You can’t keep a good game down, and the ongoing drama around Team Fortress 2 remains one of the most curious and entertaining rollercoasters there is. First released in 2007, TF2 was an instant hit that found a huge audience, but what has truly distinguished it over the years is just how many people have stuck with it, even though latterly developer Valve has focused purely on maintenance and curating community-created content.

A recent exception to this was a long-running player revolt against bots, one manifestation of which was the classic internet petition, which reached a degree of intensity that spurred Valve into action: earlier this month it unleashed a bot-demolishing banwave against offending accounts, refused them leave to appeal, and the crowd wen…