[Dr. Greg House]

Originally Posted by asherkin While most of his post is indeed very tightly focused on what the L4D modding community likes to do, the broad concept does apply to the other games as well. It is very much a discoverability problem, but the thing modding solves is still the same across different game despite different approaches: it keeps the game alive. There are loads of L4D(2) players that are only still playing because of the hard difficulty mods and larger party sizes, there are loads of CSS/GO) and TF2 players that are only still playing alternative gamemodes. Valve have just unfortunately set their eyes on the competitive players and the very casual / new players, completely ignoring the core community as they know they'll exist and do what they want regardless - but that will run out eventually.[...]

I only host alternate gamemodes so I wouldnt know about the core thing except for there were quite a number of 24/7 vanilla map servers which ofc run sourcemod, idk how well they are doing atm though.

Originally Posted by asherkin [...]Ideally what we need is mod classification: Basic admin control, minor gameplay modifications, and alternative game modes. Then tally these up for a score and some broad overall filters to improve discoverability.[...]

I like that idea very much.

Originally Posted by asherkin [...]Unfortunately, a decent portion of the server admin population is awful and will lie and cheat their way to tricking players to join the server (and then others will use this to justify doing the same), which makes any kind of honour system completely useless and puts a burden on Valve to police the server community, and then we get nothing and eventually sidelined because they (rightfully) don't want that burden.[...]

Cant the solution just be as easy as opening up a vote menu for the client where he can choose whether or not the server meets the chosen filters? Wouldn't that at least work for the majority of problems with your proposal/enough to make it work in general?

Originally Posted by asherkin [...]and their players (advertising, "donor" benefits) for a few bucks.[...]

Those are pissing me off. Excuse the phrasing. I'd like to report each one of those communities to paypal and have their accounts suspended, because they force people to declare payment for their services as donations. I'm sure paypal would have something to say about it.

Originally Posted by asherkin [...]The last two paragraphs brought to you by: The other side of the coin.[...]

That coin?

[404UserNotFound]

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House BTW: Theyve gotten mad for a reason. Decent approach from you would have been to post a mail with the exploit, saying some people would be using it, and wait. Then go ahead and threaten them with releasing the source to do it, then release it. The rest was just a dick move.

Nah, decent approach was to release it here. As was said before, the duck journals were pointless as fuck. There was no reward for levelling them up, so creating a plugin to rapid-spawn ducks to level your journal up was fine and dandy.

The two main causes for concern were:
1. Valve saw it as cheating without hacking
2. All the spawning was mildly DDoSing the Steam servers, which nobody using the plugins accounted for. Jessecar and Geel of Scrap.tf were probably the two biggest offenders behind the mild DDoSing because they kept pushing the limits of how quickly they could spawn ducks in an attempt to hit the highest XP amount possible. They probably won't admit any of that, but it's true. I sat in their Scrap.tf chatroom watching them brag about it, and when asked how they were spawning ducks so quickly, they refused to say anything.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House Go blame knife manufacturers for every stabbing then. It is their fault.

Oh you're one of THOSE people. That explains a lot.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House Afaik your latest attempt at jarating them off is republishing illegally leaked code. I'll wonder how that will go. Thanks for any possible consequences in advance.

Don't be blaming me for Team Fortress 2 Classic, it's not MY project. Here's the project owner's Steam profile if you wanna be a dick and whine to him. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.

As for republishing illegally leaked code, other people have done it in the past and even Greenlit projects made with the leaked code. Our team has been actively trying to get in touch with Valve to show them what work we've done thus far, and to get a potential OK for the project to continue along as planned.

It's people with your mindset that are the reason why we've kept discussions about the project on Facepunch. Some idiot made a thread on TeamFortress.tv for the project where it was met by people with your "omg so illegal" mindset. Then some other idiot ported the thread over to GameBanana (which went better, but we still asked him to remove the thread).

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House Those are pissing me off. Excuse the phrasing. I'd like to report each one of those communities to paypal and have their accounts suspended, because they force people to declare payment for their services as donations. I'm sure paypal would have something to say about it.

Yeah that's smart, let's kill off funding for the many people trying to make a living off of server hosting. Real smart. Why don't you go to those people's homes and take food off their tables.

Personally speaking, I don't ask for monetary donations on my servers. It's either 1, 2, 3 or 7 keys based on the rank. I turn around and unbox stuff with those keys and often raffle the unboxed items off, or if I'm in need of cash, I'll sell the keys.

I also host servers for people at 4 keys per month (for one gameserver, add 1 key for each additional server) and I host 5 people. I don't need help "keeping my servers alive". I pay $40/month (2 dedicated servers at $20/each) and can handle that just fine without donations.

But hey, PayPal knows damn well about gameservers and donations and even if they were to change their stance on it out of the blue, there's many other sites one can use in its place.

[Dr. Greg House]

Originally Posted by abrandnewday Nah, decent approach was to release it here.[...]

Okay, apparently there's no point in talking to you so I'll keep it at this one reply.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]As was said before, the duck journals were pointless as fuck. There was no reward for levelling them up, so creating a plugin to rapid-spawn ducks to level your journal up was fine and dandy.[...]

So as long as you value something as pointless (not whoever owns the system), you can do whatever you want to it? gj

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]The two main causes for concern were: 1. Valve saw it as cheating without hacking 2. All the spawning was mildly DDoSing the Steam servers, which nobody using the plugins accounted for. Jessecar and Geel of Scrap.tf were probably the two biggest offenders behind the mild DDoSing because they kept pushing the limits of how quickly they could spawn ducks in an attempt to hit the highest XP amount possible. They probably won't admit any of that, but it's true. I sat in their Scrap.tf chatroom watching them brag about it, and when asked how they were spawning ducks so quickly, they refused to say anything.[...]

I'm not sure if this is even supposed to be a counter-argument. You're pretty much establishing my point here. Not only do you point out that one could see this as cheating, you also say that the exploit caused a denial of service on Valve's side. So not only were you disturbing their economy but were also preventing them from keeping up their basic services.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]Oh you're one of THOSE people. That explains a lot.[...]

So basically when you run out of points to make you but people in drawers?

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]Don't be blaming me for Team Fortress 2 Classic, it's not MY project.[...]

You actively support the project and manage the facepunch thread. While you might not do the actual infringement your stance is clear as hell for it.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]As for republishing illegally leaked code, other people have done it in the past and even Greenlit projects made with the leaked code. Our team has been actively trying to get in touch with Valve to show them what work we've done thus far, and to get a potential OK for the project to continue along as planned.[...]

To keep it short:
The code was leaked. Valve owns the rights to it and distribution of it is illegal. As long as there is no written permission the situation doesn't change. Good luck getting one btw, there is a reason you haven't so far.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]It's people with your mindset[...]

How dare I question (anything in general or in particular in this case) if this is legal for just one second? See the tl;dr above for what the status quo is. Of course there are valid concerns, otherwise "the people behind the project" wouldn't ask for permission (in retrospect apparently, that's nice BTW). Also as you said I'm not the one who "came up with it", so to speak.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]Yeah that's smart, let's kill off funding for the many people trying to make a living off of server hosting. Real smart. Why don't you go to those people's homes and take food off their tables.[...]

Many servers have P2W vip systems. Many servers are managed by 16yr spoiled kids (this is not a joke, look around, pandacommunity for example). A donation by definition comes with no benefits. A donation itself is not to be bound to any services in exchange. What these communities offer is a service which they fraudulently mislabel as a donation so they can't be held accountable for availability and therefore targeted by paypal's cashback system. If they want to fund their servers, they can do it by accepting actual donations, or declaring what they are selling as a paid service with limited availability. There would be no harm done.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]Personally speaking, I don't ask for monetary donations on my servers. It's either 1, 2, 3 or 7 keys based on the rank. I turn around and unbox stuff with those keys and often raffle the unboxed items off, or if I'm in need of cash, I'll sell the keys.[...]

Since keys are goods of monetary value, there is no difference. So if you're asking for key donations in return for services, it's the same bs.

I also host servers for people at 4 keys per month (for one gameserver, add 1 key for each additional server) and I host 5 people. I don't need help "keeping my servers alive". I pay $40/month (2 dedicated servers at $20/each) and can handle that just fine without donations.

Originally Posted by abrandnewday [...]But hey, PayPal knows damn well about gameservers and donations and even if they were to change their stance on it out of the blue, there's many other sites one can use in its place.

And where is that written on paper? PayPal might know of the problem that is intentionally mislabeled payments. They might as well have the stance that a filehoster has when it comes to illegal downloads. "We can't automatically detect and forbid stuff, but if you report it, we can and have to act upon it"

But then again, clearly you lack perspective and skepticism. You'd rather lash out and put everyone with concerns into the moron category. Way to represent yourself, and way to represent the project. So I'm done with you.

So, basically, as asherkin suggested clearly this whole thing is two sides of a coin. Thanks for supplying us with an example of the other side. Valve who shuts us out, and certain people in the community who to some degree force their hand to do so. So here's the victims:

-AM
-The gamers
-Decent communities and modders

[404UserNotFound]

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House Okay, apparently there's no point in talking to you so I'll keep it at this one reply.

Lol.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House So as long as you value something as pointless (not whoever owns the system), you can do whatever you want to it? gj

Yup. That's about it.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House I'm not sure if this is even supposed to be a counter-argument. You're pretty much establishing my point here. Not only do you point out that one could see this as cheating, you also say that the exploit caused a denial of service on Valve's side. So not only were you disturbing their economy but were also preventing them from keeping up their basic services.

I see reading isn't your strong point. I stopped using the plugin and removed it from the forums once someone mentioned to me that Valve was seeing it as "cheating without hacking" and that it was also mildly DDoSing the servers. Other people continued to use it (i.e. Geel and Jessecar who pushed it to extreme levels).

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House So basically when you run out of points to make you but people in drawers?

It always helps to classify people.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House You actively support the project and manage the facepunch thread. While you might not do the actual infringement your stance is clear as hell for it.

I manage the thread, I run a website and forum for it, I suggest ideas and concepts. We have our own Slack.com channel for development talks. We're highly professional.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House To keep it short: The code was leaked. Valve owns the rights to it and distribution of it is illegal. As long as there is no written permission the situation doesn't change. Good luck getting one btw, there is a reason you haven't so far.

The reason we haven't so far is because we don't know who to contact. Nice attempt to twist my words around and insert false implications.

As for the distribution aspect of leaked code being illegal, I again point you to the numerous mods that have been made off of leaked source code, some of which even being Greenlit by Valve.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House Many servers have P2W vip systems. Many servers are managed by 16yr spoiled kids (this is not a joke, look around, pandacommunity for example). A donation by definition comes with no benefits. A donation itself is not to be bound to any services in exchange. What these communities offer is a service which they fraudulently mislabel as a donation so they can't be held accountable for availability and therefore targeted by paypal's cashback system. If they want to fund their servers, they can do it by accepting actual donations, or declaring what they are selling as a paid service with limited availability. There would be no harm done.

My servers are managed by me, a 27 year old who works full time and does this for fun. My donator benefits are not pay2win by any means. I make sure the benefits I offer are fair and do not imbalance anything.

As for why we label the benefits as "Donator", I doubt highly that it's to fraudulently label things. For the most part, the term Donator has been used interchangeably with VIP or any other term for a long time.

Yes, some unscrupulous dickheads like to abuse the donation system on Paypal. I'm not hiding that fact.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House But then again, clearly you lack perspective and skepticism. You'd rather lash out and put everyone with concerns into the moron category. Way to represent yourself, and way to represent the project. So I'm done with you.

No, I don't put everyone into the moron category. Just you. Especially when I see shit like this:

Theyve gotten mad for a reason. Decent approach from you would have been to post a mail with the exploit, saying some people would be using it, and wait. Then go ahead and threaten them with releasing the source to do it, then release it. The rest was just a dick move.

Which reminds me, the duck spawning code wasn't an exploit. If we're arguing semantics, I could say that quite a few plugins for TF2 are exploits. God mode is an exploit. Do your research and know what you're talking about before you start tossing verbal attacks around.

Originally Posted by Dr. Greg House So, basically, as asherkin suggested clearly this whole thing is two sides of a coin. Thanks for supplying us with an example of the other side. Valve who shuts us out, and certain people in the community who to some degree force their hand to do so. So here's the victims: -AM -The gamers -Decent communities and modders

Who's the one who lobbied to get MasterXykon banned when he idiotically re-released his fixed Equipment Manager plugin and also that SteamTools Extra extension he made that enabled fake maxplayers and other things that'll get you blacklisted from the server browser? Me.

I'm the last person here who would purposely try to piss Valve off. The last thing I want to see is Valve shutting down modding on TF2 and other games.

I'm done with you.

And if anything, I'm the "middle" of the coin.

[rowedahelicon]

What happened to just having the community pick and choose what servers to go on?

I will admit that there is a problem on the community side of things, there is a lot of cancer servers out there. I tried playing Gmod the other night and wound up trolling a server that offered paid admin to anyone.

Communities like that shouldn't thrive, but it also shouldn't take down the whole community with it. Illegal mods are the same thing, they happen and it sucks. But it should be up to us to shun them (Which a good job has been done here for the most part.) instead of letting it get to be a problem to a point they shut down everything.

This affects more than just the games we have here, Valve being the symbol of PC gaming leads the way in a lot of thoughts, and if it winds up becoming accepted that modding is toxic then that's what it'll wind up being.

There is a lot of back and forth between Valve and the communities, which is probably why they won't bother listening to anyone. Who would you listen to? When both sides are neck and neck passing the blame around to each other?

[Dr. Greg House]

Originally Posted by rowedahelicon There is a lot of back and forth between Valve and the communities, which is probably why they won't bother listening to anyone. Who would you listen to? When both sides are neck and neck passing the blame around to each other?

Either picking people/communities to listen to and stick with them, or only converse with am core devs (same goes for mappers and other branches).

[Mathias.]

Not to mention that valve became big because of community servers, dod, 1.6, cz, they server list are empty right now (except for 1.6) and that how they thanks us. I mean, can you imagine 1.6 or dod without any modification or plugin? Even in competitive people appreciate the modification with admin control and auto team locking stats stuff like this.

[friagram]

The most common thing people ask for on csgo servers is for donator systems that tie into paypal, and plugins that give gameplay changing functionality, like extra speed, faster reload, infinite ammo, respawning, extra damage, access to extra weapons/money, etc. I'm all for donating to support communities and development of community content (and also communities rewarding donors with non-game breaking cosmetic stuff like chat colors, models, trails and that kind of stuff), but this is not usually the case in GO.

This may not be the fault of the server operators though. Csgo can't support many things on the download table, so you are limited to how many models/sounds you can have for custom content. Materials are also limited, so no trails and other fun stuff. The fact that it doesn't use shared sdk content further removes it from taking advantage of some mods. Then we combine things like lack of hud text, chat colors, and other simple ui features, there really is little left to manipulate. It also doesn't help that csgo is one of the most competative games, so people will be most attracted to things that give them advantages.

Recently I have been asked to work on some other stuff for csgo, hale type mods 1vall, deathrun, zombie modes, so there are some other things out there. Still, the string tables limit what all you can do in go. Also, lack of projectile weapons really hurts.

[Robin955]

this comment is about alot of wierd shit, and maybe exaggerating a bit=)
back in 2007-2010 wcs was so damn popular and now its like shit if you look for it
annyway this?
Valve have just unfortunately set their eyes on the competitive players and the very casual / new players, completely ignoring the core community as they know they'll exist and do what they want regardless - but that will run out eventually

you might be right but just bringing this up has no point what so ever and will never have, and because of that it just looks like a complain
as for current valve, they dont really care that much about money annymore, and if some idiot would go up and complain about the open source they gave us i bet they would just stop doing it and make ppl shut their mouth for complains for something that was made as a bonus part of the game.
yeah do u see how many players that plays csgo? and actually its more like css but they added competitive and purchasing custom weapons and weapon skins.

without valve, no self made company for amateurs to make forums for their servers and get donations cause they would never had a server annyway. and people has made Thousands of Thousands of just doing some game servers and a good forum. with just 5-10 servers in it total. there wouldn't be any fastDLs to setup to earn money.
like gameservers.com without valve it would been tryintoearnsomecash.com my friend hosted 1000-1200 gameservers total for different games alone and has hes own forum, all alone and thats easy money. like most people commenting has their !Donate in their signature to earn some extra cash. 1200 servers alone, earn atleast 4 dollar per server. thats 4500 a month. not bad for a 18 year old who did everything by himself.

those who earn money because of valve should not complain ^ a normal xeon e3 ***forgot*** could host up to yeah 15 servers depending on size of server. my 64 slot with 66 tickrate took 12.2 cpu usage maximum on my i7 not saying wich and how much does a 64 slot server cost? more like 40-50 dollar a month, and i can host 7-8 of them and pay 150 for the dedi. thats 400 dollar to me and 150 to the dedi. and now lets just do a couple houndred of them and earn all them millions. all i can say is thank you valve for a perfect life. like zephyurius, instead of being free he makes plugins and sells them, like hes store compared to alongub. he's store quality isn't even close and alongub is free. who is generous again? (well yeah by now zephyrius has one free version and one paid)

and all in all its just gigabyte on gigabyte of development from over around the world for free, no one asked you to work on valve's open source games! but it was so good that you could make all them money on it. and thats one reason why its so huge. and later on you realised how awesome it was in general and then vent over to just work together to make the games more amazing for free to do better work all along. good plan son, good plan.
also Sourcemod is one of the biggest success to most people's servers in making donations and getting paid for having someone look out for ur server, in real life it costs hella lot to get people to work under you, but in here they pay you to work for you! holy bananas.

where there is people, there is money.

[Robin955]

Originally Posted by rowedahelicon I will admit that there is a problem on the community side of things, there is a lot of cancer servers out there. I tried playing Gmod the other night and wound up trolling a server that offered paid admin to anyone. Communities like that shouldn't thrive, but it also shouldn't take down the whole community with it. Illegal mods are the same thing, they happen and it sucks. But it should be up to us to shun them (Which a good job has been done here for the most part.) instead of letting it get to be a problem to a point they shut down everything.

what is illegal mods? illegal moderators or illegal game modes gameplay? or you mean hacks?
and people getting paid for admin is more like a serious place (if it was in real life) but since it isn't there is no way to keep annyone in check, its all about typing skills and convincing others to pay you for doing it then just leave the server and go do something else. or make a second steam and join it again and try same method again ;]

where do you find in real life where you pay someone to actually work for them? in games and communities that money you donate (well actually just pay) for admin or vip is the proof you have for being a serious player who would like to help out the server. and in real life you dont need that since you meet the person physically.

the contract for ppl behind the screen is paying them then you are validated to work under their circumstances, in real life you just meet up physically and work for money. here you work and pay them and earn supposedly more joy into the gameplay and the feeling within the server.
in one way thats the power of addictive gaming but its not like you are paying alot. and it makes you're gameplay different and experienced in a new way, just like if you bought a new game. (almost) atleast thats some of the purpose of admin and other features.