TF2 hasn't matched to 3rd party servers or allowed directly connecting to Valve servers in 6 years, since the introduction of a matchmaking service. They did, however, let a bot flood on official servers get so bad for so a few years that community servers took off and became popular again. It's only been this year that they finally started to effectively fight back against the bots, making casual usable again.

I have recently joined a modded server using matchmaking in the MvM mode, so either Valve allows that, or they run modded servers.

As far as botting goes, it's still not fixed. There was an obvious aimbotter named 'Vinesauce' that went about for 2 weeks getting kicked out of every match (and sometimes rejoining). I can't fathom having this little moderation/development on a game that still must be making millions per year.

Ah, fair enough, I generally don't play the MvM mode. Strange that they allow community servers for the matchmaking service on that after pulling it from the standard mode.

In my experience with Valve's servers in the eastern north american region, while the bots aren't completely gone, there are far fewer of them. Online discussion has indicated this isn't necessarily the case for non-NA regions.

I saw the vinesauce bots. It's my understanding that Valve bans any account kicked from an official server from rejoining that server for half an hour or so. Game harassers run small fleets of their bots. It's likely just another same-named bot joining rather than the same one rejoining, no?

As already mentioned, the matchmaking will not put you on community servers, and its existence has pretty much killed the majority of the community server scene. The game has more players than ever but less community servers than ever and most server mods that used to be very popular have been abandoned as a result.

I mean isnt that an indictment against the system by the community at large? People favor quick, normalized matchmaking. Having the option is amazing, but I dont think the general population really wants that, even if they would say they want the choice. Hard to justify the effort for the company then IMO.

Yes, most people are lazy and will always pick the most obvious and convenient option. No, that doesn't mean that the most obvious and convenient option is better.

The general population doesn't really "want" anything, they're satisfied with whatever they're fed and rarely think about it at all. Back in the server browser days you didn't hear constant complaints from people who wanted matchmaking instead, the switch to matchmaking happened because developers wanted to optimize engagement and increase their control over the game experience so they could monetize it more effectively, that's it.

Valve has always done it right IMO. CSGO is the same, you can start a server yourself or you can play on official servers.

Valve has always been community centered and it really shows in how all their development tools are pretty much available such as mapping tools, server tools etc.

With CSGO most of the matchmaking isn't even done in official servers, but with third party organizations like Faceit. If you want to be a professional CSGO player then you can't even rely on official servers. Nobody can go pro by playing official only when it comes to CSGO, you literally have to use third party services and their community servers.