- Team Fortress 2, Courtesy of Valve

Team Fortress 2 and the Fight Against Hate Speech: A Player’s Data-Driven Approach

Originally posted on Total Apex Gaming | By Ciara Blecka | Last updated Sep 30, 2025 8:21 PM ET

Team Fortress 2 has been experiencing a lot of toxicity lately–and this is hardly surprising for video game players. Roblox faces similar issues with bullying, harassment, and griefing. It seems like toxic players are everywhere. And the reason behind this is the sheer competitiveness of games like Team Fortress 2 and Roblox. But one player on TF2 came up with an interesting solution to toxicity in the game.

Slur Tracker

@labricecat has created a slur tracker called Slurs.tf, and you are able to search any player to see how many slurs they have used and what category the slurs are in. The categories are racial, bigotry, or generic. The slur counter wasn’t created to encourage more of this behavior, but instead was supposed to be a joke. However, this slur tracker is a great way for the game to combat such slurs by basically tattling on each player as to if they have used any hateful speech.

Tracker Backfire?

Image of Team Fortress 2, Courtesy of Valve

However, some think that a leaderboard for hate speech in Team Fortress 2 is a bad idea. The leaderboard puts flags next to each username to denote which country they are from. America and Britain so far have used the most slurs, although this may have something to do with percentages of players coming from the US and UK.

Some users have been bragging about their spot on the list–and this is the exact opposite of what the leaderboard SHOULD be used for. Instead, it should be used to recognize who is being hateful and then report them. But, those using the slurs remain proud trolls of the internet. What is particularly interesting, though, is that Russia, a country known for their toxic gamers, is all the way down at 7th place.

Who’s Being Banned?

Some users have said as many as 3,000 slurs and yet have still not been banned. Although, when it comes to slurs, not all are created equal. The word “b*tch” is considered a slur, so this may be why some of these users haven’t been banned yet.

A Problem That Can’t Be Fixed?

It remains to be seen whether having a slur tracker will actually help anything. Trolls in the game seem to be unavoidable. With the nature of a game like Team Fortress 2, voice chat is simply needed. Other games have tried to fix this problem, but it just ends up making the game not fun. However, with a way to track who is tossing out the most slurs, this may make it easier for sincere players to report those users to Steam.

This article first appeared on Total Apex Gaming and was syndicated with permission.

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