[Mr. Man]

Originally Posted by Dr. McKay Some people are being losers and undermining server operators for their own desires, so Pinion users might be interested in this.

Liked general ad-blocking abilities prevalent in all modern internet browsers, players should be allowed to choose whether they want to opt-in or out of advertising and not bombarded without consent. This is equivalent to unsolicited telemarketing.

There would be no issue if Valve simply enabled a filtering feature that allowed players to ignore servers using advertising such as Pinion to begin with. And yes, I am also a server operator, though I am more benevolent in that I don't force ads on my users whatsoever.

[nineteeneleven]

Originally Posted by napalm00 I'd reply that players are not customers and even if they were forcing a customer to watch whatever seconds of ads is unfair at best. Don't run servers in the first place if you can't pay for them, or just man up and work hard to make some kind of awesome donations system that your players will love. Also, server owners can be female too.

Ever download a free app that has ads built in? Ever listen to the radio? Ever see a billboard?

Ever contact the owner of the app, radio station, or billboard and tell them the they shouldn't be forcing ads on people, and they should just man up and pay for it themselves?

[napalm00]

Originally Posted by nineteeneleven Ever download a free app that has ads built in? Ever listen to the radio? Ever see a billboard? Ever contact the owner of the app, radio station, or billboard and tell them the they shouldn't be forcing ads on people, and they should just man up and pay for it themselves?

(Leaving the app out since anybody who does that automatically excludes themselves from the good apps list)
Is your community registered as a company, so that you pay taxes on your profits? If not, and you want to keep your servers a fun place where anybody is equally free to join and have a good time, then I politely ask you stop making absurd comparisons.
As Powerlord already stated, the MOTD window was never intended to be a way for people to force ads on players, the word MOTD itself means Message Of The Day, which is something you put in your server to greet the player when they first join.

[Dr. McKay]

Originally Posted by napalm00 (Leaving the app out since anybody who does that automatically excludes themselves from the good apps list) Is your community registered as a company, so that you pay taxes on your profits? If not, and you want to keep your servers a fun place where anybody is equally free to join and have a good time, then I politely ask you stop making absurd comparisons. As Powerlord already stated, the MOTD window was never intended to be a way for people to force ads on players, the word MOTD itself means Message Of The Day, which is something you put in your server to greet the player when they first join.

TF2 was also never meant to be a hide-and-seek game, yet Prophunt exists.

[Zephyrus]

Originally Posted by Dr. McKay TF2 was also never meant to be a hide-and-seek game, yet Prophunt exists.

valve has clearly expressed their feelings about pinion by introducing the matchmaking parameter for the connect command

[Dr. McKay]

Originally Posted by Zephyrus valve has clearly expressed their feelings about pinion by introducing the matchmaking parameter for the connect command

They've also expressed their feelings here.

[snelvuur]

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by Dr. McKay They've also expressed their feelings here.

That depends entirely on if they gave Arthur the green name before or after Pinion became an advertiser instead of just a server host.

[asherkin]

Originally Posted by Powerlord That depends entirely on if they gave Arthur the green name before or after Pinion became an advertiser instead of just a server host.

You have your timeline backwards, Pinion are an advertising company, the hosting of some official servers came later.

[Fearts]

If I remember correctly Pinion started doing "free" server hosting around August or September of 2012. They would give anyone a free server as long as it ran Pinion. The ad money that you got from filling your server paid for it, and if you made more than the cost of the server you got to keep the profit.

Shortly after this system was put in place, Pinion made a agreement with Valve to host AUS servers for them, and in some other locations were more servers were needed.

After that they were given a rank on Steam Forums.

Just because Pinion was given a rank there doesn't mean Valve supports in game advertising. They may have only done so because Pinion now hosts a lot of servers for them. As someone pointed out already, Valve has put a system in place to block ads from quick play servers, which are the servers Pinion now hosts for them.