The adult stop-animation series starring M.O.D.O.K., one of Marvel Comics’ notorious villains, has been officially canceled by Hulu after just one season, Variety reports.

Though Hulu has yet to confirm a reason for the show’s cancellation, it’s not the first time that Hulu’s Marvel shows have been abruptly canceled. Shows like the live action “New Warriors” and the animated series Howard the Duck and Tigra & Dazzler had also been canceled before their scheduled airing.

M.O.D.O.K, along with the aforementioned shows, was one of four animated programs set up at Hulu and produced by Jeph Loeb. The plan was to eventually have them crossover in an event known as "The Offenders," though their cancellations have likely scrapped those plans.

Though the news may shock some, it’s something that was hinted at back in January. During their presentation at 2022’s Television Critics Association, Hulu content boss Craig Erwich said that the platform had no announcements to make regarding renewals for M.O.D.O.K and that “Marvel and team will make the decisions for that franchise, and that brand.”

M.O.D.O.K was one of Marvel’s last remaining non-MCU shows, and it likely fell victim to Marvel’s ultimate goal of winding down on their television production, as it had been reported that Marvel Television no longer had plans to develop any new series beyond the shows that are currently in production.

IGN reviewed the first season of “M.O.D.O.K.” and held a viewing party of the series’ first two episodes with show co-creators Jordan Blum and Patton Oswald. IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha called the show’s first season a “refreshing, mile-a-minute comic self-parody.”

Diego Ramos Bechara is a freelance writer at IGN.

The highly-anticipated action film Jurassic World Dominion is coming to theaters this summer after a one-year delayed release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film is set four years after the dramatic turn of events at the end of the 2018 film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where the dinosaurs now live and hunt among humans all over the world. The film’s upcoming release also marks the conclusion of the franchise as a whole.

Jurassic World Dominion stars returning leads Chris Pratt as dinosaur behaviorist Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard as former park operations manager Claire Dearing, alongside the original Jurassic Park stars as well, including Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

In anticipation of the film, Pratt spoke to ComicBook.com and discussed if the franchise will ever return again, perhaps later down the line, speaking to the epic nature of its long-awaited conclusion.

“I mean, I guess it would probably…possibly? You’d want to leave it open to that possibility,” said Pratt. “There aren’t a ton of comps for this kind of a thing. I think maybe Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame is a similar comp because you’ve got whatever that was…10 years, 20-something films. All of these characters each had their own stories, their own trilogies coming together. And you’re like, ‘This is wild.’”

“You’ve seen these worlds collide. It feels the same way,” Pratt continued. “You’ve got the Jurassic Park trilogy. You’ve got the Jurassic World trilogy, and it’s this big epic conclusion.”

The film’s director Colin Trevorrow also spoke to the possibility of more Jurassic films in the future, nodding to his belief in young filmmakers.

“What I get excited about is knowing what some young filmmaker envisions, like what new ideas,” said Trevorrow. “I, at one point, had a very clear vision for where we could take this and what this could be. And I laid that out to Steven Spielberg, and he gave me this opportunity. And I would love to be able to give that opportunity to some little kid who’s playing with dinosaur toys in a sandbox right now.”

Jurassic Park Dominion will be released in theaters on June 10.

Katie Song is a freelance writer for IGN

The highly-anticipated action film Jurassic World Dominion is coming to theaters this summer after a one-year delayed release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film is set four years after the dramatic turn of events at the end of the 2018 film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where the dinosaurs now live and hunt among humans all over the world. The film’s upcoming release also marks the conclusion of the franchise as a whole.

Jurassic World Dominion stars returning leads Chris Pratt as dinosaur behaviorist Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard as former park operations manager Claire Dearing, alongside the original Jurassic Park stars as well, including Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

In anticipation of the film, Pratt spoke to ComicBook.com and discussed if the franchise will ever return again, perhaps later down the line, speaking to the epic nature of its long-awaited conclusion.

“I mean, I guess it would probably…possibly? You’d want to leave it open to that possibility,” said Pratt. “There aren’t a ton of comps for this kind of a thing. I think maybe Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame is a similar comp because you’ve got whatever that was…10 years, 20-something films. All of these characters each had their own stories, their own trilogies coming together. And you’re like, ‘This is wild.’”

“You’ve seen these worlds collide. It feels the same way,” Pratt continued. “You’ve got the Jurassic Park trilogy. You’ve got the Jurassic World trilogy, and it’s this big epic conclusion.”

The film’s director Colin Trevorrow also spoke to the possibility of more Jurassic films in the future, nodding to his belief in young filmmakers.

“What I get excited about is knowing what some young filmmaker envisions, like what new ideas,” said Trevorrow. “I, at one point, had a very clear vision for where we could take this and what this could be. And I laid that out to Steven Spielberg, and he gave me this opportunity. And I would love to be able to give that opportunity to some little kid who’s playing with dinosaur toys in a sandbox right now.”

Jurassic Park Dominion will be released in theaters on June 10.

Katie Song is a freelance writer for IGN

Warning: this article contains some spoilers for Halo: The TV Series Episode 8!

The live-action Halo series has made a number of significant changes to the established mythology of the games, and Episode 8 has ushered in what may be the biggest shake-up yet. Master Chief appears to have just lost his virginity.

This is a pretty big departure from the Halo games, where John-117 is depicted as an ascetic super-soldier who only shows a sentimental attachment to his holographic companion Cortana, and has likely never had sex due to being kidnapped into Spartan programmer as a child. The series hasn't exactly followed that path over the course of Season 1, with Pablo Schreiber's Master Chief frequently removing his helmet and dealing with a surge of memories and emotions after encountering a Forerunner artifact.

That artifact also happens to be the reason for John's sexual encounter in Episode 8. The series has introduced a brand new character in Charlie Murphy's Makee, a human who was kidnapped by the Covenant at a young age and elevated to a position of power in that alien theocracy. John and Makee are seemingly the only two beings in the galaxy who can interact with the artifacts. After experiencing a shared vision of the mysterious Halo station in Episode 6, the two characters give in to the hormonal rush and have sex in Episode 8. And just to make things extra weird, Cortana is watching the entire time.

This plot twist has been the source of some criticism and outrage from Halo fans. Not only is the very idea of Master Chief having sex a hard pill for some to swallow, Episode 8 also uses the Master Chief/Makee romance to set the stage for the show's version of the Fall of Reach. Though torn between her newfound love for John-117 and her loyalty to the Covenant, Makee ultimately chooses the latter and signals Reach's location to the Covenant. Because he made the mistake of trusting Makee, Master Chief is about to have a lot of blood on his hands.

Forbes writer Paul Tassi sums up the incredulous reaction some are feeling to the episode:

Look, I don't care if this is a spoiler, the world must know:

In this week's Halo episode, Master Chief has sex with a human covenant spy prisoner while Cortana watches and it appears it triggers events that will lead to the Fall of Reach

— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) May 12, 2022

On the other hand, Twitter user @Spicy_Halo offers this rebuttal:

The Master Chief kissed a girl and now I can’t relate to him anymore. pic.twitter.com/B44Jn9IgRu

— Spicy Halo (@Spicy_Halo) May 12, 2022

IGN was positive on the new episode and its admittedly revisionist take on setting up the Fall of Reach storyline. Our review said, "It's a sudden swerve for both characters, not to mention that Halo fans aren't really accustomed to seeing Chief show affection for anyone apart from his platonic love for Cortana. But it's a development that works in the context of Episode 6's dramatic ending. The two characters shared what amounts to a religious experience, and now they're dealing with all the hormonal aftereffects. This episode actually does a surprisingly good job of chronicling the complete rise and fall of that short-lived romance without the collapse feeling rushed or forced."

Do you object to the idea of Master Chief getting frisky? Vote in our poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Warning: this article contains some spoilers for Halo: The TV Series Episode 8!

The live-action Halo series has made a number of significant changes to the established mythology of the games, and Episode 8 has ushered in what may be the biggest shake-up yet. Master Chief appears to have just lost his virginity.

This is a pretty big departure from the Halo games, where John-117 is depicted as an ascetic super-soldier who only shows a sentimental attachment to his holographic companion Cortana, and has likely never had sex due to being kidnapped into Spartan programmer as a child. The series hasn't exactly followed that path over the course of Season 1, with Pablo Schreiber's Master Chief frequently removing his helmet and dealing with a surge of memories and emotions after encountering a Forerunner artifact.

That artifact also happens to be the reason for John's sexual encounter in Episode 8. The series has introduced a brand new character in Charlie Murphy's Makee, a human who was kidnapped by the Covenant at a young age and elevated to a position of power in that alien theocracy. John and Makee are seemingly the only two beings in the galaxy who can interact with the artifacts. After experiencing a shared vision of the mysterious Halo station in Episode 6, the two characters give in to the hormonal rush and have sex in Episode 8. And just to make things extra weird, Cortana is watching the entire time.

This plot twist has been the source of some criticism and outrage from Halo fans. Not only is the very idea of Master Chief having sex a hard pill for some to swallow, Episode 8 also uses the Master Chief/Makee romance to set the stage for the show's version of the Fall of Reach. Though torn between her newfound love for John-117 and her loyalty to the Covenant, Makee ultimately chooses the latter and signals Reach's location to the Covenant. Because he made the mistake of trusting Makee, Master Chief is about to have a lot of blood on his hands.

Forbes writer Paul Tassi sums up the incredulous reaction some are feeling to the episode:

Look, I don't care if this is a spoiler, the world must know:

In this week's Halo episode, Master Chief has sex with a human covenant spy prisoner while Cortana watches and it appears it triggers events that will lead to the Fall of Reach

— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) May 12, 2022

On the other hand, Twitter user @Spicy_Halo offers this rebuttal:

The Master Chief kissed a girl and now I can’t relate to him anymore. pic.twitter.com/B44Jn9IgRu

— Spicy Halo (@Spicy_Halo) May 12, 2022

IGN was positive on the new episode and its admittedly revisionist take on setting up the Fall of Reach storyline. Our review said, "It's a sudden swerve for both characters, not to mention that Halo fans aren't really accustomed to seeing Chief show affection for anyone apart from his platonic love for Cortana. But it's a development that works in the context of Episode 6's dramatic ending. The two characters shared what amounts to a religious experience, and now they're dealing with all the hormonal aftereffects. This episode actually does a surprisingly good job of chronicling the complete rise and fall of that short-lived romance without the collapse feeling rushed or forced."

Do you object to the idea of Master Chief getting frisky? Vote in our poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

It's been a rough few years for Sega, in no small part due to COVID-19 forcing the shutdown of its already declining arcade businesses. Since last year, the company has been working on a strategy change to help its business become more sustainable long-term. The good news in this for fans of classic Sega games is that this means more remakes and remasters of older Sega IP.

In its annual earnings presentation for investors, Sega outlined some of its plans for the current fiscal year, which runs from April 2022 to March of 2023. One of those plans includes "multiple titles" that Sega considers "Remake/Remaster, Spin-Off/Change of theme."

Though the wording is a big clunky there, Sega gives a few helpful examples from this past year: think more games like Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, or Lost Judgment. The publisher is hoping to sell five million units total from this category, up from four million this past year.

Including brand new releases, Sega is aiming to publish 13 games during that same period, up from seven this past year. We already know about Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Origins, Soul Hackers 2, Endless Dungeon, and Two Point Campus, and it's possible that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim's Switch release last month is also being counted in that total. That would leave seven games we don't know about yet, and possibly multiple remakes or remasters.

So what might we see remade? It's hard to say, but a Sega presentation from a year ago has some clues. With the announcement of its new strategy, Sega listed a number of past IP as examples it might look at for remasters, remakes or reboot (including several we've already seen remasters or remakes of). They are:

• Crazy Taxi
• Jet Set Radio
• Space Channel 5
• Rez
• Panzer Dragoon
• NiGHTS
• Shinobi
• Virtua Fighter
• Altered Beast
• House of the Dead
• Streets of Rage
• Soul Hackers

There are no guarantees that we'll see any specific games from that list revisited -- it's just a bunch of ideas Sega was exploring as of last year. But it's nonetheless good news that Sega is willing to liberally mine its classic library as a part of its plans to grow in the coming years. Fingers crossed for more Space Channel 5, right?

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

It's been a rough few years for Sega, in no small part due to COVID-19 forcing the shutdown of its already declining arcade businesses. Since last year, the company has been working on a strategy change to help its business become more sustainable long-term. The good news in this for fans of classic Sega games is that this means more remakes and remasters of older Sega IP.

In its annual earnings presentation for investors, Sega outlined some of its plans for the current fiscal year, which runs from April 2022 to March of 2023. One of those plans includes "multiple titles" that Sega considers "Remake/Remaster, Spin-Off/Change of theme."

Though the wording is a big clunky there, Sega gives a few helpful examples from this past year: think more games like Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, or Lost Judgment. The publisher is hoping to sell five million units total from this category, up from four million this past year.

Including brand new releases, Sega is aiming to publish 13 games during that same period, up from seven this past year. We already know about Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Origins, Soul Hackers 2, Endless Dungeon, and Two Point Campus, and it's possible that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim's Switch release last month is also being counted in that total. That would leave seven games we don't know about yet, and possibly multiple remakes or remasters.

So what might we see remade? It's hard to say, but a Sega presentation from a year ago has some clues. With the announcement of its new strategy, Sega listed a number of past IP as examples it might look at for remasters, remakes or reboot (including several we've already seen remasters or remakes of). They are:

• Crazy Taxi
• Jet Set Radio
• Space Channel 5
• Rez
• Panzer Dragoon
• NiGHTS
• Shinobi
• Virtua Fighter
• Altered Beast
• House of the Dead
• Streets of Rage
• Soul Hackers

There are no guarantees that we'll see any specific games from that list revisited -- it's just a bunch of ideas Sega was exploring as of last year. But it's nonetheless good news that Sega is willing to liberally mine its classic library as a part of its plans to grow in the coming years. Fingers crossed for more Space Channel 5, right?

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Spider-Man is officially turning 60 this year, with August 2022 marking the 60th anniversary of Peter Parker's debut in Amazing Fantasy #15. Marvel Comics has announced two major new Spider-Man stories to celebrate that upcoming milestone, including the final chapter in the Spider-Verse trilogy.

First, Marvel is paying tribute to Spidey's first adventure with Amazing Fantasy #1000. This oversized anthology issue features stories from both Marvel veterans like Dan Slott, Jonathan Hickman and Rainbow Rowell, as well as newcomers like Veep creator Armando Ianucci and novelist Anthony Falcone. Even The Sandman co-creator Neil Gaiman is returning to the Marvel Universe to pen a new story.

The stories in Amazing Fantasy #1000 won't necessarily focus on the beginnings of Spidey's superhero career. Marvel teases that Slott and Jim Cheung's story will flash forward in time to explore the bond between Peter and Mary Jane, while Falcone and Michael Cho's story will introduce a new villain to Spidey's rogues gallery.

In addition to this anniversary special, Marvel is also teasing the third and final chapter in the multiverse epic that started with 2014's Spider-Verse crossover. Slott is returning for a series dubbed End of the Spider-Verse. Marvel has yet to reveal the series' artist or how many tie-in comics may be involved.

“If you ask me, it’s madness,” Slott told Polygon. “Why would they do this? WHY? They could’ve milked this spider-cash-cow for decades. That said, if you are going to do it, going all-out in a blaze of glory is definitely the way to go!”

In the meantime, Marvel is setting up this crossover with a new volume of Edge of Spider-Verse. Much like the original 2014 series, which introduced multiversal heroes like Spider-Gwen and SP//dr, the new Edge of Spider-Verse will debut five more alternate universe versions of Spider-Man. Among them are Night Spider, a version of Black Cat who was bitten by the radioactive spider, and the kilt-wearing Spider-Laird. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at the new characters being introduced.

The first three issues of Edge of Spider-Verse will ship in August, which could suggest End of the Spider-Verse will launch as soon as September or October. Though with the animated movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being delayed again, Marvel may opt to wait until 2023 to bring the Spider-Verse crashing down.

Are you psyched for Spider-Man's upcoming birthday bash? Let us know if you'll be reading any of these comics in the comments below.

For more on Spidey's movie future, learn everything you need to know about Madame Web and brush up on every Spider-Man movie in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Spider-Man is officially turning 60 this year, with August 2022 marking the 60th anniversary of Peter Parker's debut in Amazing Fantasy #15. Marvel Comics has announced two major new Spider-Man stories to celebrate that upcoming milestone, including the final chapter in the Spider-Verse trilogy.

First, Marvel is paying tribute to Spidey's first adventure with Amazing Fantasy #1000. This oversized anthology issue features stories from both Marvel veterans like Dan Slott, Jonathan Hickman and Rainbow Rowell, as well as newcomers like Veep creator Armando Ianucci and novelist Anthony Falcone. Even The Sandman co-creator Neil Gaiman is returning to the Marvel Universe to pen a new story.

The stories in Amazing Fantasy #1000 won't necessarily focus on the beginnings of Spidey's superhero career. Marvel teases that Slott and Jim Cheung's story will flash forward in time to explore the bond between Peter and Mary Jane, while Falcone and Michael Cho's story will introduce a new villain to Spidey's rogues gallery.

In addition to this anniversary special, Marvel is also teasing the third and final chapter in the multiverse epic that started with 2014's Spider-Verse crossover. Slott is returning for a series dubbed End of the Spider-Verse. Marvel has yet to reveal the series' artist or how many tie-in comics may be involved.

“If you ask me, it’s madness,” Slott told Polygon. “Why would they do this? WHY? They could’ve milked this spider-cash-cow for decades. That said, if you are going to do it, going all-out in a blaze of glory is definitely the way to go!”

In the meantime, Marvel is setting up this crossover with a new volume of Edge of Spider-Verse. Much like the original 2014 series, which introduced multiversal heroes like Spider-Gwen and SP//dr, the new Edge of Spider-Verse will debut five more alternate universe versions of Spider-Man. Among them are Night Spider, a version of Black Cat who was bitten by the radioactive spider, and the kilt-wearing Spider-Laird. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at the new characters being introduced.

The first three issues of Edge of Spider-Verse will ship in August, which could suggest End of the Spider-Verse will launch as soon as September or October. Though with the animated movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being delayed again, Marvel may opt to wait until 2023 to bring the Spider-Verse crashing down.

Are you psyched for Spider-Man's upcoming birthday bash? Let us know if you'll be reading any of these comics in the comments below.

For more on Spidey's movie future, learn everything you need to know about Madame Web and brush up on every Spider-Man movie in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

On an average day, the IGN news tips line sees a slow but steady stream of messages from folks who want to let us know about something we might report on. Maybe a handful of tips a day. But this past weekend, the line was flooded in just a few hours with over a hundred messages from a group of very frustrated folk: the Team Fortress 2 community. Why were so many of them in our inbox? According to the contents of all those messages, their game has a massive, two-year-long botting problem – and they desperately want Valve’s attention in getting it fixed.

We weren’t the only site getting these messages, nor were they limited to just the media. The source of the flood is a community centered around Team Fortress 2 content creator SquimJim, who published a video on May 7 lamenting the rampant botting issues within Team Fortress 2. In it, he encourages his audience to reach out to both media and Valve employees in hopes that enough pressure will force the developer to take action. SquimJim offered an email template (which many of our tippers used, though others wrote their own messages) and a list of both media tiplines like our own, and publicly-available Valve employee emails. At the time this piece was written, the video had almost 150,000 views, 15,000 likes, and nearly 2,000 comments chiming in about their own frustrating experiences with bots.

It’d be easy enough to dismiss the problem as the natural fate of a 15-year-old game, or point out that the vast majority of online games have botting problems – how bad could this one be? But as IGN discovered, Team Fortress 2’s botting problems are egregious when compared to other online multiplayer games. Head into a casual match on Valve’s servers, and you’ll find that the game is practically impossible to play.

Attack of the Bots

While it’s true that all online multiplayer games struggle with botting to some degree, most of the Team Fortress 2 community members I subsequently talked to seemed to think that things got aggressively bad around two years ago, in early to mid 2020. Incidentally, this was around the same time that the Team Fortress 2 source code was leaked. There’s no specific proof that this was the cause of the botting issue, and it may just be a coincidence, but several community members pointed to that period as a tipping point all the same.

Other theories about why the botting crisis has kicked off include a bizarre revenge plotline. As Valve seemed less and less interested in pushing major updates to the game, some believe that botters rallied to try and make Team Fortress 2 so unplayable that Valve would be forced to pay attention to it again, or to drive new players to community servers. Some also suspect that bots are trying to acquire cosmetic items through play that they can then sell for real money on various marketplaces. Or perhaps they just enjoy trolling.

But regardless of motive, since 2020, matters have only gotten worse. Multiple articles have been written over the last two years about the botting wave, which has manifested in a wide range of obnoxious behaviors in any given match. Some bots spam chat with homophobic or racist remarks, outside links, or just plain rude or obnoxious messages. Most of the bots play as snipers, and because of their unnaturally precise aim, they’re able to headshot and kill players almost instantly, without giving them a chance to fight back.

Some bots take on the names of other players in the match and then initiate votes to kick the original player, resulting in legitimate players being removed and more bots flooding in. Some legitimate players have complained that they’ve been kicked from matches simply for playing a sniper class, because fellow human players assumed they were a bot. Other players have reported running across bots that cause the server to lag significantly, or simply cause the game to crash if anyone tries to kick them. And none of this is limited to an occasional bot here or there. As Jakob Von Bugmann, a regular Team Fortress 2 player explained to me, there are “people who pay for dozens of their own bots,” flooding servers, grouping up with one another, and overwhelming human players and in-game chat.

Literally Unplayable

Having never played Team Fortress 2 before, I decided to investigate the bot problem itself to see if it was really as bad as everyone described to me.

It was.

After running through the tutorials, I joined another IGN staff member who had last played Team Fortress a few years ago. What we found was a game that was, unironically, literally unplayable. I don’t use that phrase in the sense of Internet memes – you cannot play Team Fortress 2 as it was intended.

I was immediately killed by an unerringly accurate sniper half the map away, moments after I spawned, only to respawn and have it happen again and again. Half of my teammates or more were clearly bot snipers, who gathered in a single location on the map, their guns awkwardly pointed at the ceiling, moving only to perfectly snipe the opposing team. I had to turn off voice comms immediately because of the obnoxious music blasting through my speakers, and I could barely read text chat due to the flurry of annoying messages and link spam.

As I’d been warned about, on multiple occasions bots took on both my name and my teammate’s name and initiated votes to kick us. Both teams were constantly bleeding and adding new members because the multiple bots on each side (and maybe a human player or two, it was hard to tell) kept kicking one another. Once, so many players left at once that the game had to reshuffle our teams and I ended up on the opposing side unexpectedly. And this wasn’t just one match. This occurred across two matches I played with my colleague and a dozen more I played by myself at different times of day. Without team continuity, open comms channels, or even the ability to walk a few steps away from where I spawned, it was impossible to do anything resembling playing a normal match of Team Fortress 2.

The Human Resistance

These infuriating behaviors are impacting more than just a small handful of folks clinging to an old game. Team Fortress 2 is still quite popular despite its age, having broken its concurrent player record just last year and consistently averaging between 70,000 and 90,000 concurrent players every month for the last year. Granted, it’s impossible to say how much of this is inflated due to, well, bots. However, from IGN’s own experience both checking in on existing game communities online, as well as seeing multiple human players struggling alongside us in our own matches, there are clearly plenty of real people still trying (unsuccessfully) to play Team Fortress 2 every day.

Certainly, there are ways around the botting problem for dedicated players. They can vote to kick bots from matches, but all too often their open spots are simply filled with more bots. In more recent months, players have reported bots crashing the games of individuals who try to kick them. Some have suggested the community make and implement bots designed specifically to kick other bots, but they have historically been inefficient, overwhelmed, or at best contributed to the problem somewhat by being yet another bot in a match with only a couple of human players trying to enjoy a game.

Private community servers exist, but as many players informed me, most of the available ones are heavily customized. They’ll be limited to certain maps or game modes, or have mods added that change the experience significantly. Plus, even if they could find a community server that appealed to them, it’s unlikely that server’s population would be high enough to support being able to jump into matches quickly at any given time without prior coordination. If someone wants to play a vanilla game of Team Fortress 2 in their downtime for fun, they’re pretty much stuck with Valve’s Casual play servers – and the bot army that invaded them. There’s no chance for the game’s community to meaningfully grow beyond those who already love it, given how chaotic and frustrating the experience can be for new players.

As Jakob Von Bugmann put it:

“Me and thousands of other players have had amazing moments in the game, whether it be in an awesome moment of high-skilled gameplay, or simply a silly moment between teams, completely ruined by these uncaring instant-killing nuisances. With good enough gameplay or learning the bot pathing, you can actually abuse them or deal with them at a decent pace – but they just should not even be allowed to exist in the game and should have been dealt with a long time ago. Valve needs to do something for us still holding on and enjoying their game 15 years later.”

And Valve does seem to at least be aware that bots in Team Fortress 2 are an issue. Back in June of 2020, the game got an update that seemed to curb some botting behaviors. It placed chat restrictions on new and free accounts and allowed players to toggle off text or voice chat so they wouldn’t have to see or hear the spam. A follow-up patch added rate limit checks to text chat, and there have been a few other small tweaks since, but the worst of the issues still remain, and most updates since have been limited to minor bug fixes or seasonal events. Even with the bot-deterrent updates, Valve has yet to make a clear statement about the situation. IGN reached out to Valve for comment ahead of this piece’s publication, but did not hear back.

Given the severity of the situation and Valve’s silence on the matter, it’s no wonder Team Fortress 2 players are fed up. Some have suggested that making Team Fortress 2 a paid game might dissuade bots, since a paywall would dissuade botters from making more and more accounts, though that solution doesn’t appeal to everyone. For the most part, all they want is some sort of acknowledgement from Valve that it’s aware of what’s going on. Ideally, this would come alongside news that fixes are in the works.

“First, I'd like to at least see Valve talk about the problem,” SquimJim told me. “Just a blog post letting us know if it's being worked on instead of total silence. At this point even just that would go a long way with the community. Of course, an eventual update to their anti-cheat to prevent the bots completely would be ideal. In the meantime I've seen some people suggest adding a CAPTCHA system to the game, which would obvious be a little inconvenient for real human players, but at this point I'd take just about anything.”

Almost heartbreakingly, other players have indicated they’d be fine if all Valve offered was some closure, like a confirmation that it will no longer be updating the game at all.

While people like SquimJim, Jakob Von Bugmann, and their communities are still pushing forward efforts to beg Valve for help, the overall Team Fortress 2 player base seems pessimistic that a solution will ever arrive. For instance, a thread on the official Team Fortress 2 Steam forums from May of 2021 entitled “How high can we count before valve gets rid of bots?” is still going at the time this piece was written and is nearing 1,000 pages and over 14,000 comments. But despite the pessimism and snark, the numerous players that have stuck with Team Fortress 2 through it all continually express a genuine love for the game as it once was and could still be, with a little help from its creator.

“TF2 is a game that has been around for a long time – I personally have played it for almost 12 years – and in that time it has developed a very loyal and passionate fanbase,” SquimJim said. “There's really no other game like TF2. Not in gameplay, not in humor, not in characters, and nothing is quite going to have the same type of community around it. It's a game that's been really important to a lot of people and no one wants to see it in the state that it's in.”

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.