There's a take that floats around gaming communities constantly, and it winds me up every time I see it: "this game is full of bots, it's ruined." Said with total confidence. Said as if it's obviously correct. It isn't.
Bots in multiplayer games are good, actually. There. I've said it.
The Anti-Bot Crowd Doesn't Know What They Want
The people who complain loudest about bots are the same people who'd also complain if they had to wait four minutes to find a match. Or if they kept getting destroyed because every session was stacked with veterans. Or if a game died because its player base dried up and matchmaking became impossible.
You can't have it all ways. A multiplayer game with no bots and a thin player pool is just a game you can't really play. That's worse. Much worse.
In fairness, I get where the frustration comes from. Nobody wants to feel like they're playing against fake opponents without knowing it. Transparency matters. But the existence of bots isn't the problem - it's when they're poorly implemented or actively hidden that things go wrong.
What Good Bots Actually Do
A well-designed bot does something genuinely difficult: it keeps a game feeling alive without either steamrolling you or being embarrassingly easy to beat. That's a hard balance to strike.
The best implementations use something called rubber-banding - where the bot's difficulty adjusts based on how the round is going. Pulling back slightly when you're struggling, pushing harder when you're dominating. It keeps things competitive without being unfair. Jolly Good Apps spent a fair bit of time thinking about this when building Swipeloot - the bots fill empty slots in multiplayer rooms and are specifically tuned to stay competitive without becoming unbeatable. You can tell you're playing against one if you look, but they don't ruin the experience.
That's bang on what bots should do: maintain the shape of the game when humans aren't available to do it themselves.
The Alternative Is Worse Than You Think
Open the App Store to look something up - doesn't matter what, could be anything - and it's remarkably easy to end up browsing multiplayer games that have clearly died. Five-star ratings from three years ago. Recent reviews saying "no one plays this anymore" or "waited 20 minutes, no match found."
That's the real enemy. Not bots. Emptiness.
A game that uses bots to stay playable while its real community grows is doing something smart. It's keeping the lights on. The alternative - launching, getting sparse matchmaking, players churning because they can't find games, community collapsing - is how perfectly good games die quietly and unnecessarily.
I wrote a bit about how modern mobile games have had to adapt to very different expectations than older games, and this is part of that shift. Players now expect to open a game and find action immediately. Bots are often what makes that possible.
The Skill Argument Is Overrated
Some people argue that bots are beneath them. They want to test themselves against real humans. Fine. I respect that. But most players - and I mean the vast majority - aren't at that level of competitive investment. They want a fun round that feels close. They want to feel like they're improving. They want to not get absolutely destroyed in their first ten sessions.
Bots provide a genuinely useful training environment. Especially when they're tuned to escalate in difficulty. You can learn the rhythms of a game, develop your instincts, figure out the mechanics - all without the demoralising experience of losing repeatedly to someone who's been playing for two years.
And honestly? The risk/reward decisions you're making in a fast-paced game are basically the same whether the other player is human or bot. Your brain doesn't care. The pressure feels real. The satisfaction of a good round feels real.
Be Honest About It and Move On
The one legitimate criticism I'll concede: developers shouldn't be cagey about whether bots are present. If someone genuinely wants to know, they should be able to find out. Pretending every opponent is human when they're not is the kind of thing that erodes trust properly.
But "there are bots in this game" is not, by itself, a scandal. It's a design decision. Often a sensible one. The reflexive backlash against bots treats them as inherently deceptive or low-effort, when actually building a bot that plays well and keeps a game feeling fair is genuinely hard to get right.
So next time you see someone in a forum declaring a game "dead" because they spotted a bot, maybe push back a little. A game with smart bots and a growing community isn't dead. It's just being kept warm.