As of August 23rd there are 32,824 people currently playing Team Fortress 2.
At the same time 9959 people are using the idle program to try and collect hats.
   
So, roughly a third of the player base is using a third party program to idle for hats.  Am I the only one who finds this absolutely insane?

That is pretty crazy. :p

Well I would too if I knew how. I want me some of those damn hats, and you know damn sure when they have multiple hats, these guys are going to trade them for uber weapons when the trading system comes around.

WOW thats all the people that are playing? I thought tf2 was like popular...

Sorry, should have given the source. 
 
Source
 
But as Supermooseman said, the stats are only relevant per day. I'm sure the overall player base is much larger.

" WOW thats all the people that are playing? I thought tf2 was like popular... "

As well as probably a third of the servers up for the game are actually fake enirely for information gathering..you know, the ones that say like, 25/32 people playing, but actually have 0 people  90% of the time? Yeah...I wish valve would do something about that shit.

" WOW thats all the people that are playing? I thought tf2 was like popular... "

" As well as probably a third of the servers up for the game are actually fake enirely for information gathering..you know, the ones that say like, 25/32 people playing, but actually have 0 people  90% of the time? Yeah...I wish valve would do something about that shit. "