Carl - Thank you for that excellent, and most well thought-out suggestion. That type of thing could be a "game-changer" (pun intended) for "communities"/server admin's. I personally think that's a potential "win-win" all-around - especially if there is an in-game or at least in-Steam mechanism for handling donations from players. It's also potentially self-regulating - in the sense that people aren't going to donate to servers that they think suck.
Since (presumably) most server admins play some paid games on Steam, they already have some payment relationship with Valve. Valve might not be able to (within legally/contract limitations) directly credit back to those server admins credit cards, etc. But, they could perhaps put donations into their Steam "wallet" thing. And maybe from there admin's could transfer to PayPal accounts or something like that. That would also give server admins a "better" reason to even bother "registering" their server to a Steam account too. If they need further separation from that process (so they never need to know anybody's SSN's, etc.) they could run that through PayPal as their means of transferring donations to server admins. Valve just becomes the intermediary between the player/donator and the server admin. They are not payments "from" Valve/Steam, but rather payments "through" them. I think most of us have PayPal accounts anyway, and if you receive donations through it - then PayPal probably already has to have your SSN for IRS reporting, etc. anyway - so Valve doesn't need to have it. I must say it again, a most Excellent suggestion "Carl"! - Weasel PS: Yes, I work in a field where I have to think about all this data-breach, disclosure, IRS/SSN reporting and related stuff all the time. Given all the data breaches over the years (including Sony in particular) the less data somebody like Valve has to keep on file, the less there is to leak/breach, the better for all of us (including Valve actually). > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:13:36 -0700 > From: Carl <[email protected]> > To: Half-Life dedicated Linux server mailing list > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] HTML MOTDs not rendering? > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > At the risk of thinking of a new idea: how about this: > > 1. There are two big ways of making money on the Internet: selling ads, > or selling something. > > 2. Advertisers buy ads to sell something. > > 3. Valve has chosen the route of selling something (hats, guns, etc.) > over selling ads with the F2P update. > > 4. Valve has shown that it is very good at taking people who have not > paid anything and converting them to customers (again, F2P) > > 5. Valve has made it very easy to part with your money. > > So how about this: Valve acts like a third party for server donations. > Players can donate to server via Valve. Valve gets a cut, server OPs > get most of it, Users can be recognized for their donations. > > Server ops can still do perks, (avoiding the dreaded Autobalance, have > their text highlighted different, other things that don't greatly affect > gameplay but would be nice to have). > > That way Server ops can keep paying for hardware, players get perks / > recognition for their money, Valve now has a stake in making all servers > better quality. > > Go ahead, tear me apart. > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
