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TommySoda, do games w Slander, extortion and doxxing - beneath the surface of TF2’s bot crisis

I wish Valve had some sort of monetary incentive to fix this. If this happened to the cash cow that is Counter Strike this would have been fixed already. It’s sad to see this going on especially with the resurgence TF2 has been having lately.

Oha,
@Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

Counter strike is run over with bots and cheaters too so I doubt they care at all

Gnugit,

It’s likely they care but it’s such a cat and mouse game. Within a week or two any new patch will have a work around by bots and cheaters anyway.

CleoTheWizard,
@CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world avatar

And yet they really don’t do anything about it, I have yet to see evidence that they engage in the cat and mouse game. A lot of cheaters have full inventories of skins and have been cheating for many years at this point with the same cheats

gaylord_fartmaster,

If you don’t think Valve is banning anyone from their games then I invite you to take a trip to the VAC steam forums and see all the posts from people proclaiming their innocence and complaining about their ban. Always a good time.

CleoTheWizard,
@CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world avatar

I didn’t say they weren’t banning people, I said they aren’t really playing the cat and mouse game. VAC is a known system and it doesn’t actually affect cheating in any meaningful way since the game is free, steam accounts are easy to create, and time between VAC waves is extremely long.

Go play a few matches of CS2 on competitive without buying the premier and tell me that they’re doing anything at all that is effective. It’s gotten so bad that playing on non-premier games I will get a cheater in the lobby about 75% of the time. And premier isn’t immune but it’s about 20% of the time.

Most of what needs to be done is that their servers need to clean up and stop sending so much data to the client and also the servers need anti-cheat. There’s been some suggestions of this by people getting banned for moving their mouse to fast repeatedly, but that’s about all they’ve done of note.

If you think that the company who has almost entirely abandoned TF2 and left it to rot to cheaters is doing much with CS, I think that’d be a bad assumption.

Moneo,

People are being harassed and doxed by a group of people that have turned one of their most popular games into a fucking cesspool. They need to either throw in the towel and drop support for TF2 or wage war on these losers.

Hire a dedicated team, involve the police, I don’t fucking know. The current state of TF2 is an absolute disgrace, it’s fucking pathetic.

Gnugit,

I didn’t know it was that bad! I never really played it but that sounds rough. People suck.

ms_lane,

It’s a 17 year old game, how long do you expect them to support it?

TSG_Asmodeus,

Till they stop making money off skin/etc sales.

DaPorkchop_,

As long as it continues being one of the top games on steam by online player count, and/or it continues to make them boatloads of cash?

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

I will buy the explanation that the game is too old to continue to support when they stop adding new microtransactions every six months or so

crossmr,

I don't think the age of the game is really relevant. If the game is active and you're making money on it, you support it.

UltraGiGaGigantic,

Up until they release the intellectual property into the public domain, alongside the source code and hosting tools.

Corporations are not to be trusted to maintain and preserve our culture. They have enthusiasticly proven again and again they are irresponsible and cannot handle this task.

Chozo,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

That's precisely the problem; they continue to support the game, in the state that it's in. Honestly, an appropriate move would be for them to officially discontinue support for the game altogether (even if that means not having a new IP to replace it with). This means turning off their official servers, and removing the ability to buy/sell inventory items on the Steam Marketplace.

Right now, Valve allows people to sell items for real money (which they take a cut from) in a game that is overrun by bots. They need to either fix the bot problem, or stop taking people's money.

Moneo,

The fact that they’re letting this shit happen to one of their own communities is extremely disappointing. They should take it personally that some a group of people are using their game as a tool to harass people, but they don’t give a fuck.

I have lost so much respect for Valve over their handling of TF2. I’ve gone from a fanboy to a hater.

ogmios, do games w Nier creator Yoko Taro reveals the sad reality of modern AAA game development, “there’s less weird people making games”
@ogmios@sh.itjust.works avatar

Weird people were forced out of the industry over the past decade or more, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with making games.

mohab,

Happens with any industry that gets big, I think. More profits=more suits/vampires coming in and replacing artists/scientists or whoever is more qualified to make key decisions.

This won't stop unless infinite wealth hoarding is tackled by governments, if ever.

ogmios,
@ogmios@sh.itjust.works avatar

You’re not wrong. I still remember the day I picked up a newspaper and saw the headline “video games earn more than movies for the first time ever,” and I immediately knew where the industry was headed. In retrospect, I was 100% correct.

squaresinger,

Happened even with Boeing. I think it should be illegal for anyone with an MBA to be CEO or CTO of any company. They can be CFO if they want to, but not any role with actual decision power over products.

grrgyle,

Spicy, but I love that take

MJKee9,

But then you get those people opening studios like Sandfall and creating masterpieces like Clair Obscura…

Passerby6497, do games w Sniper Elite Resistance dev defends asset reuse - “if they’re there to use, why not use them?”

Agreed. Especially if they’re creative like the halo devs and only use one rock.

Zahille7,

That kinda reminds of something. Earlier this summer I had to go out of town and stay in a hotel for work. The hotel lobby had this decorative box with lights in it, but it also had these fake river stones or whatever to look like pieces of colored glass. But they all had the same shape, which was unique enough that at first glance every piece looked totally different.

SaltySalamander, do games w Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report

I'll pass, thanks. Bethesdasoft can get fucked.

knightly,

They lost me when they released Fallout 76 prematurely and refused to honor my refund request. I’m glad I bought it direct rather than through Steam, I charged that shit back and swore them off right then.

selkiesidhe, do games w Square Enix acknowledges Expedition 33 success as inspiration for next Final Fantasy as turn-based is still beloved by gamers

Pleaaaaase make 8 and 9 remakes that remain FAITHFUL to the originals!!! I loved them because they were turning based.

I don’t care about down votes: ff7 remake sucks.

RetroGoblet79,

Why not both?

I’ve been pretty impressed with the Oblivion Remastered of putting a brand new skin on old tech. I want to play FF8

And honestly, I like FF7 remake. It was a love letter to PS1 fans.

Lemming6969,

You mean 4 and 6

RetroGoblet79, do gaming w Nier creator Yoko Taro reveals the sad reality of modern AAA game development, “there’s less weird people making games”

This might come off as being a old gamer, but I feel like they’ve been saying this about AAA games since 2000s.

Sure, 90% of them will play it super safe. But there’s always 1 AAA game that breaks the mold and suddenly, the AAA games will follow that. Or imitate whatever indie game is doing with a higher budget.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

Sam Lake is still out there fighting the good fight. Kojima too - whether you think he’s a genius or think he produces incomprehensible nonsense you can’t deny he is at least flying the flag for the weird.

Zozano,
@Zozano@aussie.zone avatar

I respect that he burned a giant hole in Konami’s pocket and tried his best to block them off at each turn.

Then they fired him before the game was finished and released Metal Gear Survive lol.

Also respect that he made a fucking AAA hiking delivery game, with fucking jar-babies, and Princess Beach.

mohab,

Sure, but look at the PS2 catalog, for example—way more weird games with relatively high production for the time.

ScrambledEggs, do games w Baldur’s Gate 3’s biggest mod team now has hundreds of devs working on its huge custom campaign in an impressively professional production
@ScrambledEggs@lazysoci.al avatar

Ooooohhhh fuck yeah

Senal, (edited ) do games w Sniper Elite Resistance dev defends asset reuse - “if they’re there to use, why not use them?”

Shaw explained that the act of asset reuse is essential in stopping crunch

Utter bullshit, you stop crunch with realistic timeframes and competent planning/project management.

Asset reuse could be part of that sure, but making out like it’s essential is a geometric fractal of red flags holding other, smaller, red flags.

NoForwardslashS,

Careful, I made the exact same comment and you’ll find it downvoted to the bottom there.

Senal,

Downvotes with no actual reasoning behind them?

I am shocked, shocked i tell you.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Do you think you end up with a more realistic development timeline by remaking things you’ve already made? Your comment can end up downvoted for calling one of the most common industry practices, for very practical reasons, “cutting corners”.

NoForwardslashS,

If it’s an integral and common industry practice, how has the industry not entirely eliminated crunch already?

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Because while it’s a tool in one’s tool belt to work smarter, it is obviously not the start and end of where crunch comes from. Nor is it cutting corners.

NoForwardslashS,

Ah so we are picking and choosing whose statements we take as absolutes then.

Ledivin,

Because it’s fucking inane. Yes, it’s only one part of the problem - nothing was ever stated otherwise, he’s simply speaking on the topic at hand.

Do you also say “no, ALL lives matter?”

Senal,

“Essential” implies more than just a small part, but if you want to claim otherwise you are free to do so.

Do you also say “no, ALL lives matter?”

Because project management is comparable to civil rights? That’s some weak sauce whattaboutism.

NoForwardslashS,

I think we might be talking to a project manager.

chryan,

Genuine curiosity: are you a professional game developer

Senal, (edited )

Apologies for the delay, my instance is having problems with communities so i can’t reply with that account.

To answer the question, not anymore.

The crunch culture was a big part of me leaving.

Honestly it’s not that different in type from non-game dev houses, the difference is in the magnitude.

I understand why these things happen, the reasons just aren’t good enough for me.

Poor planning compounds with ridiculous timeframes to create an almost immutable deadline to deliver unrealistic goals.

The problem is, they’ll jump right back in to the next project and make exactly the same mistakes. At what point does it stop being mistakes and starts being “just how things are done”.

One of the main reasons this works at all is that they take young idealistic programmers who want to work in their dream industry and throw them into a cult of crunch where everyone is doing it so it must be ok or this is the price of having my dream job.

it’s certainly not all studios and it seems to have gotten marginally better at the indie to small-medium houses but it’s prevalent enough that it’s still being talked about.

chryan,

When you worked in games, how did your team deal with the unplanned scenarios where a feature, or even the core game, wasn’t fun and you needed to go back to the drawing board?

Senal, (edited )

Depends on the team.

On paper what you’re “supposed” to do is iterate through gameplay mechanisms and scenarios by building up the bare minimum needed to get a feel for it, then once you have something viable you proceed further along the development process.

In reality it really depends heavily on context, sometimes you find a particular scenario works fine standalone but not as a part of the whole, or some needed balancing change elsewhere breaks the fun of something established, late additions can also cause this.

but again that depends heavily on the type of game, rpg’s are more sensitive to balancing changes than racing sims for example.

Specifically we’d usually evaluate the tradeoff between how much it doesn’t work and how much work it is to “fix” it, sometimes it’d get cut completely, sometimes it’d get scaled back, sometimes we’d re-evaluate the feature/scenario for viability and make a decision after that re-evaluation and sometimes we’d just bite the bullet and work through it.

Over time you get a bit more cautious about committing to things without thinking through the potential consequences, but sometimes it just isn’t possible to see the future.

I understand the realities of managing a project like that, at the same time these kinds of things are known upfront to a degree and yet people always seem surprised that the cone of uncertainty on a project like that is huge.

As i said, i have no problem with re-use, i have a problem with saying re-use is “essential” to stopping crunch, like the management of a project like that isn’t the core of the problem.

lustyargonian, do games w Sniper Elite Resistance dev defends asset reuse - “if they’re there to use, why not use them?”

I remember it being a big deal, well, some deal for a brief while, that God of War Ragnarok had reused boat animations from the previous game. Similarly for Horizon Forbidden West I think.

Anyway, sports games come annually and literally feel like the same game with some adjustments here and there and they’re usually the best sellers lol, so this issue feels like a very “online thing”, or perhaps the title makes it seem like there’s a big inexcusable issue that needs a “defence”.

PunchingWood, do games w Oblivion Horse Armour dev looks back on hated DLC – “We had no idea what we were doing”

Bethesda had no idea how much backlash the DLC would create

Yeah sure.

Either they’re just straight up lying, or they’re completely incompetent over at Bethesda.

Sadly, both don’t seem very unlikely realities for what that studio turned in to.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

no idea how much backlash

That’s not to say they didn’t expect backlash, they fully expected some, they simply didn’t do a field study to see how bad it was going to be. Actually pretty common in the industry. Thow shit against the wall, see how bad the outcome is, discount that against profit. :)

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

plus

“One of the things about Horse Armour that you have to remember is Bethesda, I believe, was the very first company to do downloadable content expansions,” Nesmith told us. “Nobody had done that before for the platforms. We literally pioneered that. And so Bethesda didn’t know what the hell it was doing at the time. We didn’t know!”

PunchingWood,

I feel like it would’ve taken little effort to do a survey, or just even common sense to know what to expect.

They added that paid DLC barely 2 weeks after the game launched, it doesn’t require much thought how this probably wouldn’t be received positively.

edgemaster72, do games w The new Flappy Bird game has a hidden secret: crypto
@edgemaster72@lemmy.world avatar

I am so shocked, I have to put all my shock into a spoiler:

shocking levels of shock aheadDid you catch how shocked I am? I’ll do it again:

no really, so shocked you guysOk, maybe not that shocked.

MidsizedSedan, do games w Nier creator Yoko Taro reveals the sad reality of modern AAA game development, “there’s less weird people making games”

I know im late to the party but… I just started playing Death Stranding. Lets just say its more than just a walking simulator…

Schadrach,

I mean, it’s being a mail carrier in a world that is maximum Kojima.

MITM0,
@MITM0@lemmy.world avatar

I mean it’s an Amazon delivery simulator so yeah

Blackmist,

It is mental, but I also kind of wish he’d hire somebody else to write dialogue for him.

And maybe somebody to check all the women characters, and make sure he’s not coming across as being a little bit odd.

FooBarrington,

Not sure what you mean - “Mario and Princess Beach” is obviously peak cinema

BrainInABox,

And maybe somebody to check all the women characters, and make sure he’s not coming across as being a little bit odd.

Yeah…

And Death Stranding is better about its female characters than most of the MGS games…

MidsizedSedan,

I JUST started collecting chrysalis crystals. (so mabyt 4-5 delvilvery/walking sim missions in)

To quote an old meme, ‘I know nothing Jon Snow’ but one i saw the ::: spoiler Title Hand prints in the sand, :::

I knew this was more than a walking simulator

Blackmist,

By the time you finish the game, whatever you’ve seen so far will seem like the most normal thing in the world.

Definitely a lot of standard Kojima gameplay in there, among the apocalyptic Deliveroo simulator and bonkers 4th wall breaking.

prole, do games w Elder Scrolls Online devs detail “inhumane” Microsoft layoffs as Xbox expects the “carcass of workers” to “keep shipping award-winning games”

I can’t believe…

What’s hard to believe here? This is how capitalism works.

Carighan, do games w Dune Awakening is Funcom’s fastest-selling game ever as new MMO crushes the studio’s previous records
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I wouldn’t exactly call it an MMO? I mean I get it for marketing purposes, sure, but it feels more like Valheim or so to me?

Jayk0b, do games w Dune Awakening is Funcom’s fastest-selling game ever as new MMO crushes the studio’s previous records

Friend gifted it to me.

This game is so bad.

Fancy cutscenes and “lore” to cover up boring gameplay.

It’s just another base building + gather resources game.

The quests are go to A, go to B, collect stuff.

The gunplay is like shooting plastic straws, the enemy ai is braindead, the climbing mechanics are the worst I’ve ever seen. Ice glitched INTO walls and got soft locked so many times I stopped counting. There is a “unstuck” button. Doesn’t work. Want to report a Bug? Button doesn’t work.

Good I got it gifted, wouldn’t spend a dime on this. It’s not finished at all and just another clone game…

Dyskolos,

Be fair. Wait for the p2w micro transactions after launch, then judge 😁

KombatWombat,

There is an unstuck button. It’s in the bottom left if you hit esc iirc. I’ve used it a few times.

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