Valve banning CSGO community servers that have custom weapon models/mods
314 replies, posted
[QUOTE=DaMastez;49630925]"Justified financial motive". Valve isn't in desperate need of money (one would think, how could they possibly be?), any loss from servers giving players weapons they don't own is a loss they could easily absorb, for the better of the community who enjoys custom gamemodes, however small. If Valve did this for profits, it's incredibly short-sighted.
Their terrible communication in every regard certainly doesn't help; any decent company would either (A) give warning in advance that the change was happening or (B) issue warning bans to start with, not 22 year bans.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=EpicRandomnes;49630941]No, but Valve is making a business decision that will sorely affect the longest standing portion, and arguably most significant, or the Counter Strike playerbase without thinking of the ramifications for the players. Considering that Valve's entire design philosophy was based around making the best product possible it's a worrying move when Valve decides to clamp down on things that really don't affect them.
If you actually think that Valve banning the very few servers that allowed inventory modification and the practice altogether is actually going to make them more money, it's not by a huge margin. The servers were already rare enough (at least in my experience) that did this, and the people that had a fake knife aren't going to actually buy a "real" fake knife, because if they were going to they already would have for vanilla servers.[/QUOTE]
I agree that the 22 year ban is absolutely ridiculous and not justified in any sense, but they did give out a warning that this practice was not okay. With regards to operating at a loss, they evidently feel that the amount of servers that offered official skins for free or by donation outweighed the other community servers by a large enough margin that a ban makes sense.
I'm assuming Valve has done some research to justify that assumption and are not just doing this on a hunch, but we have very little insight into any of this, so reacting with outrage doesn't make sense to me.
And what about the skin authors who have a stake in this as well? What might be financially negligible to Valve surely isn't to those guys.
[QUOTE=Chrille;49631074]I agree that the 22 year ban is absolutely ridiculous and not justified in any sense, but they did give out a warning that this practice was not okay.[/QUOTE]
A warning is "LISTEN UP: We are going to be handing out permanent server bans starting January 28th, 2016 if you don't comply with the rules on this page"
A warning is not "Here's some list of rules that we might enforce or do something with some day, listen up OR ELSE!"
[QUOTE=Chrille;49631074]I agree that the 22 year ban is absolutely ridiculous and not justified in any sense, but they did give out a warning that this practice was not okay. With regards to operating at a loss, they evidently feel that the amount of servers that offered official skins for free or by donation outweighed the other community servers by a large enough margin that a ban makes sense.
I'm assuming Valve has done some research to justify that assumption and are not just doing this on a hunch, but we have very little insight into any of this, so reacting with outrage doesn't make sense to me.
[/QUOTE]
While I cannot confirm either of these, I've seen a lot of complaints that the warning wasn't clear enough and that they clarified them only after the bans were handed out. I've also seen some complaints that they have effectively ruined the current form of Zombies, which [I]Valve themselves helped make.[/I]
[QUOTE=Chrille;49631074]
And what about the skin authors who have a stake in this as well? What might be financially negligible to Valve surely isn't to those guys.[/QUOTE]
Well, why doesn't someone go and ask them then?
So how long until they decide to start cracking down on Half-Life mods that aren't on Steam?
But anyway as a guy who likes to play mods, this is disturbing because Valve are/were one of the increasingly few developers that allowed people to mod their games and this is a clear sign that they're starting to move away from that.
[url]http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/08/4384/[/url]
good consistency valve
AFAIK the bans are done via sv_tags, so servers that have left the custom knife tag there were fucked too.
There are a shit ton of angry server ops on the CSGO server mailing list saying they didn't have any "illegal" plugins, and it all looks like no unbans will be done.
Valve, Why are you destroying your games and services like this?
This isn't right at all. I'm so fed up with their antics. They've ruined not only their rep but their own games and services.
Fuck you Valve, Fuck you. I used to like your stuff.
the ban on knife plugins is dumb.
its like banning "give_weapon karambit"
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;49631132][url]http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/08/4384/[/url]
good consistency valve[/QUOTE]
It's sad isn't it, so so sad.
Watch this, Valve is not going to crack down on modding on the other games; Just this game because E-SPORTS, which is why I hate CS:GO just because it's treated differently in Valve's eyes.
The most fun I've had with Valve products consisted of custom serverside content, be it gamemodes, weapons or just character skins. Dodgeball, FortWars and Prop Hunt probably makes up 80% of my TF2 hours as well.
Please don't dull your games and throw out the bullshit "new players get confused!!!!" excuses.
I can understand them cracking down on server who offer custom models and stuff in exchange for "donations" but free, not-for-profit stuff?
[QUOTE=Kigen;49630278]So I was one of the ones banned. It seems to apply to any custom player models (why?). Or for instance in CS Zombie Mod changing the player's knife into zombie hands like with what you get in ZS. This blindsided us as server owners because there is no reliable notification method for Valve to tell us they changed their policies. [/QUOTE]
This sucks, ZS used to be one of the main reasons why I'd spend my childhood hours screwing around on CSS. And if it weren't for that then Valve wouldn't have had Left 4 Dead, for god's sake.
Despite all this bullshit, I think it's possible that with enough support the community at large could pressure Valve into dropping this policy (at least against those who don't monetise it) like with the paid mods. Might not be a perfect solution but, goddamn, we need to do something. I mean, god dammit Valve, don't do this. There was a time where people saw you as the flagship for treating consumers decently.
You people need to learn how to read.
They're not banning players for using clientside weapon skins/models. They're banning servers that manipulate inventory and grant players temporary weapon skins modded guns not actually in the vanilla game.
I find it odd that they're banning servers that offer it for free but manipulating the inventory is still exploiting a system in the game. Having servers that run on reward systems for donation effectively profits off of Valve.
[QUOTE=T-Sonar.0;49631230]You people need to learn how to read.
They're not banning players for using clientside weapon skins/models. They're banning servers that manipulate inventory and grant players temporary weapon skins modded guns not actually in the vanilla game.
I find it odd that they're banning servers that offer it for free but manipulating the inventory is still exploiting a system in the game. Having servers that run on reward systems for donation effectively profits off of Valve.[/QUOTE]
Nope All custom mods serversided.
[QUOTE=T-Sonar.0;49631230]You people need to learn how to read.
They're not banning players for using clientside weapon skins/models. They're banning servers that manipulate inventory and grant players temporary weapon skins modded guns not actually in the vanilla game.
I find it odd that they're banning servers that offer it for free but manipulating the inventory is still exploiting a system in the game. Having servers that run on reward systems for donation effectively profits off of Valve.[/QUOTE]
Pretty sure everyone is well aware of what it means. Just because we dont agree with you doesn't mean that we're simply misunderstanding the issue
[quote]exploiting a system[/quote]
its a fucking cosmetic server mod, not a donator wallhack.
Greediness destroys everything. That includes Valve.
[QUOTE=T-Sonar.0;49631230]They're banning servers that manipulate inventory and grant players temporary weapon skins modded guns not actually in the vanilla game.[/QUOTE]
They are also apparently banning for serverside [i]player models[/i] and absolutely any custom weapons whether or not it's made completely by just one person, for 0 profit.
Even if you say, give the player a candy cane for Christmas in replace of a knife, or make people santa - that's a permabannable offense now.
Kigen changed the player's knife into zombie hands and received a ban. For a mode that [url=http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/08/4384/]Valve themselves used to support.[/url] That's sad.
[QUOTE=Kigen;49630278]So I was one of the ones banned. It seems to apply to any custom player models (why?). Or for instance in CS Zombie Mod changing the player's knife into zombie hands like with what you get in ZS.[/quote]
No one asked for this.
They said one reason was to prevent "player confusion" - please show me the player that is confused by having [i]zombie[/i] hands instead of a knife when playing [i]zombie[/i] escape.
So much more confusing than surf maps with giant floating triangles in the sky, bunny hop maps with platforms that you need to jump between & teleport you back if you're too slow, massive server rule lists, etc.
It's because the game's all about e-sports bullshit now.
[QUOTE=GordonZombie;49631219][B]I can understand them cracking down on server who offer custom models and stuff in exchange for "donations" but free, not-for-profit stuff? [/B]
This sucks, ZS used to be one of the main reasons why I'd spend my childhood hours screwing around on CSS. And if it weren't for that then Valve wouldn't have had Left 4 Dead, for god's sake.
Despite all this bullshit, I think it's possible that with enough support the community at large could pressure Valve into dropping this policy (at least against those who don't monetise it) like with the paid mods. Might not be a perfect solution but, goddamn, we need to do something. I mean, god dammit Valve, don't do this. There was a time where people saw you as the flagship for treating consumers decently.[/QUOTE]
do you expect them to investigate every single community server to find out if they're charging for skin changes? no. there's not enough manpower to do that. so the obvious move is to ban all servers using those plugins.
you can still change skins clientside as far as i know. so if you're really affected by this you can go and do that. but lets be honest, who is really affected by this? it's a small cosmetic feature that I'm sure much less than 25% of community servers actually use. and even when they do use it, in my experience people spend more time customising their skins than actually playing.
[editline]29th January 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=LittleBabyman;49631357]It's because the game's all about e-sports bullshit now.[/QUOTE]
what's the problem with that? and what makes e-sports bullshit?
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;49630463]valve, a company whose most successful products have exploded because of mods, are now assassinating mods
great[/QUOTE]
Like the night of long daggers.
Did valve get some change in upper management recently? It's like they think they're too big to fail and are casting away all the values that made them unique. They would be nothing without modders (css, portal, team fortress, l4d, dota all mods originally). If they carry on people will just jump ship to a diff company offering a better looking product with the same moddability or lack thereof.
valve sold their soul and replaced it with microtransactions long ago
Well, that's definitely it for Valve then where I'm concerned.
What a damn shame.
I don't understand. There was not a single problem with clientside skins. People who used knives and shit on community servers either could not afford the actual skins or didn't want to pay money for them.
I also remember a server where you could apply any skin in the game to any weapon, I had tons of fun on it.
-snip, misread-
[QUOTE=Ghost_Zero;49631585]It looks like they changed it/reworded it, any idea what this means now?[/QUOTE]
Sounds like it's to stop these servers that give you temporary skins while you're on the server.
TF2 had some of these, you'd be able to spawn yourself hats and cosmetics.
Snipped
Valve is turning into one of my most hated companies out there. If it wasn't for Dota I would have just stopped giving half a shit about them a long time ago.
[QUOTE=Bitl;49630803]Doesn't really mean that much to me because these are just serverside mods in CS:GO, which I never really played. If they start banning mods for TF2 servers, skins, and mods for HL2 and HL1, than I would possibly be in the same situation you are all in.[/QUOTE]
I don't think they're gonna do anything with TF2 because TF2 has already served its purpose.
If anything, TF2 will just quietly lose support in favor of the real money makers like CS:GO and DOTA.
Regardless of the new rules and permabans being okay or not, Valve has fucked up here. [b]The article has a big fat lie in it.[/b]
Sure, they sent emails with a link to the rule list awhile back. But for something with such a long ban time, they need to have pushed it MUCH harder than sending some emails.
An in game blog post. A link on their website - maybe the FAQ page. [b]At the least a date that these bans would start so server owners could prepare or shut down if they don't want to comply.[/b]
Nah, none of that. Instead, they randomly emailed a page of rules without stating punishments.
Server owners probably took a quick look, thought "uhh... what? eh, i'll deal with this once it matters" then disregarded it.
You know what that page did state though? This:
[quote=http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/](6) What is the time frame for making these changes?
...
We’ll continue to monitor over the next week, and will post a notification if any further action needs to be taken.[/quote]
That's an outright lie right there. If they "reached out to server owners" in July 2015, that means they decided [b]months later[/b] to punish servers [b]with a permaban.[/b]
That's not [b]over the next week[/b]... and instead of "a notification" they took IMMEDIATE action with a giant server permaban wave, treating it like a VAC banwave.
Which means even if someone took the article seriously, it states there would be more details coming. Not a huge banwave months later.
Oh but don't worry, they didn't forget to update the page after the fact! Let's see here...
So whens the next ban wave? Will there even be another one? How are you detecting this so I don't accidentally trigger it? How do I get my server unbanned if I was banned?
[quote=http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/]To avoid future disruption game server operators are best advised to comply with CS:GO server operation guidelines described above.[/quote]
Who knows! Valve treats it like VAC and keep it a secret for god knows why.
That seems like bullshit, and completely unfair. Before "January 2016 update", the article read as though Valve would be updating the article with further information later in the week.
[b]Edit:[/b]
Someone on Reddit also pointed out that it tells you to contact them but doesn't tell you who to contact.
[quote=http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/]If for some reason you are unable or unsure of whether a particular plugin should be removed, feel free to contact us.[/quote]
Do I contact Steam support? Do I email [email]serverguidelines@valvesoftware.com[/email]? Do I email Gabe Newell?
If they're going to implement rules that can get a server permanently banned, have some consistency at least. This is a mess.
Is this for any server or just ones that want to have drops and stuff enabled? I don't even know if they have drops in csgo anymore.
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