What do these stats mean?

There have been a lot of questions about these statistics, especially because Steam reports way more players than these statistics tell you. To understand and compare these different charts, you must understand that (due some technical limitations):

• Steam reports players per hour (e.g. 10.000 players between 12:00-13:00 means, that 10.000 unique Steam accounts have started up the game at least once during that hour).
• We report TF2 players that are in a TF2 gameserver (e.g. 10.000 players were in a TF2 gameserver at 12:38).
• Steam counts based on who has the game open, we count based upon who is playing a TF2 gameserver (thus people who are in the main menu are not counted on this page).
• There are a lot of bots that control Steam accounts. These bots report that they run TF2, but will never appear in a gameserver. Thus, these are not counted on this page.
• The bots that we report on this page, is based on in-game bots created by the game to fight against. These are not bots that control Steam accounts (to for example trade Steam items).