Journal · Notes from the archive

Notes from the archive.

← All postsResearch · Sep 2026

Humans and bots in the same lobby

Live matches mix real players with server bots. Labeled, that mix becomes a free control group.

Live multiplayer games fill lobbies with bots when there aren't enough players. Most datasets hide that. We flag it.

In the match on our homepage, a handful of humans made almost every kill and dealt most of the damage, in a lobby that was mostly bots. Human play looks different, and the difference is measurable.

That gives labs two things: clean human-only data when they want it, and a labeled contrast set for questions like "does this model play like a person?" Our Human-or-Bot eval is built on exactly that.