The TF2 Community needs YOU!

[WigglyStuf]

Hey, this probably isn't going to work, and it won't go anywhere, but if you can, help us sign a petition to Valve to FIX TF2!

This goes beyond wanting to play a well loved game.

To quote Save.Tf,

 

" The bot hosters are malicious actors, using their aimbots as a vessel to endlessly attack and harass community members. They abuse the in-game text and voice chats to spread the most vile hate speech imaginable, while simultaneously advertising their “bot immunity services” in an attempt to scam the players desperately looking for a solution. They’ve used these same means to dox people’s personal information and broadcast it to the player-base against their will. Bot hosters have even gone so far as to commit actual crimes, such as using AI voice-modifiers to impersonate and slander non-consenting parties, launching persistent DDoS attacks, and have even swatted one of their most ardent critics. "

 

To help end the harassment, visit https://save.tf/ . Will it work? Probably not. But there's nothing to lose here.

[dasho]

"Fight the people doxxing players by entering your e-mail or signing in with Google"

[Kinsie]

As someone who spent a frankly unfortunate amount of time developing a mildly popular TF2 HUD mod and crafting Filmmaker garbage: I think you’ll have far more luck building your own independent future through moderated dedicated servers and sourcemods than leaning on the incredibly mixed success potential of the ever-derided Internet Petition to preserve the survival of the Patient Zero of everybody’s most loved and tolerated genre of the modern era: Quippy Hero Shooters With Cartoon Graphics.

 

Also: If I ever sincerely, non-sarcastically describe something I like and enjoy as a "beloved IP" like that SaveTF2 website does, you have my explicit, written permission to make fun of me for adopting marketer-tongue as though it were human speech.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

They aren't going to fix something that isn't dying just because of Internet Petition #463,857,747. They might fix the problem eventually, but it sure as hell won't be because of this.

 

 

Also, what dasho said.

Edited June 18 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[fishy]

i hope tf2 dies ngl

[Downcologo one]

#killtf2 

[Downcologo one]

The most worrying thing about all of this is the people who share CP Links in casual games, although recently there was a huge drop in bots

[Mr Masker]

11 hours ago, dasho said:

"Fight the people doxxing players by entering your e-mail or signing in with Google"

ATTENTION: TF2 Heavy needs YOUR help to save TF2 from the INVASION of BOTS!

 

All you need to do is send him your parents' payment details, the 3 numbers on the back and the expiration date!

BE QUICK, before Valve DESTROYS TF2!

Edited June 18 by Mr Masker

[BeachThunder]

Wait, this isn't about Titanfall 2...

[OpenRift]

12 hours ago, dasho said:

"Fight the people doxxing players by entering your e-mail or signing in with Google"

Okay, let's think about this for a second. How else are you going to prevent the signature count from just being easily duped by just one person? Maybe there is some other way to do it, but they clearly wanted this set up quick for the cause. I really don't think this is that unreasonable. If you're that worried about your privacy, use an alt account.

 

4 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

They aren't going to fix something that isn't dying just because of Internet Petition #463,857,747. They might fix the problem eventually, but it sure as hell won't be because of this.

This is Valve we're talking about. If nobody raises the issue, any chance they'll ever do anything will be by sheer luck.

 

Go into a Valve-run server and tell me what happens. That is a wounded game. It isn't "dying" like becoming less popular, this is "dying" in the sense that the game has been thoroughly sabotaged and exploited by bots. 

 

 

 

I don't really think the petition itself will do anything, but I think what's important is that the dialogue and discourse around Save/FixTF2 should remain prevalent. Game companies should be held accountable for things like this.

 

If Valve is unwilling to do anything to maintain their game properly, there's no ethical reason they should be making money from the game. I think the best solution is for them to do an official source code release and hand the game off to the community in some form so they can maintain it. Valve clearly doesn't care enough to put forward an appropriate amount of resources to work on it, so let the people who want changes make them themselves, and then they can focus on their stupid MOBA and watch it fail.

 

But if they aren't willing to do a proper source release and let the community maintain the game and still want to make money off of it, then the FixTF2 discourse has no reason to stop.

[dasho]

 

12 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Okay, let's think about this for a second. How else are you going to prevent the signature count from just being easily duped by just one person? Maybe there is some other way to do it, but they clearly wanted this set up quick for the cause. I really don't think this is that unreasonable. If you're that worried about your privacy, use an alt account.

 

What good is a petition if a bunch of alt accounts/things not tied to a real player identity are used? Also, who are "they" and why are they trustworthy?

[Artyoman]

2 hours ago, Downcologo one said:

The most worrying thing about all of this is the people who share CP Links in casual games, although recently there was a huge drop in bots

Those are bots, as I know someone involved FBI because of that. I hardly believe this will do anything, valve has infinite money cheat code called "steam", they won't lose anything if they will completely forget about TF2. Well, other than part of reputation

[LouigiVerona]

I love TF2 and I sympathize with the petition, although I don't know how likely it is to change things.

 

I have been playing TF2 for years and years, and it was some of the most fun time I had. Loved every bit of it... that is, until the game began to be overrun by bots. I am guessing that making bots because way too easy. I don't know if there is even a technical solution to this. There were many, and it's an arms race. Ultimately, you've got fairly simple inputs. I don't know how this can be fixed at all.

 

Having said that, if they fixed it, I'd be back playing in no time!

[OpenRift]

24 minutes ago, dasho said:

What good is a petition if a bunch of alt accounts/things not tied to a real player identity are used? Also, who are "they" and why are they trustworthy?

What matters with a petition isn't what name or email you used to sign it, it's the volume of signatures you have. I do wish that they included some more info on the folks behind the site, but from what I'm reading online, some prominent members of the TF2 community seem to be working with the folks behind the petition (i.e. Uncle Dane), so it doesn't seem too terribly sketchy when you look further into it. 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

It's not just the bot crisis problem in TF2, its the fact that the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch of the Source engine is "The New IE 6!"

 

WHY?! Because Valve has always had a lack of communication between its Steam userbase and its modding community, and pretty much now lets any older engine branch of Source 1 to firmly rot with security issues and bot accounts. In addition, Valve is a company where any of its employees do whatever they want to, meaning they are extremely silent with communication between the consumers, its community and the developers. This means that any common law funded by the BSA, SIIA and ESA that involves "Software Patching Law", "Game Patching Law", "Patching Law" and "Security Fix", all terms you can search on Google is now pretty much useless at Valve, because its developers and employees do whatever they want to.

Now for those that are wondering, what is the term "The New IE 6"? Well it's a common term on the internet since around the late-2000s to early-2010s where a software product's current state is compared to that of the infamous web browser by Microsoft, Internet Explorer 6 released in 2001 (the year of 9/11), which was a popular browser during the 2000s but was then criticized for its bugs and security exploits, and has now been hailed as one of the worst software products ever made, resulting in almost all websites dropping support for the outdated browser in the 2010s.

Here's all the reasons why the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch is now the new IE 6, and all the reasons why the branch is so broken:

1. The Orange Box branch was made late into the DirectX 9-era of graphics card hardware back in 2007, the same year that Windows Vista and DirectX 10 were released, while the 2013 SteamPipe branch was a major overhaul update that was released late into DirectX 9's lifespan, as DX9 would end support when Windows XP ended support in 2014. Neither the Orange Box or SteamPipe branches ever supported any version of DirectX newer than 9 on Windows, and Valve wouldn't natively support any DirectX version newer than 9 in their later Source 1 branches released between 2008 and 2013 which were the branches for Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, Portal 2, CSGO and the original 2013 release of Dota 2, all of them still had only DirectX 9 as its maximum version. Valve wouldn't make the transition to DirectX 11 until Source 2 was released.
2. The Orange Box/SteamPipe branch relies on older networking APIs made during the late-1990s to early/mid-2000s, which are very easy for any hacking group to easily hack into and hijack VAC servers, which really means that hackers are adding more security risks via remote code execution to Steam users if their playing any multiplayer game that uses the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch, and Valve has been painfully slow to fix any of these security issues and for trying to adopt to newer networking and security APIs in both their Steam client and their game engines. This is really why all those bot accounts in TF2 are making use of all security exploits in the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch.
3. Valve's GitHub pages for Source Engine games is now pretty much useless and its community is extremely toxic, ranging from no real solutions to stuff Valve wouldn't implement. And GitHub only supports projects that support the version control system Git, which for sure works with any open-source project but is a very difficult solution for any Proprietary software offering, because it makes fixing any buggy code and security problems more complex. If your developing any proprietary software. use a mix of CVS, Hg, SVN, BZR, TFVC, Arch, Perforce and Fossil for whatever components of the software your developing, not just use only Git, because that create more complex problems to your software than any of the other version control systems available.
4. Because of the outdated DirectX 9 software-rendering nature of the branch in general, any game that uses it now consumes twice the number of resources, which includes memory, computing power, and for laptop users double the amount of battery life, when compared to native DirectX 11 and 12 hardware-rendering or even Vulkan hardware-rendering.

What this basically means that Valve has just pretty much let every single hacker group exploit all security problems in the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch, meaning every Steam user who plays Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and Half-Life Deathmatch Source are now going to be victim of remote code execution which are hosted on servers tied to hacker groups. This also means that Valve will never likely fix any of the security exploits that causes bots to invade TF2 servers both from Valve and the community because VAC hasn't been update to support any newer networking and security APIs made years after DirectX 9 was discontinued.

If any modders are planning to make a multiplayer game or mod on the Source engine, they should not use the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch because of all the security issues that Valve has never been able to fix in-house. Use either the CSGO branch which is now only going to be used to create third-party games, or use the community-driven Strata branch, which offers more features, including support for DirectX 11, WebM video for FMVs, being exclusive to 64-bit processors and operating systems, PBR shaders, support for older versions of BSP, and much more. Both the CSGO and Strata Branch also have support for more networking and security APIs than what the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch has to offer.

Edited June 18 by Wadmodder Shalton

[dasho]

4 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

What matters with a petition isn't what name or email you used to sign it, it's the volume of signatures you have. 

 

Which means that the petition will be dismissed out of hand as there is no correlation between the number of signatures and the number of "customers" that are complaining. Stop playing and stop paying, this is the only tactic that has ever worked. If it doesn't work, move on. 

[riktoi]

48 minutes ago, LouigiVerona said:

I am guessing that making bots because way too easy. I don't know if there is even a technical solution to this. There were many, and it's an arms race.

 

It being an arms race is one of the big reasons why nothing is being done. Valve has said on at least one occasion that they do not want to run the treadmill with cheat/bot manufacturers/coders to repeatedly wack them in hopes of weeding the numbers.

[Gifty]

Ah, for the class update days of yore...

[LouigiVerona]

38 minutes ago, riktoi said:

 

It being an arms race is one of the big reasons why nothing is being done. Valve has said on at least one occasion that they do not want to run the treadmill with cheat/bot manufacturers/coders to repeatedly wack them in hopes of weeding the numbers.

 

Yeah, makes sense. And, let's face it, TF2 is a really old game by this point.

 

One thing they could do is release it as open source.

[WigglyStuf]

(Op by the way)
I'm not too optimistic about savetf2 either honestly. I dont think they have much of a moral or sentimental obligation to fix the game. Still thought it was worth a try though. Nothing to lose, you know?

[WigglyStuf]

6 hours ago, Mr Masker said:

ATTENTION: TF2 Heavy needs YOUR help to save TF2 from the INVASION of BOTS!

 

All you need to do is send him your parents' payment details, the 3 numbers on the back and the expiration date!

BE QUICK, before Valve DESTROYS TF2!

nice pfp btw

[lokbustam257]

1 hour ago, LouigiVerona said:

One thing they could do is release it as open source.

 

4 hours ago, OpenRift said:

 If Valve is unwilling to do anything to maintain their game properly, there's no ethical reason they should be making money from the game. I think the best solution is for them to do an official source code release and hand the game off to the community in some form so they can maintain it

 

Making the game open source would just escalate the botting problem 30 times worse than before, as now bot hosters know exactly how to make the most efficient and anti-cheat-proof bots.

 

And handing the game to the community isn't exactly the most ideal, because we all know what happened with those Valve-endorsed community updates in the past. And Valve is damn sure they won't let any foreign hands touch their game after those.

 

 

This petition won't gonna work, and an online petition, that's just kinda laughable. The best we can get realistically is Valve responding with another tweet and then watch the movement dying after 3 days (sounds similar?)

 

If Valve ever gonna response to this whole movement by fixing the game, it'll likely just turn into a treadmill work for Valve as bot hosters keep making better bots and as with Valve with their fixes.

 

To be honest, this Fix TF2 movement is going nowhere. How about SaveDayofDefeat instead? I mean c'mon, that game hasn't updated in like 35 years :(

[oneselfSelf]

6th times the charm... ROFL

[Ralphis]

need a teleporter here

[act]

4 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

It's not just the bot crisis problem in TF2, its the fact that the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch of the Source engine is "The New IE 6!"

 

WHY?! Because Valve has always had a lack of communication between its Steam userbase and its modding community, and pretty much now lets any older engine branch of Source 1 to firmly rot with security issues and bot accounts. In addition, Valve is a company where any of its employees do whatever they want to, meaning they are extremely silent with communication between the consumers, its community and the developers. This means that any common law funded by the BSA, SIIA and ESA that involves "Software Patching Law", "Game Patching Law", "Patching Law" and "Security Fix", all terms you can search on Google is now pretty much useless at Valve, because its developers and employees do whatever they want to.

Now for those that are wondering, what is the term "The New IE 6"? Well it's a common term on the internet since around the late-2000s to early-2010s where a software product's current state is compared to that of the infamous web browser by Microsoft, Internet Explorer 6 released in 2001 (the year of 9/11), which was a popular browser during the 2000s but was then criticized for its bugs and security exploits, and has now been hailed as one of the worst software products ever made, resulting in almost all websites dropping support for the outdated browser in the 2010s.

Here's all the reasons why the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch is now the new IE 6, and all the reasons why the branch is so broken:

1. The Orange Box branch was made late into the DirectX 9-era of graphics card hardware back in 2007, the same year that Windows Vista and DirectX 10 were released, while the 2013 SteamPipe branch was a major overhaul update that was released late into DirectX 9's lifespan, as DX9 would end support when Windows XP ended support in 2014. Neither the Orange Box or SteamPipe branches ever supported any version of DirectX newer than 9 on Windows, and Valve wouldn't natively support any DirectX version newer than 9 in their later Source 1 branches released between 2008 and 2013 which were the branches for Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, Portal 2, CSGO and the original 2013 release of Dota 2, all of them still had only DirectX 9 as its maximum version. Valve wouldn't make the transition to DirectX 11 until Source 2 was released.
2. The Orange Box/SteamPipe branch relies on older networking APIs made during the late-1990s to early/mid-2000s, which are very easy for any hacking group to easily hack into and hijack VAC servers, which really means that hackers are adding more security risks via remote code execution to Steam users if their playing any multiplayer game that uses the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch, and Valve has been painfully slow to fix any of these security issues and for trying to adopt to newer networking and security APIs in both their Steam client and their game engines. This is really why all those bot accounts in TF2 are making use of all security exploits in the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch.
3. Valve's GitHub pages for Source Engine games is now pretty much useless and its community is extremely toxic, ranging from no real solutions to stuff Valve wouldn't implement. And GitHub only supports projects that support the version control system Git, which for sure works with any open-source project but is a very difficult solution for any Proprietary software offering, because it makes fixing any buggy code and security problems more complex. If your developing any proprietary software. use a mix of CVS, Hg, SVN, BZR, TFVC, Arch, Perforce and Fossil for whatever components of the software your developing, not just use only Git, because that create more complex problems to your software than any of the other version control systems available.
4. Because of the outdated DirectX 9 software-rendering nature of the branch in general, any game that uses it now consumes twice the number of resources, which includes memory, computing power, and for laptop users double the amount of battery life, when compared to native DirectX 11 and 12 hardware-rendering or even Vulkan hardware-rendering.

What this basically means that Valve has just pretty much let every single hacker group exploit all security problems in the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch, meaning every Steam user who plays Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and Half-Life Deathmatch Source are now going to be victim of remote code execution which are hosted on servers tied to hacker groups. This also means that Valve will never likely fix any of the security exploits that causes bots to invade TF2 servers both from Valve and the community because VAC hasn't been update to support any newer networking and security APIs made years after DirectX 9 was discontinued.

If any modders are planning to make a multiplayer game or mod on the Source engine, they should not use the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch because of all the security issues that Valve has never been able to fix in-house. Use either the CSGO branch which is now only going to be used to create third-party games, or use the community-driven Strata branch, which offers more features, including support for DirectX 11, WebM video for FMVs, being exclusive to 64-bit processors and operating systems, PBR shaders, support for older versions of BSP, and much more. Both the CSGO and Strata Branch also have support for more networking and security APIs than what the Orange Box/SteamPipe branch has to offer.

microsoft and its consequences have been a FUCKING DISASTER for software development

[OpenRift]

1 hour ago, lokbustam257 said:

Making the game open source would just escalate the botting problem 30 times worse than before, as now bot hosters know exactly how to make the most efficient and anti-cheat-proof bots.

  

And handing the game to the community isn't exactly the most ideal, because we all know what happened with those Valve-endorsed community updates in the past. And Valve is damn sure they won't let any foreign hands touch their game after those.

I think in order to make TF2 open source, it will need to be handled in a specific way, not just "here you go, have fun™". The bot hosters were able to make their bots thanks to a source code leak from I think 2020, which is how they've been able to evade VAC. This bot problem does not seem to affect community servers nearly as much however. I don't know the technical details, but it seems that a lot of them have a more robust aftermarket anti-cheat in place that are able to keep a large amount of the bots out. If TF2 were to be open sourced, I think the new maintainers' best course of action would be to run an aftermarket anti-cheat system on the new "official" servers, which could better handle the bots. 

[Cutman 999]

I only contributed my shitty sign so I can at least say I haven't done anything, but yeah.

 

#killtf2

[act]

22 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

I think in order to make TF2 open source, it will need to be handled in a specific way, not just "here you go, have fun™". The bot hosters were able to make their bots thanks to a source code leak from I think 2020, which is how they've been able to evade VAC. This bot problem does not seem to affect community servers nearly as much however. I don't know the technical details, but it seems that a lot of them have a more robust aftermarket anti-cheat in place that are able to keep a large amount of the bots out. If TF2 were to be open sourced, I think the new maintainers' best course of action would be to run an aftermarket anti-cheat system on the new "official" servers, which could better handle the bots. 

to make tf2 open source, because in the end, making any software open source means that first you need to fully own the software.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_(software)

 

Quote

License

Proprietary/Shareware

Quote

Valve's Source game engine uses VPhysics, which is a physics engine modified from Havok

 

Valve doesn't fully own Source. Or maybe even Source 2. Valve not writing a physics engine from scratch has legitimately damaged the future of source games. I'd consider going open source, public domain, or equivalent to be the final "good ending" of all human thoughts and creations - artistic works, machines, tools, knowledge, all of it. Remembered, used, developed further, and part of the world as it is. It's beautiful, honestly. But, because Havok will likely not go open source - or at least in any such manner that would retroactively give permission to Valve to release their VPhysics engine as open source, and by consequence all the games of the Source Engine era will not go open source, unless an underground scene to make a reverse-engineered source port spawns - see Xash3D and Blood. It could take a fucking while, and honestly, I feel like the extremely toxic communities that Source games have for some reason would entirely fail to produce a fully-featured equivalent to Xash3D or NBlood. They'll just end up fucking doxxing and swatting and robbing and sexually abusing eachother - with the occasional IRL murder - like they have been for the last 20 fucking years.

[Biodegradable]

Considering just how old the game is combined with the fact that it's not nearly the cash-cow some people make it out to be these days, being "Free To Play" now; I don't think Valve has much incentive to actually fix it beyond this point. Thanks to the source code leaking in 2020, I don't think they really can. The TF2 community can mitigate the problem a little by using custom community servers to combat the bots, but I think they're shit out of luck if they think Valve plans to wage a never-ending arms race against the bot programmers. It's sad, but TF2's been around for almost 20 years. Its time has well and truly passed, and I'd say it had a pretty damn good run for a game of its ilk that none of the thousand of imitators every publisher keeps farting out these days will ever live up to.

 

TF2 was a watershed moment that captured lightning in a bottle and made a huge cultural impact on gaming, independent animation and internet culture. It was one-of-a-kind, but it was never going to last forever.

 

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Edited June 19 by Biodegradable

[OpenRift]

23 minutes ago, act said:

to make tf2 open source, because in the end, making any software open source means that first you need to fully own the software.

  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_(software)

 

  

Valve doesn't fully own Source. Or maybe even Source 2. Valve not writing a physics engine from scratch has legitimately damaged the future of source games. I'd consider going open source, public domain, or equivalent to be the final "good ending" of all human thoughts and creations - artistic works, machines, tools, knowledge, all of it. Remembered, used, developed further, and part of the world as it is. It's beautiful, honestly. But, because Havok will likely not go open source - or at least in any such manner that would retroactively give permission to Valve to release their VPhysics engine as open source, and by consequence all the games of the Source Engine era will not go open source, unless an underground scene to make a reverse-engineered source port spawns - see Xash3D and Blood. 

Shit, that's what I was worried about. Though there was that port that people made of the source engine to Android, but I don't entirely know the nature of that port, and it could be in a legal grey area.

 

24 minutes ago, act said:

It could take a fucking while, and honestly, I feel like the extremely toxic communities that Source games have for some reason would entirely fail to produce a fully-featured equivalent to Xash3D or NBlood. They'll just end up fucking doxxing and swatting and robbing and sexually abusing eachother - with the occasional IRL murder - like they have been for the last 20 fucking years.

Jeez, we're talking about the Source community, not Duke Nukem's lmao

 

In all seriousness I think the problems of the source community have more to do with how big it is and how old it is. This happens with any fanbase that's old enough. You do have me curious what events you're alluding to, but I think that's a discussion for somewhere else.