A Micspammer is the most common cheater you can find nowdays in game, you can recognize them because they will ALWAYS play as sniper, they also have all the achievements in game and they use 3 items that are usually conflicting with each other (for example they can wear a Ghastly Gibus, Frontline Field Recorder and a Skull Island topper, all these items can't normally be equipped togheter at the same time).

Micspammers all share one thing in common: The "song" they enjoy to spam with the in-game voice-chat feature, it's usually not even a song, just some random gibberish that is very loud and it's always the same for each micspammer (they also like to change it everyday, so you will always find a micspammer using the voice chat spamming the same thing over and over again, even if it's a different micspammer!)

They usually move in storm, but it's almost impossible to find more than two per server as they don't target servers that have already one micspammer per team.

They will ALWAYS put a LONG BLANK SPACE in the chat, resulting in hiding their presence (at least in the in-game chat) and to avoid the kick from the servers, they also do this to annoy people playing the game that now will be stucked with an empty chat till they move away from the server with a kick!

BUT HOW TO DEAL WITH A MICSPAMMER?

Here's a list of things you should ALWAYS make sure to do with a micspammer in-game:

-Mute the player!



Team Fortress keeps the players you muted always muted for the rest of the game, it also carries over to other servers, this means that if you muted someone on 2fort and later you meet again this person on a map such as Hightower, you will already have them muted and this will save your ears and your time!



-Don't type in chat KEYWORDS, such as for example "Kick, f1, cheater, micspammer, hacker" and so on, these words are automatically set by the micspammers to trigger their cheat-menu and automatically put a LONG BLANK SPACE in game!

-If the LONG BLANK SPACE has been activated, you can either open the chat, scroll up and find who typed it in (since it's technically as if they were normally talking in chat) or you can simply open your console (the best option) to see the chat history and instantly find them.

-Call the vote BUT before you do that, make sure to check the Micspammer's profile picture, they usually change their name to a current real player that it's in the same server and team!
This means that for example a micspammer can simply change his name to "DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP" which is my name, simply check the leaderboard by pressing TAB and look at the in-game profile picture, you can clearly see who's the micspammer from the in-game voicechat and can easily avoid to kick the real innocent player!

-At this point, if the vote is sure to pass through and kick the micspammer, the micspammer will automatically leave the server to join another (the "player disconnected from the game" usually won't appear in the chat).


CONGRATULATIONS! The Micspammer was defeated! But did we win? Not exaclty!
At this point there won't be any micspammers left in the server and this means that if a legit player doesn't join in the next 30 seconds, another micspammer will, the VAC ban is really slow but you have the power to deal with the next one, and the next one again and again!

WARNING: You can disable the voice chat in the in-game settings or with the console using the command "voice_enable 0" but it's not recommended since then you won't be able to communicate with your teammates in case a cheater changes his name to someone else or changes it to your name, since at this point the player who's getting impersonated should use the voice chat to tell the team that they are kicking the wrong player!

A normal cheater is not always that easy to identify!

If a player has expensive items, there's no way they would cheat and risk to lose all those precious items right? WRONG!

Believe it or not, many players with unusuals and australium weapons can cheat!
How rare are they? Not that much, today for example I met an Heavy with an australium minigun and an expensive unusual who was also cheating and spamming in the chat his own binds, exactly like any other cheater would!

It's also super hard to deal with them, as they usually (most of the time) work in team with someone else and/or have a cheat that allows them to get some "F2" in the kick menu to save themselves from getting kicked, if they work with someone else, be prepared, as they will try to kick you back and in general kick anyone who will try to kick them!

A cheater usually changes name to someone else, sometimes they can EVEN change the profile picture and steal someone's else identity (but it's not that rare to see and it requires setup from the cheater, wasting a lot of time that you can use to your advantage, so they usually only change their name, exactly like micspammers do!)

A cheater will most likely pretend very badly that they are not cheating, for example, an obvious cheater that's spinning and getting kills can use the voice chat normally (they are real players after all) and they can say stuff such as "It's just skill man!" or "Don't kick me I'm a legit player!", they do this to annoy people and to make them salty, the trick is to not get mad and keep your cool, but what if they kick you? Well, if they do always be positive, someone else will probably avenge you.

There are various types of cheats, it can go from an easy Wallhack, that allows the cheater to see players behind walls or it can be more hidden such as silent aimbot which isn't really that silent, just less noticeable, an expert eye can still see they are cheating as no human can pull out some of the shots they do (they will also most likely try to play classes like spy with the ambassador or sniper)


Here's a list on what to do:

-Exactly like the Micspammers, cheaters can have the LONG BLANK SPACE which means that if you write in chat KEYWORDS such as "Cheater" or "kick him" they will automatically have their programms put the legendary space blank in chat, "cleaning it" temproally till everyone stops talking for some seconds or till he doesn't get kicked, therefore be ready to deal with this!

-Try a vote kick, this is to test the water, if you hear the STRONG BASS more than once, someone is protecting the cheater and this means that the cheater isn't alone, whenever it's a friend of the cheater or someone that wants to win at all costs and doesn't want to kick the cheater!

-At this point if the vote passes and the cheater gets kicked you "won", congratulations!
If it didn't then this means that the cheater or his friend will (most likely) try to kick you to make you angry, it's important to not lose your cool, even if you get kicked, as they are trying to ruin the game, and if you stop playing the game they win the fight! Be sure, as a player, to check the name of the person that's getting kicked before pressing F1 or F2, many players press F1 to kick the "cheater" without noticing that they are kicking the person that was trying to kick the cheater because the cheater wanted to get some revenge for the vote kick!

-If the cheater it's protected by a friend, the whole team has to cooperate! If the whole team presses F1 this means that the cheater, no matter how many friends, will be force-kicked out from the game, but to do this, make sure to avoid to yell in the chat things such as "press F1" as the LONG BLANK SPACE usually kicks in at this moment, make sure to bypass it by writing stuff like "F" and "1" in two different messages...

-At this point if you had luck and team cooperation, which isn't rare considering how the recent lagbots made everyone want to kick a cheater instantly instead of keeping it in game to win, you will successfully kick him!


If for some reason you got kicked and the cheater still is in game, it's not your fault, you tried, it's not rare to be kicked instead of the cheater, it happens all the times to everyone and you are not alone, instead of getting angry always make sure to report the cheater first, with many reports the TEAM FORTRESS team checks the account and if they see it's a cheater they ban him, you will get a giant notification that will say "A player that you and other player have reported has been banned"

MANN VERSUS MACHINE! Except this time it's the whole server against the little baby bot!

The bot is usually the easiest one to kick, and it's the one that gets "bullied" the most, they once evolved into the infamous "LAGBOTS" but since Valve fixed the problem, the bots are now viewed once again as a little pain in the neck, and they won't last more than some seconds once the team is coordinated, you can see some "speedruns" of players kicking bots even before they leave the spawn!

If you want to see an example of a coordinated team "speedrunning" to kick the bots, Payload race - Hightower is probably the best map to see these coordinated teams, it's also always funny to be in these matches of coordinated players as the bots have no chance to even get more than 2 kills!

There are various types of bots, the most common one is the "Spinbot" which simply moves around spinning and headshots everytime, another example is the "spambot" which isn't really that different from a normal spinbot or a cheater, as it will spam in the chat some random binds...

There are also bots that are nice with the players and that sit in spawn, trying to kick other bots, although this one is very rare and I only found it less than 3 times recently while playing the game.

Bots have usually similiar names to each other, for example: Spinbot #4, and they move in storm like the micspammers, although the bots will most likely join togheter in the same server to annoy people and get an advantage like the classic cheaters do when it comes to a vote kick!

Recently bots have evolved a bit to what I like to call the "SALTbots", they post controversial things in chat trying to make everyone mad, such as insulting famous people (even people that died) and/or will impersonate a famous random Team Fortress Youtuber trying to make them look bad, an example is the recent "MaxBox" bots or the "SpikeyMikey" bots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd_Lfnwppsg&t


They are simple minded, if we can even say the word "mind" against a machine, they aren't a problem to kick, and they are only annoying because of how many there are in game!

The procedure to kick a bot it's usually the classic "Vote kick" and nothing more happens, so in this case it's not hard to beat them!

The thing is that some bots are "stronger" than others, and therefore, instead of getting the "classic bot #5" in a match, you can get one that is more compless and that can change name at will to someone else constantly, this means that you have to be really fast in kicking them (always checking the leaderboard so that you don't kick the wrong player), or you can wait till they change their name to your name!



At that point you won't have a problem in kicking them and you won't need to check if you are kicking the wrong person, always make sure if it's possible to let the player that is getting impersonated to call the vote, as otherwise a random player, might call the vote on the real player thinking he's kicking the cheater!

Also here's a little tip: If a bot or a cheater is using your name, and someone calls a votekick on the bot, make sure to use the voice chat to say things such as "Press F1, it's not me, it's the bot", it's easy to see if they are kicking you or the impersonator as the Vote menu will noramlly disappear instantly if it's on you, and will remain on your screen till you press "F1 or F2" if it's the bot using your name!

After I wrote this guide I got some messages from different users, either in private or under this very guide, if you want to join a group that expecially is against these bots/cheaters and micspammers, or if you want to know more, I'd suggest to visit this steam group:

https://steamproxy.net/groups/no-hack-pls



Thanks for clicking on this guide, I know there are many others most likely that explain the same, and I know that most likely there are better guides here on steam, but it's important for us players to cooperate and beat the "script kiddies", passing the word to each other so that we all know how to deal with them and make Team Fortress 2 great again!

We should do this for new players that want to join the game and old players that simply want to play the game!

Each screenshot and picture in this guide is owned by the user that made them and by Valve.