Hello, sorry if I'm not writing this correctly, this is my first message here, and hopefully it'll be long before I have to address a similar topic again.
I'm one of the staff members and administrators on a group with over 100 TF2 servers. We have the capacity to host around 3 - 4% of all people currently playing TF2 according to the Steam stats page. On a regular day, that's just what we do - each server of the 100 in the list has 10 - 15 regulars, and the rest is filled with quickplay users. At this moment we have 35 people in our administrative team. That's 35 people who take time out of their days to do Valve's job - removing trolls, banning hackers and doing things like that. They do that for $0. They get shouted at by the hackers and trolls on a daily basis and some of them endured that for years at this point. At this moment we have 7 people running this whole operation, of which one of them is me. Our community manager spent hundreds of hours writing plugins to fix Valve's bugs - again, for $0 - he spent thousands of his own dollars on servers, he spent thousands of hours making our community what it is today. The rest of us also invested a significant amount of time to make this operation a success. We end our months in red. We aren't using the money we get from donations to buy ourselves golden monocles and then give our users privileges which are borderline hacks. I love my community. We have over 110 members. They all enjoy playing the game Valve made, and they all pay regularly for tickets, items, use market, whatnot. It's just a drop in the ocean, but it counts for something. With this change, it's a matter of months, if not weeks, before we won't be able to continue what we're doing and provide great service for thousands of our players daily, as well as a friendly and welcoming community which became a second family to many of us. It's a bit silly, but it's how it is. I understand this change. But damn it Valve, if you don't want your new users playing on servers like NightTeam or Saigns, then FIX. YOUR. GAME. Don't make us, legitimate server hosts, who never did and never will sell "privileges" which are virtually hacks suffer from your poor design choices. Make Quickplay take into account server changes like that, and block those servers from Quickplay. TF2 is a community oriented game. I don't know why is Valve trying to hide that fact so much. Update after update, game after game (point in case: CS:GO), communities have been thrown away and disregarded in favor of mad consumerism. I've always thought of Valve as a company who cared about its players and people who support their game. Maybe that time has came to an end. But I'd like to be proven otherwise. Cheers, -- Ivan (Steam: Darwin the Paranoid Android). 2014-01-25 <[email protected]> > > On 25/01/2014 5:24 AM, lemon superman wrote: > > With all this talk about how Valve no longer cares and evidence of that > > being quite clear, what is keeping all of you in the game? What is > > keeping you all hosting servers? > > > > Serious question. > > > > It is clear from what I've read that this game is no longer fun and no > > longer worth supporting. Every update that is added is not one that > > favors any of you and normally punishes all of you who feel they are > > legit server owners/communities, worked hard to stay on the straight and > > narrow, followed all the rules and didn't abuse anyone playing on your > > servers intentionally. All of your hard work, time, money, effort, > > stress, and anything else ends up going to waste and you are constantly > > getting screwed. You can't run the maps you want to run because your > > communities would die with them and when you run only the stock maps in > > the most vanilla way possible and by the rules Valve has imposed to keep > > the community afloat, you end up hating to play because it really isn't > > even that fun at all. You're tired of 2fort, tired of badlands, tired of > > dustbowl, turbine, goldrush/badwater. Tired of 20 second spawn times, > > tired of having to keep on to of whether or not your server is > > registered to quickplay, tired of keeping in compliance with rules and > > policies that Valve clearly does not enforce and uses just as a scare > > tactic. Tired of the free publicity that these maverick servers who > > shouldn't be in Quickplay, that break all the rules, and abuse the > > community get due to dumb things like ads, quickplay placing them on > > their servers, and how little effort they actually put in to building > > their servers. What about you? You didn't do that at all to the player > > base yet you get no mention at all! > > > > You're tired of all of it. Tired of each and every update putting this > > game closer and closer to other games that you hate because you knew > > that this game was once so much more. It offered so much without being > > so restricting and the playerbase gave back to it when Valve wasn't busy > > adding things to help hurt EVERYTHING you came to love about the game. > > The playerbase can't distinguish between a community server and a Valve > > server and they only believe that servers are either Valve or shitty > > ads-ridden hovels of admin abuse and general griefing. You want > > something new and fresh, something that would have normally > > re-invigorated the players on your community and else where, but without > > actually having to change the game from what it is to do so. But if you > > attempt to go outside of the norm with this game as it is now, you gain > > nothing but empty servers that you pay all kinds of money for. > > > > What is stopping you all from just packing it all up and leaving now? > > What could possibly be so important that it warrants all this unwanted > > stress and expense for absolutely nothing? All the emails and > > badmouthing and outrage in the world will not change Valve's decision on > > anything they've done and it is quite clear that TF2 is either a testbed > > for other games to benefit or a cash cow and that is all. From > > everything I've read in every email chain so far, there is more than > > enough evidence to support that Valve has summarily turned their backs > > on you all and they could care less. "Screw you, got mine." is all you > > see every time you see a new email or update or preview or "feature" > > that they add to this game. > > > > So, I ask you, why do you still bother? >
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