Yeah - "seeding servers" by having people join and play a round or two (or even go AFK for a bit) has been around as long as TF2 (and much longer than quickplay). The fact is, no one likes to join an empty server, and unless you;'re lucky enough to be full 24/7 (which these days, only vanilla server generally are), then your servers will need to get "started" each day by players willing to jump on until other players join.
Again, that's something that has been around long before quickplay was even conceived, so I don't think people can point and say "they're trying to game the system" just because they're idling. Whose to say they''re not trying to get item drops? Even worse - if the simple act of having "spectators" was going to be some kind of infraction, then the more nefarious folks would start "targeting" other communities/servers with spectators, and how ridiculous would that be? If valve was actually concerned about that, the easy fix would be to only count players that are "active" in the server (i.e. have scored points, etc.), but I think that would be more trouble than it's worth to implement. On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 10:58 PM, Nomaan Ahmad <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't think your servers will be delisted for having real players > sitting in spec. > > On 22 May 2013 03:51, Chad Cummings <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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 >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> please visit: >> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds > >
_______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
