Valve diverting new players to their servers. Select servers will be closed.

[Bottiger]

We will be removing servers that don't fill up for the majority of the day.

Why
The cause of the population drop started on January 23. Valve cut off the source of new players by making quickplay default to Valve servers.

Since then they have made a few attempts to appease community players by adding more options to quickplay and adding quickpick. Unfortunately, less than 6% of people use those options and less than 3% use quickpick. By now it is clear these options failed.

What you can do about it
It may help to send complaints to erics@valvesoftware.com and fletcherd@valvesoftware.com.

We have already had to remove some servers and players complained to us instead of Valve. We hope you understand we can't keep every server up when Valve is sending all the new players to their servers.

 

[Meowcenary]

I never thought I would hate Valve but now I'm starting to

 

[sov]

Do you have any idea which servers will be removed or have been removed?

 

[Astir]

I believe very server that doesn't fill up / isn't used will be evaluated.

 

[CDAWG]

Valve really likes killing communities

 

[KillerZebra]

I woul suggest complaining to valve and mentioning my idea.

Old problem, Some people want to only play on valve servers
Server operators/communites are happy
People who want to play are happy
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are unhappy

To fix this, they made quickplay that automatically puts you into a Valve server unless you check the box. With this way,
Server operators/communites are unhappy and are stuggling to keep servers up.
People who want to play are happy
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are happy

They should switch it back to the way it was. Quickplay puts you in any random server (assuming they follow valves quickplay rules). Have a checkbox that says "Only Valve Servers". This way people who only want to play on Valve severs have their button. The default option is not "Valve Only" anymore.
Server operators/communites are happy and servers can go back to the way they were. TF2 Communites survive
People who want to play are happy
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are happy

 

[KillerZebra]

This is the official email I sent. If you guys want to use it and just edit it to your liking. If you even like the idea.

I have a better solution for quickplay. Please read the following.

The current quickplay situation is killing all TF2 Communities. I am an admin on Skial, and like everyone other community, we are forced to shut down some of our servers because we cannot support them anymore. A community where, despite the rumors, have followed Valves guidelines for quickplay. We are one of the most popular TF2 communities around, and we are being forced to shutdown servers. That should be ringing bells.

Here is the old problem,

Some people want to only play on valve servers
Before you decided to change how quickplay works, this was the status of people playing TF2.

Server operators/communities are happy

- Everyone in the communities were happy, had friends. This was how TF2 started out.
People who want to play are happy

-People who don’t care where they play are always happy.
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are unhappy

- They wanted valve only servers in quick play. That’s it. Death to TF2 communities for some random reason.

To fix this, your solution was to change quickplay to automatically put you into a Valve server unless you check the box. With this way, communities get less traffic. Most people don’t bother with the box.

Now,
Server operators/communities are unhappy and are struggling to keep servers up.
People who want to play are happy

-These people are either new, or do not care where they play. So they do not bother to check the box. They may not even notice it, or now what it means.
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are happy

A better solution

Put quickplay back to the way it was before you made the above change. Now, add a checkbox that only lets you join Valve Servers. This way people who only want to play on Valve severs have their button, and are happy and can continue to play.
Server operators/communities are happy and servers can go back to the way they were. TF2 Communities survive
People who want to play are happy
People who only want to play on Valve Servers are happy


Traffic gets back to normal. We can continue to support an amazing game and keep our servers going. Everyone is happy, everyone wins.


With the way things are going now, Valve servers will be the only ones standing.

KillerZebra

https://steamcommunity.com/id/KillerZebra/

 

[Bottiger]

I don't think it would help if you say you are an admin. They would just think you are biased.

 

[KillerZebra]

Well I am giving them another solution, which is why I don't think it really matters. I am not just emailing them saying "omg this sucks we want old quickplay back".

 

[SPYderman]

If it will help, once I get a job I'll try to send a bit of money every so often to help our servers

 

[Bottiger]

If it will help, once I get a job I'll try to send a bit of money every so often to help our servers

Well thanks but that is the wrong way to keep servers up. We should not rely on a few people for all the support. When the servers empty out what's the point?

Well I am giving them another solution, which is why I don't think it really matters. I am not just emailing them saying "omg this sucks we want old quickplay back".

It matters because there has been as much noise about this on the HLDS mailing list and Valve has ignored the subject.

As I have said before, I tried contacting Valve about things like this before and they said something like "show us that's what the players want".

 

[Catt]

It is so frustrating and it doesn't feel like Valve is going to do anything. My friends and I had to shut down our server and community because of those Quick Play updates, but I didn't think it would affect Skial that much. That's extremely sad.

It's just a matter of time before the TF2 Community servers aren't a thing anymore. I hope Valve soon realised what they have done and fixes their huge mistake. 3: It's so frustrating to watch newer and older communities dying because of it.

 

[Nothing_Much]

Source 2 anyone?

 

[Renegade]

Well, I'm going to be sending an email to them. Hopefully, a lot of people do the same.

 

[EvanFlew]

Source 2 anyone?

I dont even...

 

[mittens]

There should be a message in the servers spanning this information instead of !valvehatbug

 

[Nothing_Much]

I dont even...

Disclaimer, I fucking love Skial servers and I hope the servers don't get shut down anytime soon.

*I could be wrong*

I have two theories as to why Valve's doing this sorta thing.

They could be planning some form of a new release of their older games on Source 2, maybe it's only a matter of time before they drop Source 1.

OR

Maybe Valve wants their Steam Machine's experience to be as vanilla as possible, the community already shows enough support by buying games and TF2 items from Steam. It's a small sacrifice possibly to make TF2 (and other games) better than what currently exists.

Honestly if either of those reasons are what they're going for, I'm all for it, I'm so sick of TF2 as a "game". I'll give Valve about 3 years, and if by 2017 Source 2 isn't released, then I'll join in on the Valve hate bandwagon, if one exists for justified reasoning's over time.

 

[Bottiger]

They have not said the specific reason, but most people think it was to stop the complaints about pay-to-win servers like Saigns and Nighteam along with this group called bets.tf that had a redirect hack.

Valve has been moving away from community servers as you can see by actions like these and Dota2 and CS:GO. Waiting for Source 2 isn't going to change anything.

 

[chuckwagon]

There should be a message in the servers spanning this information instead of !valvehatbug

There is one.

 

[Pengy]

The email I sent. Feel free to copy/paste or edit to your liking.

In light of the recent changes made to the quickplay feature in TF2, I would like to make a suggestion that would make everyone happy, rather than killing off TF2 community servers.
Now, before quickplay was changed in any way, the only people that were unhappy were people that only wanted to play on valve servers. Server owners and people that just wanted to play were happy in the way quickplay worked.
So, to make "everyone" happy, you have now put in a checkbox that diverts all quickplay users to Valve Servers. This means less traffic for community servers, as nobody really notices the checkbox or bothers to change it.
A better solution would be to leave quickplay in, but simply check "Any Server" by default (rather than "Official Server"). This means people that just want to play are happy, and people that want to play on Valve servers have a way to do so (simply by checking the box). This method allows TF2 communities to survive.

Hope you'll take this into account.

-MijetGummiBear
TF2 Community Member