On 04/04/2013 13:40, Bjorn Wielens wrote:
Indeed.
As a (medium-sized) community we don't run pinion because we despise it as much
as the clients. That said, I completely support the right of server ops to use
ads (legitimately) in an attempt to recover operating costs. I also support the
rights of clients to block the ads, though. Ops pay for servers and can do with
them as they see fit, and clients pay for their internet connection/bandwidth,
and can do with the bits servers send them as they see fit.
It's not really that simple.
For one thing, Valve supply the software under a license. And valve are
(in the sense of quickplay) supplying punters who want a specific
experience. A lot of them don't want to be joined to your server and if
they could help it, they wouldn't. But that's half the point, when Valve
do something to stop them joining, people cry on these forums that it
isn't fair and that their server is empty.
Now Valve basically said "Set up these tags and don't bullshit in your
server data about players and bots, and then you can do more or less
what you want. But quickplay exists for this specific experience and if
you want quickplay players then don't piss on their strawberries" but,
admins have to keep pissing on quickplay's strawberries. They can't help
themselves.
They are greedy. Far from wanting to build up their own community of
people who want to watch adverts, they want getrichquickplay to send TF2
players to their server to watch adverts, so they can roll around in the
cash.
But, you cannot act like you've done anything to get a getrichquickplay
user to join your server to then justify "doing with them as you see
fit" - in fact what you have to do to get quickplay players is the
complete opposite of doing something, you need to just run the server as
vanilla as possible - but that doesn't stop you from doing anything -
you might tempt people who join to come back directly, or join another
server you have where you can fleece them for as much dosh as you can
get away with.
It's like, if you want to run an NTP server, and make it part of one of
the global pools, you have to go along with the rules, you can't say
"It's my server, I do what I like and my server has 25 hours in each day
and shows adverts for swiss watches from eleventy o'clock until 30
minutes past thirtington each day" - because then they'll say "Ok,
please take your server with you on your way out"
And, afaict, that's the real issue. People who join your server
directly, so far as I can tell Valve don't care too much about how you
ruin their experience or not. They get to vote with their own feet (I'm
sure there are still limits - and I'm equally sure those who think
working for a living is too hard will continue to find and push at them)
But people who are clicking quickplay aren't asking for your addons,
adverts or anything else specific to you. They aren't even asking to be
connected to your server. It's you that has made the choice to accept
quickplay players. Valve have made it very easy for you to stop them
joining if that doesn't suit the way you want to run the server.
I agree that a lot of people don't realize the costs and amount of work that
goes into running a community TF2 server.
(In fact, this image sums up the menality quite nicely:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38481337/servers.png)
Hmm, some will know either because they've done it, or because some of
the servers they play on advertise servers.
But I suspect what you say is true without realising in what way. I
suspect most people would be surprised at how cheap it was. Especially
when they are given this kind of "please donate, otherwise Bob Geldof
will need to write me a song" rhetoric, that's trying to make it sound
like it's financially crippling.
It'd be interesting if someone organized a TF2 blackout day like they did with
SOPA to squash this mentality and educate folks what TF2 would be like if there
weren't any folks investing time and money to run community servers. Then
again, it'd probably fall on deaf ears from the 'HURR DURR BUT I PAID FOR
TF2/TF2 IS FREE' crowd.
If there's no server for me to play on, I'll run my own. It's a doddle
to do and it's cheap as chips.
Valve have plenty of servers too.
You have no leverage to make this almost-a-threat with.
It happens much of the time that a server I often play on, is either
empty or full - the world doesn't end, I just join another server.
Switch your server off, and that is all that will happen. People will
play on another one.
One thing I do note though, many admins on here seem to have quite a bit
of disdain for the TF2 community. Arguably, a reasonable observation
perhaps, but if you want these people to give you money, that's not a
good impression to give them.
Albeit, it seems they've figured treating your customers this way means
donations dry up. So now they are hoping to sell their users to
advertisers, again, in some circumstances this is clearly pissing them
off. It doesn't matter how wrong or stupid you think they are, if you
implement adverts, or anything else, in a way that pisses your users
off, you will eventually have no users and no advertisers will be
interested either.
--
Dan
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