b0nes_NAwhats the worst that can happen?
It fails and it causes people who were fans of TF2 and still stuck around to keep playing despite the bots decide to drop the game entirely because they start to believe it's a dying game. And then the whole "TF2 is dying" mantra gets louder.
I mean realistically, if you've stuck around with TF2 for this long, you love the game and very little will actually sway you to stop playing, but most of the people I know who play TF2 are competitive players and they're a bit harder to push away from the game than a casual player who could probably be convinced to stop playing.
And regarding the whole, "Valve cares about public image" or "Here are community fixes by fans" thing, look again to OpenFortress and TFClassic. Both were out for a long period of time and then got taken down with rumors of, "Higher-ups are Valve didn't even know these mods were going on". They took those down despite it being a negative mark on their rep. If Valve actually wanted the community's help, Mastercom's would've been in-house optimizing the game years ago.
I just think you're vastly overestimating how much TF2 news or community content employees at Valve actually receive. I would be greatly surprised if a bunch of people who had the power to do something TF2-related even heard of Mastercoms.