Well, we have been losing new traffic to our servers since quickplay started and this will just make things worse.
When TF2 first started, this game was supported by game sales but folks had to have a place to play and so we gave them one and at no cost to Valve. Then they switched to F2P and they started making money off of selling virtual items and we supported them. We created trading servers or places in our websites devoted to buying, trading, and selling. Then they started asking the community for more ideas (at least this time they started paying the artist for the use of the item/map/etc) and the private servers continued to support that all the while keeping a steady stream of new people to TF2 flowing through their stores. Did we complain? Heck no. We continued to support them. Then, to keep more new people flowing into the stores, they tried to keep all the game play experiences the same so it wouldn't scare people away so they created quickplay and if you wanted your server to participate, then you had to conform to using specific maps and keeping it vanilla, otherwise you risked not having any new people find you. Why would a new player even look at the server list when they can just click a button and start playing? Of course, how quickplay worked was all speculation. Valve said get some folks to log on and then more would follow. Sometimes this would work and sometimes it would not. During peak playing times, we would have 8-10 people on there trying to fill with no luck. We would look up our rating and it was always positive so what gives? Now Valve is concerned that even with quickplay, our servers are still not dull enough and they might scare people away so they have been adding more and more Valve servers to the mix until now they think they have enough bandwidth to handle the majority. Tell me. if you just downloaded this game and you were new, why would you NOT pick a Valve server through quickplay. So, when I said, "Valve, enjoy your cash", that is what I meant. And yes, I know this is business. And yes I know they are trying to do what's right. but it still sucks for those of us who have been supporting this game since the game came out. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jethro Seabridge Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:11 PM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released Two things I notice wrong with your response: A: That is a hell of a knee-jerk reaction and B: How does Valve get more cash for people playing on their servers? Valve servers have no ads. On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:08 AM, Stephen A. Yates <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Really? - Add quickplay option to only connect to official Valve servers We have been running Vanilla 24 player servers since the month after the launch of Orangebox. Valve did not seem to have an issue with us when we were helping to build the TF2 community. This should pretty much put an end to new players finding their way to our servers and community. Thanks Valve. Enjoy your cash. We will be closing our community down at the end of this month. Peace out. -SpikerNoob _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
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