In my opinion, Jason nailed this. Organically growing your community is the best (and in my opinion) most honest way to pay your bills. Put out a truly excellent product and people will support it with their money. See FirePowered gaming for a good example of an organically grown community.
I think Valve is saying by this update that they agree; Quickplay is not to be used to farm ad-impressions. If they have a great product the ad-impressions will come from returning regulars who have added your servers to their favorites. Finding a loophole and exploiting just puts yourself at risk, just like people who purchased hundreds of idle accounts. I think this decision was excellent and I'd like to see Valve more vigorously enforce the policy of truth going forward. On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Jason Tango <jtrun...@outlook.com> wrote: > Your cite Skial as an example, but what you fail to realize is that those > large server groups only have those large number of servers because they > are/were trying to use the quickplay system as a source of profit over and > above their "expenses", NOT as a response to the natural growth in their > "communities." > > In other words - those kinds of communities did not grow "organically", > starting with just enough servers to support their current membership, and > adding servers as their community grew. They threw up those huge numbers of > servers as nothing more than "quickplay ad farms", turning the playerbase > into little more than disposable ad impressions. Do you honestly think any > of those groups have the massive community membership necessary to require > 80+ servers? Of course not. > > Do you see the distinction? > > There are server operators who have slowly and consistently grown their > server "regulars", adding to their server fleets as both their membership > and funding permitted, and there are those that simply threw up high-volume > "quickplay honey pot" fleets of ad-farms/servers with the intent of turning > the players into an easy source of profit. > > Now, I'm not looking down my nose at Skial (I don't really know anything > about them), or any other of these large server fleets, BUT - the fact is > that most new players first few experiences with the game will be through > quickplay, and the vast number of these ad-farms (many of which were hosted > by the hundreds on cheap, under-powered VPS servers) are/were giving these > players a very negative first impression of the game. > > While I don't necessarily agree with HOW Valve has fixed the problem (as I > think it stinks that ALL server operators have to be made to suffer due to > the actions of those abusing the system), I'm certainly glad Valve is > taking steps to at least insure new players don't think that these > ad-infested servers are the way ALL servers are run. > > > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 21:24:00 +0100 > From: sai...@specialattack.net > To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com > Subject: Re: [hlds] An open letter to Valve about MOTDs > > > Forced in-game ads are evil. > > > > You’ve already paid for the game, why watch ads? > > > > There never was such a problem until quickplay and motd allowing video. > > > > Build a good community and likable servers, and you shall have your money > through donations. We haven’t done it any differently in the past 15 years > and we’re still doing so today. > > > > People are willing to donate bits for a fun community to play at who has > their own servers up and running. > > > > The whole problem here is quickplay, you have tons of people roaming > around random servers without an real good opportunity to bind them to your > community. Before people would search for likable servers and add them to > their favorites. These people would then return and start to get familiar > with other people at the servers. This allowed for great community building. > > > > Unfortunately I don’t expect VALVe ever to turn off quickplay. That’s why > I think communities will slowly start to die out. > > > > I can remember days where 90% of the players in a server had a > clan/community tag In front of their name, nowadays you barely ever see > them. > > > > Saint K. > > *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: > hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Supreet > *Sent:* Thursday, November 07, 2013 7:58 PM > *To:* hlds@list.valvesoftware.com > *Subject:* [hlds] An open letter to Valve about MOTDs > > > Valve, > Listen. People make good money off of running their TF2 servers. Moreover, > it helps them pay for the servers. > Why don't you just take all our liberty away, pull an EA and cut dedicated > servers and host them all yourself? > Quickplay has only been beneficial to free to play players or what I like > to call "Window Gamers". They try a game because its free then after a > while they leave the game because they're bored of hopping on random > servers through quick play and finding ads everywhere. > The liberty and freedom of browsing through a server list was an amazing > idea so you should keep to it. > Your quick play scoring system is pretty stupid and flawed. Why? Because > its HEAVILY BIASED. > Over time, there's just been servers that get a behemoth influx of players > and and the quick play system starts favoring them. Therefore, ignoring the > possibility of any potentially better servers people might like if they > ended up on them. > You should really consider stopping your shenanigans. You can't make up > your own mind Valve. You released an update months ago with vague release > notes about the removal of HTML motds then you modified it and now you just > released another update. > If you really cared about the game server operators, you would remove this > bs "tweak" and give server operators the liberty to use methods to recovery > money to cover costs and pocket money for their efforts. > OR > Build a better dedicated server that doesn't eat up so many resources so > server operators don't have to pay $30 a month for a single server to a > hosting company. There are communities that run great servers and multiple > of them. Imagine the frikkin cost of servers Skial has to deal with, with > their massive 80 something servers. > These ads help pay for these expensive DDoS protected servers hosted by > big communities. > A lot of concerned people have offered their tiny bits of tweaks and > solutions to your update but it will never stop. > Either pull an EA and remove MOTDs overall, doom us all so we can get some > closure and move on LOL or let server operators have the freedom to run > their server the way they want. > Why don't you just work with the ad companies and get them to make a > variable that tells the quickplay system read if the server is ad enabled, > or maybe through sv_tags and DEDUCT score off of quickplay. > It'll make all the complaining kids happy. 50% less chance I'll end up on > an ad enabled server. > Many thanks and regards. > Please contribute to this discussion in a professional and cognitively > inclined manner and refrain from being monkeys yelling at each other on the > mailing list. > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your > list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds > >
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