SaveTF2 Protests of 2023 and 2024

> You Can Stand Me Up At The Gates Of Hell But I Won't Back Down
>
> Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down

## Overview

The #SaveTF2 protests were a series of 2 protests enacted by the Team Fortress 2 community in an attempt to get valves attention in hopes of them either updating the game or destroy the bot crisis. Many popular Tf2 youtubers would voice their support for the movement and players would put the hashtag #SaveTF2 in their steam usernames. The 1st protest gained little traction outside of the Tf2 community however it was enough to make the official Team Fortress 2 Twitter account to make a Tweet acknowledging the movement and promising change however that change never came.

Months passed by and Valve had yet to keep their promise of providing the game with a serious update or a fix to the bot crisis along with Valve DMCA striking a Tf2 remake. This resulted in a second protest breaking out which had much more global outreach causing world wide protests from people within and outside of the Tf2 community. People would march down the streets of London carrying signs reading #SaveTF2 and world leaders would send tweets throwing their endorsement behind the movement. The protests are still active as of January 22th 2024 when this page was last updated.

## First Protest and Aftermath

### Cause

The Protests started because of a serge of cheating bots joining servers and cheating and the lack of a major update since 2017. Thousands of bots would join different servers and whip out all the competition this event was dubbed the bot crisis and has yet to be fixed. Along with this issue making the game nearly unplayable the last major update TF2 received was Jungle Inferno which had been released in 2017. The update drought along with the bot crisis left Team Fortress 2 bleeding players who would leave to play other games with better anti-cheats and more updates.

### Organization

The first #SaveTF2 protest was launched by multiple big Team Fortress 2 youtubers who all coordinated to post videos supporting the movement and telling their viewers means of protests such as posting #SaveTF2 on social media and putting the hashtag in their usernames.

### Results

The movement was endorsed by many creators such as ceno0, FishOnAStick-Gaming, Zhain, and others. Despite the Tf2 communities relatively small size they are a very loud community and their outcry managed to reach the attention of Valve who issued an official statement which read "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." However after months of waiting Valve had yet to implement serious change leading to many believing the statement to be a lie.

## Second Protest

### Cause

Despite Valve's promise to fix the flaws with their game they had never actually made an effort to stop bots from joining their servers or to updated the game in any meaningful way. In fact the bot crisis only got worse with the numbers of bots joining servers increasing. Along with Valve copyright striking a TF2 fan remake in January of 2024 the Tf2 Item servers went down leaving many players unable to access their inventory or use the hats and weapons they owned. The servers stayed down for 2 days and the players of the game had had enough of their prayers being ignored. Some people decide to look back to the SaveTF2 protests and reorganized.

### Organization

After the Tf2 communities outcries were ignored some people in started to try and revive the movement that got them their response in the first place which caused a second protest to gain some momentum. The second protests were sizably smaller without the endorsement of bigger youtubers like they had the previous year however Valve had decided to copyright strike a fan made Tf2 recreation which resulted in awful publicity for the company and more people to hop on the #SaveTF2 bandwagon. The topic of copyright was already in the public eye with many reaction streamers getting criticized for their usage of other peoples content most notably by the youtuber Jacksfilms. Jacksfilms made a statement to the surprise of some condemning Valves actions and throwing his support behind the second movement. This would go on to cause a snowball effect with bigger and bigger content creators and later on public figures acknowledging and supporting the movement. such as the President of the United States Joe Biden.

   The most notable events occurred in Russia where an army of 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers marched into Moscow not as an act of aggression but rather a display of solidarity with the Tf2 community. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin held hands on the steps of the Kremlin and announced a Ceasefire in Ukraine and Russia effective immediately. Both of the leaders gave an hour long address each talking about the joy Team Fortress 2 has brought into the lives of many. Zelenskyy was quoted as saying "We stand here today not as Ukrainians and not as Russians but as Team Fortress 2 players." The Ceasefire is active to this day as the protests continue.

### Results

The #SaveTF2 protests of 2024 are still active as of January 23th and Valve has yet to respond.