Do you have some sort of data that shows the 30-day untradability for
Steam Gifts and 7-day untradability for store-bought/market-bought items
aren't preventing fraud?
That's what those restrictions were put into place for. If they are
managing to lower the fraud rate through those particular channels, then
Valve wasn't wrong about them and they are working as intended.
On 7/5/2015 2:58 PM, Alexander Corn wrote:
Paid mods are the only thing in recent memory that I can think of with
Valve admitting they made a mistake. There are plenty of other
negative changes that I can think of which are still alive and kicking
(30-day untradability for Steam Gifts, 7-day untradability for
store-bought/market-bought items, etc). As far as I can tell, Valve
only admits they're wrong when they start to receive a large volume of
negative emails.
If they want to bring community servers back to equal footing on the
condition that nobody can run ads anymore, then so be it. I just think
that they're treating a symptom and not the actual problem. The actual
problem is that (apparently) players aren't able to easily find
desirable servers. But is "desirable" really well defined? Is a server
with a skippable ad okay? Is a server with a 5-second ad okay? 10
seconds? Is a server with round-end donor immunity okay? Desirability
is really subjective. Personally, even as a non-server-op I think that
Valve servers are completely undesirable for various reasons,
including performance, skill level, and lack of moderation.
I think that Quickplay at its core is a flawed concept, but I'd be
fine with them restoring all servers to Quickplay by default with the
current Quickplay rules. The problem is that Valve is too lazy to
moderate Quickplay at all. They'd rather cripple Quickplay to a point
where it's unprofitable to put "undesirable" servers into its pool.
Which also affects every other community server at the same time.
On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 2:49 PM, E. Olsen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Are we just ignoring the fact that for a long time, Pinion
hosted many of the CS:GO official matchmaking servers, which
had terrible performance issues (like Valve servers now!)
*and* ran MOTD ads? It's okay for Valve, a
multi-billion-dollar corporation to do it, but not average Joe
trying to make some money back on what already isn't a
negligible expense?
The fact that valve did it sure as hell doesn't mean it was a good
idea. I'm sure they would be the first to admit they're not
infallible, and have made errors in judgement.
Ads really aren't a problem anymore in TF2 and if players
still have that delusion, then there's really nothing that can
be done about it.
Of course there is. When there is a perception problem, you can
take a proactive stance to fix what is causing that perception
problem. Like it or not, servers running those ads have caused a
perception problem.
At any rate, this is the same argument that has gone in circles
for two years, and probably contributes to why Valve won't lift a
finger to help communities still passionate about the game. The
people who want the right to monetize a player connection with an
ad impression will always scream at the top of their lungs that
they should be allowed to do anything they want, and we've already
seen Valve response to that.
At any rate, I think the more prudent course is to continue to try
to change Valve's mind directly. If people think all the cynicism
and insults hurled Valve's way will change things, then by all
means - keep in keeping on.
On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Saint K. <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Amen.
*From:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of
*Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek
*Sent:* Sunday, July 05, 2015 8:31 PM
*To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
*Subject:* Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released
I don't know if the last paragraph is meant sarcastically, but
ads are a huge problem on community servers. Feel free to
write a script that connects to all tf2 servers and keep the
speakers on.
Yes, motds can be turned off client-side. But please don't
expect the average joe to be able to do anything else other
than maybe setting his display resolution.
In the good old days younger people would just gather a few
friends, create a clan and throw together part of their
allowance to rent a gameserver. Later on they would actually
survive on donations. Hosting was driven by passion.
Nowadays every person that can barely even write and their
mother wants to run a server and pay nothing for it. And use
ads and whatnot to earn money from the servers. Sorry, it
never worked that way.
Solution is fairly simple. Have a strict report system to
remove servers from the list. Yes, for gods sake, it won't
remove every single shit server there is, but it's a decent
first step. Evaluate, and go from there. It's not like Valve
wouldn't spit in server-ops' faces. The issue is they don't
pick the right ones.
Luckily, I can't say much about the pinion-official-server
debate, we were quite unaffected in the EU. I must say
however, the pinion people on spuf get a lot of respect from
me. A lot of people shit on them for the right reasons, and
they keep it together. I couldn't do that, god only knows.
On 05.07.2015 19:59, Alexander Corn wrote:
Are we just ignoring the fact that for a long time, Pinion
hosted many of the CS:GO official matchmaking servers,
which had terrible performance issues (like Valve servers
now!) *and* ran MOTD ads? It's okay for Valve, a
multi-billion-dollar corporation to do it, but not average
Joe trying to make some money back on what already isn't a
negligible expense?
But I digress. Ads really aren't a problem anymore in TF2
and if players still have that delusion, then there's
really nothing that can be done about it. Best to just
flip the switch back to all servers by default (and reset
Valve's quickplay scores, they're very artificially
inflated now).
On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 10:29 AM, E. Olsen
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Agreed.
Donation-driven communities were how servers were
operated for years (and how many still do). To suggest
that there has been some kind of fundamental shift in
the game's demographic that would prevent that model
from working now is simply not true.
In fact, those very same people who were willing to
support a server community in the first years of TF2
existence now have even more disposable income should
they wish to do so.
The difference between the two funding models is that
as opposed to those MOTD ads, a server community that
is supported through donations has to provide enough
actual value to players that they CHOOSE to support
that community/server. MOTD ads simply monetize anyone
that connects, without providing any additional value
(and in so many cases, because the system is so open
to abuse, the servers are/were barely suitable for
running TF2 at all in terms of performance).
There seems to be a misconception here, though. I'm
certainly not saying that all servers/communities that
run those ads are "bad". Far from it. Nor am I saying
that those who use them are somehow doing so in a
malicious or underhanded manner.
However, I AM saying that when something that has been
allowed to be used on community servers sullies the
general reputation of those very servers so much that
we actually have players that resist the slightest
change that would give community servers a little more
exposure, then perhaps it is time to start the
conversation about whether it is in the best interest
of community servers operators as a whole to continue
to allow those ads to function.
Frankly, if we have choose between restoring and
rebuilding player confidence in the quality of
community servers, or allowing those ads to run until
there are no players left willing to set foot on a
community server, the answer would seem to be an easy one.
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