Team Fortress 2 Bots Are Now Into Extortion And Worse

Team Fortress 2 is practically abandonware at this point, so about the only time we hear about it is when something bad is happening. That was the case last September when we heard about an infestation of bots in the game -- and given Valve's relative lack of action, the problem has only gotten worse.

Eurogamer is reporting that the bots are back with a vengeance and are now not only disrupting games but also advertising links to questionable, and even illegal, content. Some link to an ecommerce where the bot-maker will reportedly cease their efforts if they're paid a sum of money -- $500 in the one case EG reported on.

Worse, some are advertising links to child pornography, or "CP." "Whether the links and profiles did host these images could not be verified," Eurogamer reports, though I think "could" ought to be replaced with "should." Whether or not the links supply what they're promising, the whole situation is still odious.

The question now is, what will Valve do about it? While it did take some actions to address the earlier bot issues, like placing restrictions on new F2P accounts, this would seem to represent an entirely new category of reprehensible behavior, and one that Valve can't wait for the community to enact measures against.