I feel comfortable with Team Fortress 2. I haven't played it in years, but it's nice to know that this game exists that consistently entertains so many players. Thirteen years after its release, it is still going strong, and with the advent of the annual Halloween event, Scream Fortress XII, it has somehow managed to break player records.

Scream Fortress XII is not a particularly noteworthy event. It has a few spooky new community maps and cosmetic items, but nothing that will get people excited and instantly reinstalled; according to SteamCharts and SteamDB, the number of simultaneous players recently surpassed 130,000.

That's a ridiculous number of players, but not all of them are human; esports consultant Rob Breslau commented on the surge on Twitter, noting that Team Fortress 2 is still at the mercy of bots.

Bots taking over Team Fortress 2 is lamentably not a new thing. April was a particularly bad time for the game, especially for casual matchmaking, and Valve released an update that seemed to fix the problem. But it did not last. New bots emerged, this time spamming the in-game chat, trolling players and spouting racist rants. Valve then released another update in June to address the problem. Now, however, the bots are back in force.

The Team Fortress 2 subreddit is currently debating how many players are actually bots. However, that does not necessarily mean that the majority of new players are bots. However, players still frequently see bots and have their games ruined by bots.

The Halloween event just started last night, so hopefully Valve will release an update to get rid of these pesky invaders. But as the history of Team Fortress 2 shows, they will still find a way to come back.