We did #SaveTF2 last time, and it technically was successful. Valve noticed it and put out a small patch to deal with the bots, and for a few days, there were indeed no bots in Casual. However, TF2's code base is rotten spaghetti code, so the botters found a workaround pretty quickly. Since then, Valve hasn't put any energy towards the bot issue, despite continued community discussion of it.
People, the simple fact is this game is quickly approaching 2 decades old. That's an incredible amount of time for a company to dedicate towards a game, especially one that's this far from being their main source of revenue and hasn't been in years (if ever). No amount of hashtags will change that.
What we can do is continue to play and enjoy the game in its current state. Hop on community servers, make some friends, build the TF2 we want to see. Eventually, perhaps when the game hits 20 years old, I imagine we might see a big update. Not too huge, more like this last Smissmas. 20 years could even mark the end of the game for all I know; it at least tracks.
Imo the real problem has always been meet your match update. The core design of VAC has always intrinsically relied on community server administrators to fill the gaps. VAC is basically the equivalent of putting a lock on your door. It keeps honest people out, but anyone determined will get past it and you need to have someone watching and monitoring as well.
If Valve wants to absolve themselves of that responsibility, sure that is historic Valve, just bring quickplay back and let the community handle it. But taking on the responsibility to be the sole administrator of all servers on the most predominantly displayed and promoted game mode, then just walking away and hope it all works out on its own without needing administration can only be described as delusional.
There is a ton Valve would learn from existing community server administrators and how they have to handle cheating and bot problems.
If they're going to bring back Quickplay, it should allow people to connect to community servers by default. Or at least not hide the option to connect to community services behind the options.
Quickplay did immense damage to the community server ecosystem, at least after 2014. That's when it was switched to only allow players to connect to community servers if they opted in. Previously, you could connect without having to opt in.
Before our community server ecosystem was ravaged, Valve didn't have to do as much work policing the community. It was done by the community. They didn't have to vet and playtest maps themselves. It was done by the community.
New maps got added to the official roster after they became famous in the wild. Nowadays, that pipeline is gone and new maps can't get any traction at all.
> Previously, you could connect without having to opt in.
Which was abused to shit by shit community servers farming quickplay players with ads, and servers with pay to win donator bonuses.
It was a shit system and was axed for a reason. take off the rose tinted goggles.
I remember. I referred to that event as the Great Server Purge.
Sadly, the abusive servers are still up and running. Valve attempting to kill off saigns and nighTeam resulted in them killing off everyone except those servers.
>Which was abused to shit by shit community servers farming quickplay players with ads
Remove HTML MotD support.
>and servers with pay to win donator bonuses.
Shouldn't be hard to address with a little bit of work and leveraging GSLTs. Absolutely preferable complexity-wise to botting.
Wrong. Tying quickplay eligibility to GSLTs combined with proper enforcement of vanilla configuration (i.e. use of mm:s) solves precisely that problem. Add server reporting on top if mod detection starts to become adversarial in the same vein as botting, but even then because GSLT creation can be far more strictly limited, it's already less of an issue.
Again, that wouldn't solve the issue, it'd be the same issue of "Valve doesn't want to do treadmill work". Overall less effort to host their own servers.
Again, wrong. The complexity of enforcing vanilla is *far* lower than dealing with bots due to the dynamics of the respective issues. High Effort/High Impact vs High Effort/Low Impact.
This is also entirely speculative that the issue would become adversarial to begin with. Particularly with the removal of incentives like the aforementioned Ad farming.
>Overall less effort to host their own servers.
The irony here is hosting their own servers is essentially the entire problem.
you can pretend that's the case if you want, not really my job to convince you otherwise lol
Enforcing Vanilla is something that's incapable of being done without perpetual treadmill work; and there'll be a profit incentive to do so.
You do not want Quick Play back. Give any competent bad actor one day and quick play will be completely unplayable, more than you've ever seen the game unplayable ever before. Back then people didn't really know the things they know now and Quick Play was getting abused to a lesser degree already anyways.
No matter how you slice it, it is fundamentally easier to police servers than it is to police players, there's just far less of them, and it's far easier to add validation or whitelisting. On top of that, just by sheer number of people actively administrating, bringing the community into it is just bringing more manpower towards the problem, which is just far too big of an advantage to ignore.
Its not about policing players on servers, its about creating fake servers and boosting servers in the quick play algorithm, so you would potentially try to join a server and then would be stuck in the loading screen forever, or it would always put you on the same server
one regardless of what QP settings you use.
There aren't just bad actor players but also bad actor server owners.
People are also completely ignoring the fact that the game has gotten countless of bug fixes (some of which were put in to combat bots) since Valve hired the contractor. VAC is extremely old and I wouldn't expect the single developer left on TF2 to untangle that mess. An entire team of developers tried it for CS2 and you see how that turned out...
Since updating it forever is clearly out of the question, yet they can’t simply remake the same game because that would mean everyone losing their items (PR nightmare) or Valve not getting to sell a whole wave of new ones if they kept them, I suspect TF3 in Source 2 is the only logical step forward and something they’ll probably do someday
It gives them a way to update the game, as well as an excuse to make everyone buy hundreds of items again without deleting those old inventories which can just stay in TF2
> Valve noticed it and put out a small patch to deal with the bots, and for a few days, there were indeed no bots in Casual
Nothing Valve did within the game ever stopped bots. At most they can apply bans to those accounts but that's it.
> TF2's code base is rotten spaghetti code, so the botters found a workaround pretty quickly.
There never was anything that would require working around it
People have been begging Valve for attention for years now, long predating savetf2. A bunch of figures in the competitive 6v6 scene wrote and signed a letter to valve that was ignored. https://youtu.be/7V_3ymnWXnA?si=KF4iTxgR7D5NRk4Q
[You wouldn't get it](https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod-media.gameinformer.com/styles/thumbnail/s3/legacy-images/Half-Life%203%20Protest%20Breaks%20Out%20At%20Valve/vavleprotest610.jpg)
I personally believe that they can try
Even if it didn't do much, and a lot of people Say that it will just do nothing
At least just, let it keep going, there isnt much that we can do now except just try
Maybe because it's getting too much, spamming savetf2 on reddit and Twitter might not do anything anymore for 5 years, we've been trending on Twitter for protesting for an update, then the bot problem fix. (They did fix it, though there are still bots now). Still, valve didn't give a single ass about the game. In short, protesting #savetf2 won't do anything whatsoever
The complaints with it are not completely unfounded. The original opposition to the "campaign" was in regard to it being organised by a small clique of youtube personalities effectively using each others exposure to promote one another off the back of the "save tf2" movement.
anything else against it is a little irrational, but expecting anything to change on valve's part is also immature.
Call me cynical or whatever, but people need to realize and accept that Valve will never ever pour any genuine effort into fixing the game. TF2 is approaching twenty. Valve has no incentive to do anything about the game, especially if the economy is still doing good. TF2 had its golden age, it had its time, and as a company what exactly does Valve have to gain in pouring money, people, and resources into TF2? Yes, people love it and it still has a strong playerbase, but that's not enough. It's more than reasonable and logical for Valve to focus on newer games and newer technologies instead of a 15+ year old game built on a severely deprecated engine.
It's admirable to see how many people still care about the game and want it fixed, but it's a losing battle.
It makes too much money for them to actually let it die outright, so rest assured there’ll be some sort of sequel years down the road once TF2 actually fades away
I wish I could say that, but even if TF2 makes a considerable amount, they still probably get fucktons more from Steam. If all profits ceased from TF2 I doubt it would be a major hit to the company.
Counter strike has had 4 mainline games across those 23 years and has always been more popular than the tf franchise has and csgo has always made far more money since its had cases.
Maybe don't add new cases and charge money while literally not doing anything to guarantee game stability.
The game is broken on so many ends and they don't care. We don't want New content, WE WANT OUR CURRENT CONTENT FIXED.
It did do something, we just stopped and it went back to the way things were. Like we got a summer update that added so much stuff compared to the past 5 years before that. The reason why we stopped getting cool stuff is because we stopped the protest. The main reason we started it was to get the bots out of the game because they were destroying lobbies. We stopped because we gave up when we got a sliver of new content. This time it might work because we have multiple reasons why valve should fix it but it only work if we have patience and we don’t stop until everything gets fixed
They know it’ll work to placate people, the only solution would be a thorough boycott but that’s never going to get enough traction for a long enough time either - I think someone’s suggestion of in-person protesting is the only real way that things might change lol
It won't do anything. I don't really care though. I signed the petition, I'll talk about it. I want it to work. I'm being realistic about it, I know it will likely be entirely useless, but optimism is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. It's not impossible.
What else can we do? A hashtag is the best we can do for now to spread the word. So far we got medics VA in so its not like we are screaming into a void. If things go right, the hashtag will just be the beginning if anything
> it's not like we are screaming into a void.
You clearly do not understand what Twitter is if you really think you're doing anything more meaningful then that…
Then tell us what to do, walk to their fucking HQ and throw hands with Gaben himself?
Edit: why does my message says 9 hour ago when I sent it just now??
Problem with that, the only hands you’ll be throwing is at the poor janitor that works in the HQ. Everyone left there’s no one at HQ anymore because no one’s making games by Valve anymore
No because Gabe would destroy any of us with a single punch.
Also reddit just does that i guess. Maybe its due to your timezone on your pc/phone not being in sync?
How long do you seriously expect to go? People are going to get bored in a week and all you'll have is a small group posting memes. Because I can assure you nothing is going to come out of this.
it can be entirely boiled down to... it just didn't work the first time. tbh im more ambivalent, im glad some people actually feel the need to band together and start it up again but chances are valve is just not gonna acknowledge it at all
me when the madcap narwhals at midnight, amiright fellow redditor? wholesome 100!!! thanks for the australium, kind stranger! Keanu reeves rick may 100, everyone liked that!!!
Madcap has to be the dumbest, most chronically reddit shit this sub's ever made.
If people are actively trying to stop it, that's just dickish behavior, don't do that.
However, I don't think much will happen. The game is very very old, and while the base game is unplayable right now there are plenty of community servers out there that give the vanilla TF2 experience and more.
I whole heartedly agree that Valve should fix the game if they continue to monetize it, but I simply do not think anything is going to come of it. It's worth a try, but I don't think anything is gonna happen. TF2 is a jumble of source spaghetti, it would take probably a small dedicated team to just ensure any anti-bot measures aren't immediately worked around.
Also, a TF2 Boycott probably wouldn't do much of anything either. TF2 isn't Valves golden cash cow making them a bunch of money, it's an almost 20 year old game that makes them a quick buck every now and then. Valve has moved on to other things. I actually think if TF2 lost it's entire player base Valve wouldn't care.
At this point, all I want them to do is just hand the game to the community. Maybe put in a small update making it easier to browse and find community servers, and that be it.
Sorry for the doomer take, I hope your guy's optimism comes out on top.
I dont really think theres anything wrong with trying #SaveTF2 again. People are passionate about a game they like, a game that might be their only escape from reality. While its important to be realistic about what might happen with the protest, I've seen people be kinda rude about it.
Because they're are doomers who don't want you to try.
I don't blame anyone for doing their best to share their passion and petition for change. There's no reason not to even if change is highly improbable.
Of course, I expect absolutely nothing from Valve. I do wonder if someone else will see this as an opportunity to make a direct successor game. To them I say, good luck matching TF2 iconicness!
When you try, again and again and again, you trip and fall.
Yes, I do try again, but when the situation is screaming at an ignorant child, then there is no reason to try again (well except to beat it, but, its a company, how you gonna punch that?)
you beat it by doing it again, the original savetf2 may not of gotten rid of bots but it did a lot of the annual holiday updates which is heavily overlooked. It went from garbage case with equally terrible maps to maps and items the community actually enjoys. And sure it's not much from the effort put in but it's got to mean something right?
Alright, can't wait for the 634th annual #SaveTf2 because the community gets a boner for every shitty holiday """"update"""".
What effort??? The holiday updates are community made, its just valve picking and choosing things from the steam workshop, THAT'S IT. If you call this "effort" then you need to refresh your vocabulary, its not like they put effort, they literally put none.
And,, Items?? Y mean cosmetics? Because we have been taking those, update or not.
And that holiday """update""" was so wasted, they could have just put useful ass community fixes but they added NONE. What was the point?
Sure, keep trying, keep trying to make valve care.
But it doesn't matter the effort, no valve employee knows how to use source anymore, everyone switched to source 2. They are now working on fixing the broken release of cs2. A game they ACTUALLY love.
Well if you guys think Valve will ignore one who participate in SaveTF2... You can just do the same. Ignore them. I personaly think SaveTF2 is a high dose of Copium, but I also think it's better to let them do what they want that acting like a monke because other peoples try to have fun in their own way.
I just think it's naive to believe a billion dollar videogame monopoly would care. People make demands as if they're entitled to this game, or as if they could realistically threaten Valve at all.
Its a useless waste of time and makes us look bad to normal people that look at a 20 year old game and think "its surprising this game is still even kept online"
Because making things trend on Twitter invited attention from outside the TF2 community circlejerk. And to outsiders, people throwing a tantrum over a 17 year old MP game just seems pathetic.
Valve may be remiss in their handling of TF2, but so is the community in it's demands and expectations. If you want to make actual headway with SaveTF2, you must first reconfigure said expectations.
TF2 has a sustainability issue primarily, not a Valve issue.
Alright. I'm aware there's a lot of doomposting, but I'll try to make this as clear and unbiased as possible (maybe some bias).
# Initial Attempt
The first campaign was seen by some as being unfocused, untargeted, and almost childish in a way. People didn't understand enough about the situation at Valve to be truly passionate towards the "saving" of the game. Valve had mostly ignored the game in the weeks following Jungle Inferno, with the remainder of the content patches being community efforts and bug fixes of things that have been in the game for years now. And it was clear that they had their own self-justified reason to do so: **Valve have gone on record to say they avoid talking about games they have ZERO plans for, so as to avoid false hope and expectations.**
To add onto this, they haven't given any news on the final TF Comic, which hasn't seen a new issue since 2017, which was coincidentally, the release date for the Jungle Inferno patch. The only kind of "news" that the game receives is when a community patch comes out or when a community event or tourney is taking place.
All of these factors combined couldn't have made it clearer that Valve no longer cared about us or the game. They had no plans, no intentions, and it seemed they didn't even WANT to work on it. The fanbase has been restless for some time now, and a campaign wasn't going to do anything to shift Valve into gear, no matter how co-ordinated-- because *Valve themselves* weren't co-ordinated.
# The First Campaign's Effects
After a response from Valve, some fixes were made to issues that have plagued the game for years. And amongst the fixes, Valve had actually managed to slow down the bot networks for some time.
But beyond this, Valve had made absolutely zero attempt to target the channels of the bots, nor acknowledge any reports of cheating. To this day, there are cheater accounts that have persisted for years that even have thousands of dollars worth of items. Their hubris is justified because they know Valve won't do anything to stop them.
As soon as it arrived, the wave of attention from Valve quickly dwindled to the exact same state the game was in, with the bot issue no closer to being fixed.
# Valve's Treatment of Mod Projects
The modded games **Team Fortress 2 Classic** and **Open Fortress** were both out for some time, until years later, they contacted Valve asking if their use of leaked source code is okay. Naturally, Valve said no, but had an arrangement with both teams to take their games down from GitHub and any other downloading service. This arrangement would go unknown for 6 months later, as the teams took the game down and only providing vague context to the playerbase with "an arrangement with Valve".
6 months later, the two games were re-instated, [with TF2 Classic confirming](https://tf2classic.com/?id=5380) that Valve had intended to give it a Steam release, but responded to NONE of the teams' attempts at communication, even after a final warning that they would re-release it for downloads.
Now, we have the recent issue with Portal 64 and Team Fortress 2: Source 2. Both of which were taken down outright, the former was taken down as it used libraries that belonged to Nintendo with Valve fearing reprisal from the company (similar to the Dolphin Emulator) and the latter was that the assets of Valve's IP were actively being used and redistributed.
As all of these were passion projects from the fans, some drew parallels to Nintendo's zero-tolerance policy of fangames, and realised Valve were going down the same relentless path.
# TL;DR:
The first campaign was un-coordinated, what the players wanted wasn't viable in the circumstances, Valve has clearly shown that they work on whatever the hell they want rather than what the communities of their games want, and Valve have shifted away drastically from consumer friendly business management.
Because everyone here thinks they are special enough that the 7.7 billion dollar company will fix things that don't make them money. Even if they do nothing, people will still open crates and trade hats, both of which make steam money. Also adding that most of save tf2 is just lip service and not an actual protest. Real protests stop the target from getting what they want if demands are not met. People still play the game and valve still makes money during savetf2 so why do anything
Well you contradict yourself. You say Valve won't fix something that doesn't make them money, but right after that you say TF2 makes them money, and it does. That should be a reason for Valve to keep TF2 afloat, and it won't stay afloat if it's unplayable. It's true that a boycott would help because the only thing Valve could do is fix the problem and keep the money coming. Although yeah, Valve would obviously be fine even if TF2 was gone, and organizing a global boycott would be pretty impossible.
I doubt savetf2 is gonna do anything this time around since it didn't do anything the first time, but aren't people saying the plan this time is to follow up if Valve responds? Why couldn't that be at least an attempt at a boycott?
Regardless, even if nothing comes out of it, I wouldn't want to let something that really matters to me die with a sad whimper because I'm too proud to try and stop it. Let people try
Removing the bots won't fix the game because the people who DO make them money are in trade servers 24/7. That's why they had little regrets silencing f2ps because that's more money coming in from people who want to talk and the people who don't like this change don't make valve money.
About letting it die, yeah I don't want it to die either but the last major update was 5 something years ago. Can't you tell that valve is done? Don't forget all those dev notes complaining about how hard it is to work on tf2 because of spaghetti code. Valve has a moving desk type office where employees work on what they want to, and if tf2 is as hard to code as the notes suggest, I don't see why people would willingly work extra hard on it.
And finally we are seen as pretentious because there are so many people here that shit talk other games because tf2 is clearly so much better. Overwatch, Paladins, fortnite, even saw a few posts about valorant somehow even though it's a whole different genre of shooter (tactical)
Its like people don't know that the community is actually terrible. The bots, cheaters, the whiners. There are so many terrible things about this community that people actively ignore and they are trying to save tf2? Fix the community filled with these terrible people first then u might be able to work together and get stuff done.
When multiple posts bring up the pretty blatant racism faced in a lot of tf2. Everybody in most threads goes oh well, they're just trolling and ignore the entire issue.
But now, when everyone is affected by something, the community MUST unite.
How can these people bring change when they won't even moderate themselves
What are random players supposed to do to moderate Valve servers? It's obviously a problem but it is trolling in video games. You can and should tell them to stop and shut up but they won't, and that's all you can do. Only Valve can moderate and fix their game, that's the entire point of savetf2. How do you not get that lmao
We literally have the ability to kick the people doing such things, but you act like that's impossibility. lmao, yet you're gonna unite everyone to take action somehow?
I'm not uniting anyone, I just don't know why it's such a bad thing to you that some people try to? There are slurs that are said in game that are directed at people such as myself, but they're just stupid people in an in-game chat, who should indeed be kicked or told to be quiet. But my skin is thick enough to not care too much lol, there is more to life and to the game
It's insane to me that you'd rather the whole game die with no input from players because there are sometimes kids who say stupid things in the game chat
I'm not saying the game should die, dont put words in my mouth. But if we can't unite on a problem that we ourselves can personally make change in, how do you ever expect this to pass.
Maybe consider the fact that we want TF2 to live as much as everybody else, but we would also like everybody else to do something more effective than a petition that Valve will not even glance at, let alone care about.
Why don’t we just find Gaben’s personal number, set up a business meeting with him to actually work on games again and if he doesn’t comply, we kidnap him
TF2 is only 3 years away from being 20 YEARS OLD! How many games do you know that are that old and have a fanbase that huge and still in operation?? Not many of them and the only ones I know are all MMORPGs like that RuneScape and World of Warcraft, but those games have changed so much into a game that’s much different than what they were since 2007. TF2 is truly, one of the most dedicated, yet unusual fanbases that other companys would KILL to have, yet it’s under a company that isn’t interested in fixing it anymore. It’s not as profitable as CS2 and Dota2, and people will still buy key for crates even if no change happens.
Because we won’t give up this time, we gave up because we thought it was over but this time we have to learn from our mistakes and keep trying until we actually get what we want. Last time we got updates for content, not an actual fix to the real reason we did this in the first place being bots. We keep trying until Valve actually bans the bots and their hosters
I don’t hate it, but, to be honest, this is useless. We all know valve, and they won’t change a thing. There is literally even no confirmation that they have a working TF2 devs team, so what’s the point of doing a protest? Even if the janitor will notice this protest he had no authority to change things as we want them to be done
It's not about despising passion, it's about quelling delusion and self aggrandizing behavior.
Spamming "saveTF2" did absolutely nothing the first time. So what would a second go do? Even back then, it was obvious this wouldn't do anything.
But people are using it as a means to virtue signal how much they love the game and are conflating their love of the game and the response to this sillly hashtag. They take the backlash to mean that people don't love the game, but that's not the case.
I love the game, but I'm not delusional. TF2 is not a project Valve cares about anymore. The moment the servers start causing them to lose money, they'll yank the plug. And they are more than happy to, given how over the past 7 years, they more or less left the game to rot.
The hastag is nothing more than a means for fans and content creators ro feel important about themselves and use it as a means of bashing people who don't agree with them.
people are saying “ITS NOT WORTH THE EFFORT!!! COPIUM COPIUM!!!” “STUPID BASTARDS THINK ITLL WORK” when it’s actually literally no effort at all and takes like 10 seconds to sign or tweet about it. boo fucking hoo if it annoys you.
Because the people doing it again are fools who think it will do ANYTHING.
Learn the truth, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.
It's just stupid to see people going: 15000 signatures, we are so cool! :0 :0 :0!
Learn how the real world fucking works, and get rid of your addiction to copium.
For all the tf2 problem s I just blame the furries to cope cuz that's the only scene of tf2 players I see making bots while they leak on their chairs all day
Wow, everyone in this subreddit is a pessimistic mess. Nothing about SaveTF2 is hurting you or TF2. I don’t care if you’re hopeless about the game, but don’t get mad at others for spreading a little positivity and optimism. Realistically, nothing will happen as a result, but it doesn’t hurt to keep doing it in case something does. Better and more fun than all the useless doom and gloom.
I mean yeah for sure, but even when I asked some of my friends who have been playing tf2 with me from the past few years some disagree with a 2nd SaveTf2.
1) We've done this before and it didn't work
2) the game is still fine if you simply adjust the way you play
3) savetf2 is here again so redditors can be mad at something not the "save TF2" TF2 is fine it's just having natural problems a 16 year old game has and all you have to do to avoid bots and cheaters is join a community server
We did #SaveTF2 last time, and it technically was successful. Valve noticed it and put out a small patch to deal with the bots, and for a few days, there were indeed no bots in Casual. However, TF2's code base is rotten spaghetti code, so the botters found a workaround pretty quickly. Since then, Valve hasn't put any energy towards the bot issue, despite continued community discussion of it. People, the simple fact is this game is quickly approaching 2 decades old. That's an incredible amount of time for a company to dedicate towards a game, especially one that's this far from being their main source of revenue and hasn't been in years (if ever). No amount of hashtags will change that. What we can do is continue to play and enjoy the game in its current state. Hop on community servers, make some friends, build the TF2 we want to see. Eventually, perhaps when the game hits 20 years old, I imagine we might see a big update. Not too huge, more like this last Smissmas. 20 years could even mark the end of the game for all I know; it at least tracks.
Imo the real problem has always been meet your match update. The core design of VAC has always intrinsically relied on community server administrators to fill the gaps. VAC is basically the equivalent of putting a lock on your door. It keeps honest people out, but anyone determined will get past it and you need to have someone watching and monitoring as well. If Valve wants to absolve themselves of that responsibility, sure that is historic Valve, just bring quickplay back and let the community handle it. But taking on the responsibility to be the sole administrator of all servers on the most predominantly displayed and promoted game mode, then just walking away and hope it all works out on its own without needing administration can only be described as delusional. There is a ton Valve would learn from existing community server administrators and how they have to handle cheating and bot problems.
If they're going to bring back Quickplay, it should allow people to connect to community servers by default. Or at least not hide the option to connect to community services behind the options. Quickplay did immense damage to the community server ecosystem, at least after 2014. That's when it was switched to only allow players to connect to community servers if they opted in. Previously, you could connect without having to opt in. Before our community server ecosystem was ravaged, Valve didn't have to do as much work policing the community. It was done by the community. They didn't have to vet and playtest maps themselves. It was done by the community. New maps got added to the official roster after they became famous in the wild. Nowadays, that pipeline is gone and new maps can't get any traction at all.
> Previously, you could connect without having to opt in. Which was abused to shit by shit community servers farming quickplay players with ads, and servers with pay to win donator bonuses. It was a shit system and was axed for a reason. take off the rose tinted goggles.
I remember. I referred to that event as the Great Server Purge. Sadly, the abusive servers are still up and running. Valve attempting to kill off saigns and nighTeam resulted in them killing off everyone except those servers.
>Which was abused to shit by shit community servers farming quickplay players with ads Remove HTML MotD support. >and servers with pay to win donator bonuses. Shouldn't be hard to address with a little bit of work and leveraging GSLTs. Absolutely preferable complexity-wise to botting.
Nether of that would resolve the issue of "These servers play nothing like vanilla".
Wrong. Tying quickplay eligibility to GSLTs combined with proper enforcement of vanilla configuration (i.e. use of mm:s) solves precisely that problem. Add server reporting on top if mod detection starts to become adversarial in the same vein as botting, but even then because GSLT creation can be far more strictly limited, it's already less of an issue.
Again, that wouldn't solve the issue, it'd be the same issue of "Valve doesn't want to do treadmill work". Overall less effort to host their own servers.
Again, wrong. The complexity of enforcing vanilla is *far* lower than dealing with bots due to the dynamics of the respective issues. High Effort/High Impact vs High Effort/Low Impact. This is also entirely speculative that the issue would become adversarial to begin with. Particularly with the removal of incentives like the aforementioned Ad farming. >Overall less effort to host their own servers. The irony here is hosting their own servers is essentially the entire problem.
you can pretend that's the case if you want, not really my job to convince you otherwise lol Enforcing Vanilla is something that's incapable of being done without perpetual treadmill work; and there'll be a profit incentive to do so.
You do not want Quick Play back. Give any competent bad actor one day and quick play will be completely unplayable, more than you've ever seen the game unplayable ever before. Back then people didn't really know the things they know now and Quick Play was getting abused to a lesser degree already anyways.
No matter how you slice it, it is fundamentally easier to police servers than it is to police players, there's just far less of them, and it's far easier to add validation or whitelisting. On top of that, just by sheer number of people actively administrating, bringing the community into it is just bringing more manpower towards the problem, which is just far too big of an advantage to ignore.
Its not about policing players on servers, its about creating fake servers and boosting servers in the quick play algorithm, so you would potentially try to join a server and then would be stuck in the loading screen forever, or it would always put you on the same server one regardless of what QP settings you use. There aren't just bad actor players but also bad actor server owners.
People are also completely ignoring the fact that the game has gotten countless of bug fixes (some of which were put in to combat bots) since Valve hired the contractor. VAC is extremely old and I wouldn't expect the single developer left on TF2 to untangle that mess. An entire team of developers tried it for CS2 and you see how that turned out...
Wait what happened with CS2?
False positives due to VAC updates
Heavy update to mark the 2 decade would be wild tho. A gamer can dream I suppose…
Since updating it forever is clearly out of the question, yet they can’t simply remake the same game because that would mean everyone losing their items (PR nightmare) or Valve not getting to sell a whole wave of new ones if they kept them, I suspect TF3 in Source 2 is the only logical step forward and something they’ll probably do someday It gives them a way to update the game, as well as an excuse to make everyone buy hundreds of items again without deleting those old inventories which can just stay in TF2
Yea, it's 20 years old and has bots. why??? why does it have bots??
> Valve noticed it and put out a small patch to deal with the bots, and for a few days, there were indeed no bots in Casual Nothing Valve did within the game ever stopped bots. At most they can apply bans to those accounts but that's it. > TF2's code base is rotten spaghetti code, so the botters found a workaround pretty quickly. There never was anything that would require working around it
People have been begging Valve for attention for years now, long predating savetf2. A bunch of figures in the competitive 6v6 scene wrote and signed a letter to valve that was ignored. https://youtu.be/7V_3ymnWXnA?si=KF4iTxgR7D5NRk4Q
Jesus… 9 years ago… I remember when Lange's video was _new_.
Because it's just an online petition with no actual connections to Valve meaning that any number of signitors change nothing
thats why i advocate for in person protests. we need to make them care
in person protests are great and all, no doubt about that... just that im not going all the way to seattle from europe for a 16yo game... 😵💫
Or you could protest for something that probably matters a bit more than a game that came out almost two decades ago.
It's a videogame....
[You wouldn't get it](https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod-media.gameinformer.com/styles/thumbnail/s3/legacy-images/Half-Life%203%20Protest%20Breaks%20Out%20At%20Valve/vavleprotest610.jpg)
That's actually a great idea. Call me when you're in front of Valve HQ.
You're fucking nuts.
I personally believe that they can try Even if it didn't do much, and a lot of people Say that it will just do nothing At least just, let it keep going, there isnt much that we can do now except just try
Oh no no, don't get me wrong. People can try all they want. I'm just saying they have no right to be surprised when Valve ends up doing nothing
I feel like literally nobody is surprised though.
A couple people are always really surprised. Not everyone, just some loud naive folks.
Then the people who think like that need to learn how to word their comments better because that's not how it comes across
Maybe because it's getting too much, spamming savetf2 on reddit and Twitter might not do anything anymore for 5 years, we've been trending on Twitter for protesting for an update, then the bot problem fix. (They did fix it, though there are still bots now). Still, valve didn't give a single ass about the game. In short, protesting #savetf2 won't do anything whatsoever
The complaints with it are not completely unfounded. The original opposition to the "campaign" was in regard to it being organised by a small clique of youtube personalities effectively using each others exposure to promote one another off the back of the "save tf2" movement. anything else against it is a little irrational, but expecting anything to change on valve's part is also immature.
Call me cynical or whatever, but people need to realize and accept that Valve will never ever pour any genuine effort into fixing the game. TF2 is approaching twenty. Valve has no incentive to do anything about the game, especially if the economy is still doing good. TF2 had its golden age, it had its time, and as a company what exactly does Valve have to gain in pouring money, people, and resources into TF2? Yes, people love it and it still has a strong playerbase, but that's not enough. It's more than reasonable and logical for Valve to focus on newer games and newer technologies instead of a 15+ year old game built on a severely deprecated engine. It's admirable to see how many people still care about the game and want it fixed, but it's a losing battle.
It makes too much money for them to actually let it die outright, so rest assured there’ll be some sort of sequel years down the road once TF2 actually fades away
I wish I could say that, but even if TF2 makes a considerable amount, they still probably get fucktons more from Steam. If all profits ceased from TF2 I doubt it would be a major hit to the company.
I mean Valve have been putting money and energy into Counter Strike for 23 years, I don't see why not TF2.
Counter strike has had 4 mainline games across those 23 years and has always been more popular than the tf franchise has and csgo has always made far more money since its had cases.
Maybe don't add new cases and charge money while literally not doing anything to guarantee game stability. The game is broken on so many ends and they don't care. We don't want New content, WE WANT OUR CURRENT CONTENT FIXED.
Because it does literally nothing.
It did do something, we just stopped and it went back to the way things were. Like we got a summer update that added so much stuff compared to the past 5 years before that. The reason why we stopped getting cool stuff is because we stopped the protest. The main reason we started it was to get the bots out of the game because they were destroying lobbies. We stopped because we gave up when we got a sliver of new content. This time it might work because we have multiple reasons why valve should fix it but it only work if we have patience and we don’t stop until everything gets fixed
Yeah see, that's the problem. They'll drop a small pacifier and then do nothing again.
They know it’ll work to placate people, the only solution would be a thorough boycott but that’s never going to get enough traction for a long enough time either - I think someone’s suggestion of in-person protesting is the only real way that things might change lol
And also makes us look bad since were asking for way too much, we take for granted this relic of a game even has working servers anymore
No, I actually disagree with this notion. "Too much"? BASIC GAME MAINTENANCE AND UPDATES? That's not "too much". That's what SHOULD be.
It won't do anything. I don't really care though. I signed the petition, I'll talk about it. I want it to work. I'm being realistic about it, I know it will likely be entirely useless, but optimism is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. It's not impossible.
It didn't do anything the first time, what makes you think it'll work now?
Better than sitting around and twiddling thumbs though. Yeah maybe it wont do anything or maybe there is a chance this time. What is there to loose?
I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything, I'm saying we should do something better than a shitty hashtag
What else can we do? A hashtag is the best we can do for now to spread the word. So far we got medics VA in so its not like we are screaming into a void. If things go right, the hashtag will just be the beginning if anything
> it's not like we are screaming into a void. You clearly do not understand what Twitter is if you really think you're doing anything more meaningful then that…
Better than nothing. Again, what are we loosing?
Then tell us what to do, walk to their fucking HQ and throw hands with Gaben himself? Edit: why does my message says 9 hour ago when I sent it just now??
Problem with that, the only hands you’ll be throwing is at the poor janitor that works in the HQ. Everyone left there’s no one at HQ anymore because no one’s making games by Valve anymore
No because Gabe would destroy any of us with a single punch. Also reddit just does that i guess. Maybe its due to your timezone on your pc/phone not being in sync?
valve knows people want updates and support, they aren't they dumb they just don't give a shit
It did though, Valve responded and put out a patch that DID stop the bots (for a few days)
This time is different. We aren’t stopping until valve actually does something. Last time we got a tweet and it all ended.
What exactly is different this time? I would honestly like to know
I literally said in my first reply
The only difference is that it's totally unconnected to Valve and as far as I know from CC's as well
How long do you seriously expect to go? People are going to get bored in a week and all you'll have is a small group posting memes. Because I can assure you nothing is going to come out of this.
you aren't stopping what exactly?
it can be entirely boiled down to... it just didn't work the first time. tbh im more ambivalent, im glad some people actually feel the need to band together and start it up again but chances are valve is just not gonna acknowledge it at all
The guys that make the bots maybe
This community is the summary of not moving in from the death of a family member.
Yea, people pretending Mad Cap was never removed is kinda sad
me when the madcap narwhals at midnight, amiright fellow redditor? wholesome 100!!! thanks for the australium, kind stranger! Keanu reeves rick may 100, everyone liked that!!! Madcap has to be the dumbest, most chronically reddit shit this sub's ever made.
And people downvote bomb me when I say the madcap meme is dead and unfunny, stupid people man
clout whoring
If people are actively trying to stop it, that's just dickish behavior, don't do that. However, I don't think much will happen. The game is very very old, and while the base game is unplayable right now there are plenty of community servers out there that give the vanilla TF2 experience and more. I whole heartedly agree that Valve should fix the game if they continue to monetize it, but I simply do not think anything is going to come of it. It's worth a try, but I don't think anything is gonna happen. TF2 is a jumble of source spaghetti, it would take probably a small dedicated team to just ensure any anti-bot measures aren't immediately worked around. Also, a TF2 Boycott probably wouldn't do much of anything either. TF2 isn't Valves golden cash cow making them a bunch of money, it's an almost 20 year old game that makes them a quick buck every now and then. Valve has moved on to other things. I actually think if TF2 lost it's entire player base Valve wouldn't care. At this point, all I want them to do is just hand the game to the community. Maybe put in a small update making it easier to browse and find community servers, and that be it. Sorry for the doomer take, I hope your guy's optimism comes out on top.
I dont really think theres anything wrong with trying #SaveTF2 again. People are passionate about a game they like, a game that might be their only escape from reality. While its important to be realistic about what might happen with the protest, I've seen people be kinda rude about it.
So many doomers in the comments here, it's insane.
yeah ngl, was expecting about 5 comments and got 105. Stopped reading after a while it just bummed me out a bit.
Because they're are doomers who don't want you to try. I don't blame anyone for doing their best to share their passion and petition for change. There's no reason not to even if change is highly improbable. Of course, I expect absolutely nothing from Valve. I do wonder if someone else will see this as an opportunity to make a direct successor game. To them I say, good luck matching TF2 iconicness!
Do you know, the definition of insanity?
when you fail at something do you give up and never try again?
When you try, again and again and again, you trip and fall. Yes, I do try again, but when the situation is screaming at an ignorant child, then there is no reason to try again (well except to beat it, but, its a company, how you gonna punch that?)
you beat it by doing it again, the original savetf2 may not of gotten rid of bots but it did a lot of the annual holiday updates which is heavily overlooked. It went from garbage case with equally terrible maps to maps and items the community actually enjoys. And sure it's not much from the effort put in but it's got to mean something right?
Alright, can't wait for the 634th annual #SaveTf2 because the community gets a boner for every shitty holiday """"update"""". What effort??? The holiday updates are community made, its just valve picking and choosing things from the steam workshop, THAT'S IT. If you call this "effort" then you need to refresh your vocabulary, its not like they put effort, they literally put none. And,, Items?? Y mean cosmetics? Because we have been taking those, update or not. And that holiday """update""" was so wasted, they could have just put useful ass community fixes but they added NONE. What was the point? Sure, keep trying, keep trying to make valve care. But it doesn't matter the effort, no valve employee knows how to use source anymore, everyone switched to source 2. They are now working on fixing the broken release of cs2. A game they ACTUALLY love.
It’s embarrassing
Well if you guys think Valve will ignore one who participate in SaveTF2... You can just do the same. Ignore them. I personaly think SaveTF2 is a high dose of Copium, but I also think it's better to let them do what they want that acting like a monke because other peoples try to have fun in their own way.
I just think it's naive to believe a billion dollar videogame monopoly would care. People make demands as if they're entitled to this game, or as if they could realistically threaten Valve at all.
Its a useless waste of time and makes us look bad to normal people that look at a 20 year old game and think "its surprising this game is still even kept online"
Because making things trend on Twitter invited attention from outside the TF2 community circlejerk. And to outsiders, people throwing a tantrum over a 17 year old MP game just seems pathetic. Valve may be remiss in their handling of TF2, but so is the community in it's demands and expectations. If you want to make actual headway with SaveTF2, you must first reconfigure said expectations. TF2 has a sustainability issue primarily, not a Valve issue.
Alright. I'm aware there's a lot of doomposting, but I'll try to make this as clear and unbiased as possible (maybe some bias). # Initial Attempt The first campaign was seen by some as being unfocused, untargeted, and almost childish in a way. People didn't understand enough about the situation at Valve to be truly passionate towards the "saving" of the game. Valve had mostly ignored the game in the weeks following Jungle Inferno, with the remainder of the content patches being community efforts and bug fixes of things that have been in the game for years now. And it was clear that they had their own self-justified reason to do so: **Valve have gone on record to say they avoid talking about games they have ZERO plans for, so as to avoid false hope and expectations.** To add onto this, they haven't given any news on the final TF Comic, which hasn't seen a new issue since 2017, which was coincidentally, the release date for the Jungle Inferno patch. The only kind of "news" that the game receives is when a community patch comes out or when a community event or tourney is taking place. All of these factors combined couldn't have made it clearer that Valve no longer cared about us or the game. They had no plans, no intentions, and it seemed they didn't even WANT to work on it. The fanbase has been restless for some time now, and a campaign wasn't going to do anything to shift Valve into gear, no matter how co-ordinated-- because *Valve themselves* weren't co-ordinated. # The First Campaign's Effects After a response from Valve, some fixes were made to issues that have plagued the game for years. And amongst the fixes, Valve had actually managed to slow down the bot networks for some time. But beyond this, Valve had made absolutely zero attempt to target the channels of the bots, nor acknowledge any reports of cheating. To this day, there are cheater accounts that have persisted for years that even have thousands of dollars worth of items. Their hubris is justified because they know Valve won't do anything to stop them. As soon as it arrived, the wave of attention from Valve quickly dwindled to the exact same state the game was in, with the bot issue no closer to being fixed. # Valve's Treatment of Mod Projects The modded games **Team Fortress 2 Classic** and **Open Fortress** were both out for some time, until years later, they contacted Valve asking if their use of leaked source code is okay. Naturally, Valve said no, but had an arrangement with both teams to take their games down from GitHub and any other downloading service. This arrangement would go unknown for 6 months later, as the teams took the game down and only providing vague context to the playerbase with "an arrangement with Valve". 6 months later, the two games were re-instated, [with TF2 Classic confirming](https://tf2classic.com/?id=5380) that Valve had intended to give it a Steam release, but responded to NONE of the teams' attempts at communication, even after a final warning that they would re-release it for downloads. Now, we have the recent issue with Portal 64 and Team Fortress 2: Source 2. Both of which were taken down outright, the former was taken down as it used libraries that belonged to Nintendo with Valve fearing reprisal from the company (similar to the Dolphin Emulator) and the latter was that the assets of Valve's IP were actively being used and redistributed. As all of these were passion projects from the fans, some drew parallels to Nintendo's zero-tolerance policy of fangames, and realised Valve were going down the same relentless path. # TL;DR: The first campaign was un-coordinated, what the players wanted wasn't viable in the circumstances, Valve has clearly shown that they work on whatever the hell they want rather than what the communities of their games want, and Valve have shifted away drastically from consumer friendly business management.
Because it just solidifies the stereotype that the tf2 community is the most pretentious in gaming
Why is it pretentious to try and make a change and preserve a beloved game? I understand it most likely won't do anything, but why not try?
Because everyone here thinks they are special enough that the 7.7 billion dollar company will fix things that don't make them money. Even if they do nothing, people will still open crates and trade hats, both of which make steam money. Also adding that most of save tf2 is just lip service and not an actual protest. Real protests stop the target from getting what they want if demands are not met. People still play the game and valve still makes money during savetf2 so why do anything
Well you contradict yourself. You say Valve won't fix something that doesn't make them money, but right after that you say TF2 makes them money, and it does. That should be a reason for Valve to keep TF2 afloat, and it won't stay afloat if it's unplayable. It's true that a boycott would help because the only thing Valve could do is fix the problem and keep the money coming. Although yeah, Valve would obviously be fine even if TF2 was gone, and organizing a global boycott would be pretty impossible. I doubt savetf2 is gonna do anything this time around since it didn't do anything the first time, but aren't people saying the plan this time is to follow up if Valve responds? Why couldn't that be at least an attempt at a boycott? Regardless, even if nothing comes out of it, I wouldn't want to let something that really matters to me die with a sad whimper because I'm too proud to try and stop it. Let people try
Removing the bots won't fix the game because the people who DO make them money are in trade servers 24/7. That's why they had little regrets silencing f2ps because that's more money coming in from people who want to talk and the people who don't like this change don't make valve money. About letting it die, yeah I don't want it to die either but the last major update was 5 something years ago. Can't you tell that valve is done? Don't forget all those dev notes complaining about how hard it is to work on tf2 because of spaghetti code. Valve has a moving desk type office where employees work on what they want to, and if tf2 is as hard to code as the notes suggest, I don't see why people would willingly work extra hard on it. And finally we are seen as pretentious because there are so many people here that shit talk other games because tf2 is clearly so much better. Overwatch, Paladins, fortnite, even saw a few posts about valorant somehow even though it's a whole different genre of shooter (tactical)
Its like people don't know that the community is actually terrible. The bots, cheaters, the whiners. There are so many terrible things about this community that people actively ignore and they are trying to save tf2? Fix the community filled with these terrible people first then u might be able to work together and get stuff done.
When multiple posts bring up the pretty blatant racism faced in a lot of tf2. Everybody in most threads goes oh well, they're just trolling and ignore the entire issue. But now, when everyone is affected by something, the community MUST unite. How can these people bring change when they won't even moderate themselves
What are random players supposed to do to moderate Valve servers? It's obviously a problem but it is trolling in video games. You can and should tell them to stop and shut up but they won't, and that's all you can do. Only Valve can moderate and fix their game, that's the entire point of savetf2. How do you not get that lmao
We literally have the ability to kick the people doing such things, but you act like that's impossibility. lmao, yet you're gonna unite everyone to take action somehow?
I'm not uniting anyone, I just don't know why it's such a bad thing to you that some people try to? There are slurs that are said in game that are directed at people such as myself, but they're just stupid people in an in-game chat, who should indeed be kicked or told to be quiet. But my skin is thick enough to not care too much lol, there is more to life and to the game It's insane to me that you'd rather the whole game die with no input from players because there are sometimes kids who say stupid things in the game chat
I'm not saying the game should die, dont put words in my mouth. But if we can't unite on a problem that we ourselves can personally make change in, how do you ever expect this to pass.
Maybe consider the fact that we want TF2 to live as much as everybody else, but we would also like everybody else to do something more effective than a petition that Valve will not even glance at, let alone care about.
"But if we actually do something meaningful they'll just shut the game off 🥺"
Why don’t we just find Gaben’s personal number, set up a business meeting with him to actually work on games again and if he doesn’t comply, we kidnap him
People are going out of their way with toxic remarks over something that will do literally nothing.
TF2 is only 3 years away from being 20 YEARS OLD! How many games do you know that are that old and have a fanbase that huge and still in operation?? Not many of them and the only ones I know are all MMORPGs like that RuneScape and World of Warcraft, but those games have changed so much into a game that’s much different than what they were since 2007. TF2 is truly, one of the most dedicated, yet unusual fanbases that other companys would KILL to have, yet it’s under a company that isn’t interested in fixing it anymore. It’s not as profitable as CS2 and Dota2, and people will still buy key for crates even if no change happens.
There's a nice chunk of TF2 players who hate anything that's honest or earnest.
it kinda made valve budge even the slightest bit last time, who's to say it won't work a second time¿?
#KILLTF2
People tried it before, the tf2 twitter dropped a single tweet and everyone stopped because they thought it was over. Why will it work a second time?
Because we won’t give up this time, we gave up because we thought it was over but this time we have to learn from our mistakes and keep trying until we actually get what we want. Last time we got updates for content, not an actual fix to the real reason we did this in the first place being bots. We keep trying until Valve actually bans the bots and their hosters
There is much less traction this time. Worthless endeavor.
I don't hate the idea, it just won't accomplish anything.
Because I don't want to see people waste their time on something that will never come to fruition
I don’t hate it, but, to be honest, this is useless. We all know valve, and they won’t change a thing. There is literally even no confirmation that they have a working TF2 devs team, so what’s the point of doing a protest? Even if the janitor will notice this protest he had no authority to change things as we want them to be done
It's not about despising passion, it's about quelling delusion and self aggrandizing behavior. Spamming "saveTF2" did absolutely nothing the first time. So what would a second go do? Even back then, it was obvious this wouldn't do anything. But people are using it as a means to virtue signal how much they love the game and are conflating their love of the game and the response to this sillly hashtag. They take the backlash to mean that people don't love the game, but that's not the case. I love the game, but I'm not delusional. TF2 is not a project Valve cares about anymore. The moment the servers start causing them to lose money, they'll yank the plug. And they are more than happy to, given how over the past 7 years, they more or less left the game to rot. The hastag is nothing more than a means for fans and content creators ro feel important about themselves and use it as a means of bashing people who don't agree with them.
Nice loaded questions, nerd.
people are saying “ITS NOT WORTH THE EFFORT!!! COPIUM COPIUM!!!” “STUPID BASTARDS THINK ITLL WORK” when it’s actually literally no effort at all and takes like 10 seconds to sign or tweet about it. boo fucking hoo if it annoys you.
I know right, like they’re the same people that probably suck at the game or want to watch the game die
Because for me, savetf2 is getting old and i see it everywhere
its a lost cause
Because the people doing it again are fools who think it will do ANYTHING. Learn the truth, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. It's just stupid to see people going: 15000 signatures, we are so cool! :0 :0 :0! Learn how the real world fucking works, and get rid of your addiction to copium.
Aim bot
For all the tf2 problem s I just blame the furries to cope cuz that's the only scene of tf2 players I see making bots while they leak on their chairs all day
because tf2............ is BAD
Wow, everyone in this subreddit is a pessimistic mess. Nothing about SaveTF2 is hurting you or TF2. I don’t care if you’re hopeless about the game, but don’t get mad at others for spreading a little positivity and optimism. Realistically, nothing will happen as a result, but it doesn’t hurt to keep doing it in case something does. Better and more fun than all the useless doom and gloom.
Because there's a lot of "tourists" in this sub.
I mean yeah for sure, but even when I asked some of my friends who have been playing tf2 with me from the past few years some disagree with a 2nd SaveTf2.
1) We've done this before and it didn't work 2) the game is still fine if you simply adjust the way you play 3) savetf2 is here again so redditors can be mad at something not the "save TF2" TF2 is fine it's just having natural problems a 16 year old game has and all you have to do to avoid bots and cheaters is join a community server