Update! Welcome to those who were lied to.

[Failhorse]

To see the original content, view this threads second post. I have updated this thread. A quick reference. Apx a week ago Valve sent a stern warning to servers who lie to their users. Essentially saying pay to win, fake clients, bots disguised as real people, and the like were no longer going to be tolerated. We have never used such things. And built our little corner of TF2 with the hard work of all the admins and regulars. Our servers were popped everyday by real people. Meanwhile other groups used bots and fake clients to cheat people into connecting to their servers. Well, a lot of those groups have many many empty servers. They are also at a huge disadvantage since they relied on server mods to do the work for them.

So to all those looking for a fun, populated, semi-serious TF2 group. Welcome. We are here to make sure you have fun... And maybe rage sometimes. But we can't help that...

[Failhorse]

This HLDS email went out recently. Essentially calling out all the servers and communities that cheat the system to gain players and other nonsense.
For a group who has never cheated. We've grown.. multiplied. Now we get to watch as the communities and servers we came from. Most of whom cheated in 1 way or another slowly fade away. Disclaimer: Critsandvich has never done anything wrong. We are in no danger.

Click on this post to read the warning from valve.


Source:

Code: Select all

We all know that some server operators run mods specifically designed to falsify information sent to the Valve backend and to their players. These mods inaccurately report the player count and whether players are human or not. They conceal that significant modifications to gameplay have been made. This is detrimental to players' experience.

Perhaps some server operators would actually prefer to not run these mods, but feel that it is necessary to compete and maintain their community. For this reason, Valve has made the decision not to take any action against any server operators at this time.

We will be directly contacting some of the "institutional offenders" who are using these mods on multiple servers. However, whether we contact you directly or not, this email serves as warning to all server operators that we do have the ability to detect this class of behavior, and, going forward, we are going to be more aggressive at policing it. If we determine that you are modifying the network stream or otherwise circumventing basic security measures, we will take the actions needed to maintain a positive environment for our players.

To be perfectly clear, here are some examples of the modifications and behaviours which we consider especially harmful to our community:

* Forging or modifying network communications used to describe server properties to the backend or directly to clients.

* Concealing the fact that bots are bots, and making them appear as human players. (Running bots is OK, as long as no modifications are made that make it difficult for players to identify which players are bots and which are humans.)

* Interfering with the mechanisms that advertise modifications to gameplay rules in the server browser. (For example, nocrits, gravity, respawn times, etc.) Experimenting with gameplay modifications is encouraged, but any mechanisms in the engine designed to alert players to those modifications must be allowed to function.

* Listing the same game server multiple times in the master server.

Thank you,
Fletcher Dunn

[BoB Dolen]

Nice remember far to often that I have to view a server before joining it to check if they are using bots or falsifying the current player numbers annoys me to no end.....that and donator "advantage" shit like those nightteam servers. Like how my blacklist server list is fucking huge now.

[Mike808]

DOWN WITH THEM

[Hatred]

lotus servers .... bye lotus !

[Mike808]

That is what I wrote at first Hatred, but I think it may be better if the exact names were left out.

[Prof_Schwartz]

And this is why we rule

[Ackybur]

We used to use bots in the beginning. Sure it didn't last ling, but we did.

[Vivi Hill]

Critsandvich at least has never used fake bots like the ones mentioned in the email. We might have used normal bots to make games more interesting, but those don't get reported as players, and they lower the player count per bot. I can't vouch for TFGN, obviously.

[Failhorse]

ackbar that was the firm and that does not count. blame whats his name.

[Ackybur]

ackbar that was the firm and that does not count. blame whats his name.

I think it was beginning tfgn! I swear... so csn hasn't but it was in the early years

[mrpikmin2]

at first I misread that as they are cracking down on servers that use mods, and was kind of confused.

Good for valve, f2ps are getting bad experiances from crap servers.

[Maringue]

So do we get a cookie or something for playing by the rules?

[Spyder]

So do we get a cookie or something for playing by the rules?

Satisfaction.

Satisfaction in they fact that we are badass and the rest of them are not.

[Failhorse]

I've updated this thread to reflect the onslaught of new players. See OP for details.