Server operators: new server account requirements

[AronTimes]

So I found this on Reddit. Very interesting implications for community servers, and a possible means through which community servers might be added back to Quickplay or be allowed to run contracts:

Server operators: new server account requirements will be in place for new features in an upcoming update

Via HLDS:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to give a heads-up about some upcoming changes to the way server accounts work in TF.

In an future update, we are going to be introducing features that will only be available to game servers that have a registered game server SteamID, via the Game Server Login Token (GSLT) system. This system has existed for some time, but is currently only used in TF for persistent favouriting in the server browser. It has also gained some more restrictions recently that you should be aware of.

• Game server accounts are tied to an owning Steam user account
• This Steam account must not be currently community banned or locked.
• This Steam account must not be limited.
• This Steam account must have a qualifying registered phone.
• Game servers that violate the community guidelines for the game they are hosting may have their access suspended or revoked.
• Game server account suspensions or bans also apply to all other game servers tied to said Steam user

More info and management tools are here: https://steamcommunity.com/dev/managegameservers

For TF specifically, being free-to-play, access to some upcoming features may eventually depend on the qualifications the owning Steam user account. So, while creating dedicated individual user accounts to own individual game servers is possible, it may lead to an increased burden in the future. We recommend game server accounts be registered to the Steam account of the acting server owner -- GSPs should require clients to provide their own tokens.

This change will allow us to have a greater level of confidence in game servers, by making it easier to revoke access for bad actors and better tying game servers to their owners. The increased persistence gives us many more opportunities to assign trust to community servers, and to provide them access to features that would otherwise be too open for abuse. It also provides a much better mechanism for dealing with abuse than the current IP-ban system that is both less effective and more painful for server providers that share IPs between clients.

We will have more information once we are ready to begin rolling out these features, but I wanted to send this heads up such that current admins and server providers can look into integrating this support into their setups.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns and I will try to address them,

- Neph

[Balubish]

Interesting

[AronTimes]

Yes, very interesting. The worst part about doing contracts was that I had to do it on Valve servers. During contract seasons, community servers would be depopulated and Valve servers would see a surge in good players. I tried playing CSN, APP, and FP during contract seasons and the skill level was much lower compared to normal. Also, Valve might want to offload some of their load onto community servers. This is a win-win since community servers get more love, while Valve has to maintain fewer servers of their own.

This is all speculation right now, but at least it's not my speculation, but that of people who know much more about this than me.

Also, a Valve dev came out and confirmed that mods like VSH will not be banned from TF2. The "mods" they cracked down on in CS:GO were those that gave free premium skins to donors, i.e. you donate $5 to the server and you get a free skin worth 100s of dollars that can only be used on that server. Basically, they don't want servers circumventing their hat revenue.

[Balubish]

Yes, very interesting. The worst part about doing contracts was that I had to do it on Valve servers. During contract seasons, community servers would be depopulated and Valve servers would see a surge in good players. I tried playing CSN, APP, and FP during contract seasons and the skill level was much lower compared to normal. Also, Valve might want to offload some of their load onto community servers. This is a win-win since community servers get more love, while Valve has to maintain fewer servers of their own.

This is all speculation right now, but at least it's not my speculation, but that of people who know much more about this than me.

Also, a Valve dev came out and confirmed that mods like VSH will not be banned from TF2. The "mods" they cracked down on in CS:GO were those that gave free premium skins to donors, i.e. you donate $5 to the server and you get a free skin worth 100s of dollars that can only be used on that server. Basically, they don't want servers circumventing their hat revenue.

yeah lets hope it will go through