to the #savetf2 movement with a tweet reading:
"TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things."
this was followed by some random bugfixes, fixing an exploit where the in game chat could be completely cleared instantly by bots (while not restoring f2p's ability to talk), and another seasonal case update so they could shove gambling in our faces again.

this tweet was only made because of the noise that the savetf2 movement created in the media, with many very large youtubers, news outlets and communities from other games coming together with the tf2 community to express how awful this situation has become. it was heartwarming at the time, really. but then valve stopped communicating again immediately after.

the last content update to this game was on the 16th of october 2017 - 6 and a half years at time of writing. after such an insanely long time without anything new to talk about, this community has turned extremely toxic and hostile to anyone who expresses that they do not like it. this community outright harasses previous tf2 youtubers who turned to variety content because they feel like they are entitled to the time, energy and passion that these youtubers put into their work. the image this community has made for itself is no secret - it is viewed as a group of racist, sexist, homophobic children who harass people for enjoying any game except tf2 (you may have seen some tf2 fans harassing people for posting about any other games even if they have never mentioned tf2). i would not blame you for not wanting to be seen that way too.

attempting to do so actually goes against their philosophy when it comes to anticheat development - they dont want to play "cat and mouse" with cheat developers, so unless preventing it is extremely easy for them to do, they wont do it for this game.

this game - this free game - is not worth it.

add 3900 hours to whatever it says at the top - this is my second account. i love this game so much that i was more than willing to start over again. i love this game so much, and i cannot recommend it to new players. reviews are for people considering getting the game, not for people who have already sunk thousands of hours in - and with that in mind, i do not recommend this game to new players. casual mode - valves own OFFICIAL SERVERS - have been in an unacceptable state for several years now and completely unplayable for about a year due to automated cheating on an industrial scale. every single match you try to queue in to will have at least like 8 bots that lock the server down and votekick real players until they are all thats left. this is an embarrassment of a game and it is shocking that valve is still pretending that this game is in a remotely acceptable state by still pushing gambling to the playerbase through seasonal cases. on top of the servers themselves festering with bots, the actual default settings of the game are an active hindrance, kneecapping new players who simply dont know whats wrong. this goes beyond default binds and fov settings and weapon switch settings. the default connection settings are 16 years out of date so they add a significant amount of latency to all of your actions and you have to activate a console and type in commands to fix them because valve cant be assed to do it themselves. as well as this, while many stock weapons are alright, there are many vital unlockable weapons but you have like a 1/50 chance per week to get the weapon you want from a random drop. the in game store is also a trap for new players who dont know the value of the weapons - each being sold for about $0.99, when they are actually worth ~US$0.001 - a markup of around about 990x. this is predatory, and this game is only "free" because it costs nothing to download - in practice, [b] the most basic of functionality in a team based game is locked behind a paywall. [/b] accounts that have not purchased something from this in game store are not allowed to use the in game voicechat or textchat in any official servers to talk with their teammates and they are also not allowed to call for medic - communication is, as im sure you can guess, quite important in a game with the word "team" in its name. this has been the case since the 16th of june 2020 and was done in order to dissuade the heat from the media who were reporting on the bot crisis spamming chatwalls of slurs and micspamming extremely loud sounds. instead of actually fixing this, they just muted all free to plays. this has not stopped anything, as bots are just stealing premium accounts and micspamming and chatwalling and cheating on them. valve has shifted the responsibility of providing a playable experience to community hosted servers such as uncletopia, where cheaters actually get banned. while i am extremely thankful for the existence of these servers, it is ridiculous that they are a NECESSITY - not a choice. on 27th of may 2022, valve broke a 2 year long total radio silence streak in response to the #savetf2 movement with a tweet reading: "TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things." this was followed by some random bugfixes, fixing an exploit where the in game chat could be completely cleared instantly by bots (while not restoring f2p's ability to talk), and another seasonal case update so they could shove gambling in our faces again. this tweet was only made because of the noise that the savetf2 movement created in the media, with many very large youtubers, news outlets and communities from other games coming together with the tf2 community to express how awful this situation has become. it was heartwarming at the time, really. but then valve stopped communicating again immediately after. the last content update to this game was on the 16th of october 2017 - 6 and a half years at time of writing. after such an insanely long time without anything new to talk about, this community has turned extremely toxic and hostile to anyone who expresses that they do not like it. this community outright harasses previous tf2 youtubers who turned to variety content because they feel like they are entitled to the time, energy and passion that these youtubers put into their work. the image this community has made for itself is no secret - it is viewed as a group of racist, sexist, homophobic children who harass people for enjoying any game except tf2 (you may have seen some tf2 fans harassing people for posting about any other games even if they have never mentioned tf2). i would not blame you for not wanting to be seen that way too. [h3] valve will never fix this bot crisis [/h3] attempting to do so actually goes against their philosophy when it comes to anticheat development - they dont want to play "cat and mouse" with cheat developers, so unless preventing it is extremely easy for them to do, they wont do it for this game. this game - this free game - is not worth it.