It was brought to my attention by one of our community members the following post from back in March:
"SkepticalGaming has been using idles to gain quickplay score and thus...players. Not just any idles. Idles using idle scripts. We have seen the players who joined the server at the same time and we have a full list of IP and Steam ID. All the "players" that were used to pouplate only had one game and were not premium accounts. We also have many screen shots of such fake clients." First I will say that I am not affiliated with or associated with Skeptical Gaming in any way. But this does concern me, because our community does something similar and I do not want us targeted for similar behavior. During the day we have some of our what we call "seeders" hop on our servers and idle in spectator for the day, since they're off to work or school, this helps give us a boost in the QP pool when our other community members who can actively play join the server. First I'll clarify that: We are not modifying any data streams. These are normal TF2 accounts of community members. We're not using some fake clients that pose as bots. We play on the servers as well, we don't just sit idle specs on them all day and hope that they fill up. As far as I've read, as long as we're not modifying the data streams or tricking the steam servers, we're in the clear, but this post above still concerns me. Can and will Valve seriously punish a server for having spectators? A lot of communities have what they refer to as their population teams or seeder groups who aim to help get their servers full. I am wanting some clarifications here. I do not want to wake up and find our servers delisted. TLDR: Can your servers be delisted for having several spectators sit to help with seeding. Thanks for your time, Chad
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