Maps and general gameplay fixes released semi-regularly are from the community for the most part, and Valve does probably nothing in comparison these days.

It is not fine. I would exchange any updates released the past 9 years for a bug fixes and weapons balances changes.

Any day.

Quickplay was 100 times better than the Casual Matchmaking, if you've time to kill, you should watch Lister video and Zesty Jesus video (You will NOT play), both are linked into my TF2 review.

And both are must watch if you weren't here at this period. I was here and the ads were bad for sure, but what we've actually is far worse, and the problem with ads was fixed when Valve decided to release their own pub servers.

I know everything you mentionned down below: the treadmill work and I've seen that Shounic video when he released it.

Still Valve let the game rot for 8 years to bots and stupid cheaters.

They've absolutely no excuse for that bullshit, especially because it's Valve, one of the richest video games company in the world. Some other popular games didn't have that many issues with cheats. TF2 was a fucking shit show.

The VAC system never worked and I've reported myself thousand of cheaters for the past decades (and multiples times over the years for some of them, and they banned like what 0.1% of them at best.

I'm not trying to defend Valve or anything, just saying that it's not all bad, but it's very clear that Valve doesn't want to engage with an old-ass life support game.

At the end of the day, the community does a fine job entertaining itself and I think that's fine

Especially when the fixes required aren’t revolutionary, it just the bare minimum: better anticheat detection, revert quickplay or something close to that, balance tweaks, community engagement.

Anticheat is quite difficult given the age of Source, Valve's position on "treadmill work" and the general nature of non-invasive anticheats. Shounic has made a quite good video about this, I'll link it here: https://youtu.be/TvH7syo376E?si=GQiR8eD-3VKXvh3Y
Quickplay, though I wasn't there to experience it, from what I've gathered, was absolute fucking ass. You'd get matched into shitty servers with a billion ads playing and calls to microtransactions everywhere. You couldn't easily sort by maps and the party system wasn't there.
Also, tweaks to maps and general gameplay fixes are released semi-regularly.
As to balance tweaks and community engagement... yeah, I agree, Valve doesn't give a fuck and that's clear.

Hi, since no one else gives a fuck about this discussion I'm just gonna respond here

Hey, replied to you page 16 of the tf2 update:
https://steamproxy.net/app/440/eventcomments/524225618711241646/?ctp=16