Here's a little interesting take on this (Not directed at anybody in
particular, just at the concept in general)...
There are some Bad Apples amongst the community server folks. Community
servers were meant to enhance the game experience for the players.
Instead we have operators whose only goal is to drag in as many clients
as possible for their ad impression, even if it's "cheating" both the
players and ad company by playing ads invisibly in the background.
While there were many good servers out there too, the bad servers grew
in number until the situation became untenable. Extra things were done
by Valve to try to stem the flow of Greedy Little Server Operators and
all their methods of trying to cheat the system. What should have been a
case of good servers thriving and bad servers dying became the opposite.
The cheating scumbags were the ones thriving and so - from the player
perspective - the game sucked.
Because of all the worms and bugs living in the apple barrel, Valve had
to do what it did. They -are- a business, which means that yes, their
goal is to make money, and yes, if the community servers were preventing
that, then action would be taken. And it was. And the whining and
groaning was heard by many of the worms who could no longer feast on ad
impressions.
Now, mind you, not all of the whining was heard by worms. Some
legitimate, quality server operators had trouble too. However the end
result is simple:
Nobody should be running a community server to try to make a profit. If
they are doing so, they have to realize that it's officially a business
and may fail. Bad business plan? Crappy user experience? Not interesting
enough to hold users' attention? *Poof!* Bye! As long as the net result
to Valve from community servers is negative, they will not fix it.
From the cynical side, the people who are doing just fine with their
community servers are sitting back and thrilled that the worms are
suffering. They're seeing people saying "OMG! IMMA SHUT DOWN MAH
SERVER!" and laughing that these people think Valve care. If the server
does not create a positive experience and bring Valve money, then why in
the world should Valve care? They are not here to create free ways for
people to make an income. So, from the cynical side, please, stop
whining about how you'll shut down your servers. Shut them down and
begone. Let the people who are doing fine live in peace from the inanely
incessant prattle, assuming they are even on this list when they are
doing fine.
From the pragmatic side: If the server costs you too much money and you
don't want to spend it, then don't. You don't owe Valve the server and
they don't owe you anything either. Since you're not getting a bone from
them, stop hurting yourself and your pocketbook. Shut down. Move on.
There is a great big world out there and you should be awesome enough to
stop beating your head against a brick wall.
TL;DR version:
Don't say that you're going to quit. Just do it. Don't cling to false
hopes. Move on. Be happier.
Good luck to all.
On 9/3/2015 12:58 AM, Rowedahelicon wrote:
To be honest I forgot they even said it, and I'm usually way on top of
this stuff. I've been preparing to close down my servers if I can't
figure out a good advertising campaign, the silence has gotten deafening.
On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:05 AM, HD <ad...@gamerscrib.net
<mailto:ad...@gamerscrib.net>> wrote:
They won’t reply, nor will anything be changed with Valve servers.
Personally I’d like to see the amount of them cut in half and I
believe the suggestion was to remove it from defaults after a
specified amount of time played but as I said…never happen.
Replying as you did just makes me feel like something will happen,
kinda like waiting for a unicorn to appear.
*From:*hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com>
[mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com>] *On Behalf Of
*Alexander Corn
*Sent:* Wednesday, September 02, 2015 11:57 PM
*To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
*Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>We agree this is not ideal. We are continuing the look at the
situation with community servers and how we can better support
passionate communities, but currently have nothing to announce.
So how's it coming? It's been a few months now and as usual,
nothing has happened. I know that as without being a server op, I
would find Valve servers distasteful. There's something about
being votekicked for killing players on the other team that just
makes the gameplay experience unsatisfactory.
Thanks,
Alexander "Dr. McKay" Corn
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:22 PM, John Schoenick
<jo...@valvesoftware.com <mailto:jo...@valvesoftware.com>> wrote:
Hey guys, with today's update we're introducing a few new features
that will impact servers, and I just wanted to give you guys a
heads up.
There is a new quickplay category, featured, that represents the
featured maps for a given campaign. In order to have your server
in this category, you need to be running the mapcycle
mapcycle_featured_maps.txt, and have the special string 'featured'
in your quickplay tags.
Today's update also introduces contracts, which currently require
players be on official servers to complete. Unfortunately, our
current setup makes it very difficult to restrict features like
this other than in an all-or-nothing manner, and we determined
this was necessary to protect the system from immediate abuse.
We agree this is not ideal. We are continuing the look at the
situation with community servers and how we can better support
passionate communities, but currently have nothing to announce.
- JohnS
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--
*Matthew (Rowedahelicon) Robinson*
Web Designer / Artist / Writer
Website - http://www.rowedahelicon.com/
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