A new free-to-play idle RPG called TBH: Task Bar Hero has climbed onto Steam’s top 15 most-played games list with over 100,000 concurrent players. However, its reviews have recently fallen to Mixed due to serious allegations and performance issues. An idle game features low-effort gameplay with mostly AFK progression, and the genre has been popular on Steam for quite some time.
However, only a handful of indie titles in the genre have reached the same massive audience as TBH: Task Bar Hero. One of the most-played idle games on Steam is Bongo Cat, which has a very simple premise: Every time the player presses a button on the mouse or keyboard, they earn points. Despite its simplicity, Bongo Cat reached an all-time peak of over 190,000 concurrent players on Steam and has remained one of the platform’s trending titles since launch. Now, TBH: Task Bar Hero appears to be Steam’s next breakout idle hit, though it is currently facing several major issues.
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TBH: Task Bar Hero Controversy Explained
Released on May 27, 2026, TBH: Task Bar Hero quickly attracted a surge of players, reaching a peak concurrent player count of 104,957 within roughly 72 hours (via SteamDB). While this should have been a major milestone for indie developers Nugem Studio and Tesseract, the game was soon flooded with negative reviews, dropping its Steam rating to “Mixed.” Matters escalated further as some players accused TBH: Task Bar Hero of being spyware, potentially used to collect user data.
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The development team quickly responded with a Steam community post explaining the data the game collects. They stated, “Data is stored only when it is actually necessary. The company looks up additional information only when the potential use of cheat software is detected. As a result, for the vast majority of users, no information beyond a Steam ID is ever stored.” While this clarification may help ease the spyware concerns, TBH: Task Bar Hero is also reportedly facing significant performance issues. However, the developers claim these problems are largely caused by Steam itself.
One of the biggest issues fans of idle games face in TBH: Task Bar Hero is the random loss of hard-earned items and, in some cases, purchases. The developers explained in another post that most of these problems are caused by Steam server outages and that they are working to contact Valve to address the situation. They also plan to introduce a compensation period once the issues are resolved, aiming to restore everything players have lost.
Why TBH: Task Bar Hero Is So Popular Right Now
Despite these issues, some players may question why TBH: Task Bar Hero remains among Steam’s most-played games. Those who like the game argue that its premise and visuals are genuinely fresh and engaging. Despite being a small indie project, TBH: Task Bar Hero offers a roster of over 500 collectibles, all tradable on the Steam Market. It also includes more than 50 enemy types and multiple difficulty levels, adding a ton of replay value. In short, many believe TBH: Task Bar Hero has solid core gameplay, but is simply going through a rough launch.
In the coming days, it will be interesting to see how the development team handles the current issues and whether TBH: Task Bar Hero can maintain its impressive player base. So far, the team has released multiple updates and hotfixes aimed at improving performance. If this steady pace of patches continues, TBH: Task Bar Hero may be able to overcome its current problems and establish itself as a staple in the idle RPG genre.
