Valve's forgotten game: Team Fortress 2's shocking toxicity problem - Sensationalist Headlines

What The vast majority of TF2 is played on official Valve servers.

the hilarious thing about the fact that people responded to this with the whole, "how is cyber bullying real" type response is that it is one of the controversies in the community. A player responded to someones very personal tweet about the communities shittier parts, with that exact type of humour and got banned from the competitive league, etf2l.

there's like zero benefit in allowing people to be assholes to each other. zero. if it's a casual match, the mute button will suffice because i understand that it is hard to create a system that will properly punish this kind of people and not backfire somehow however, if it's a competitive match, these players should be punished. yknow, dont be a dick. some names are offensive and some people don't like getting called these names. don't call them these names. some people don't want to be bothered, leave them alone.

Harassment/Stalking in steam (following people around) should end in a permanent game/community ban, maybe even an account lock on more serious cases. Being toxic is one thing, having absolute no life and stalking people around is a whole different can of worms

I mean valve is a company that didnt even moderate their store front, and let in malware to be sold on steam. I wonder at what point will something snap and they'll be held accountable. As far tf2 gameplay itself, it may be the area I live in, but I really dont see much shit talk of any kind at all from the community. Usually at most its one or two people, and even then. I recall last week some guy was on voice chat, saying, dumb, edgy racist teen talk trash before the round started. I just started a votekick, and he only got the chance to call me gay before he was swiftly voted off. I play tf2 daily, and I come back to it because of the friendly community. Although then again I play casual. The only experience I had with harassment leaving the contains of a game was with garrysmod. It was years ago, i was on some rp server, and I saw a bunch of people making fun on this one younger kid. I added him on steam, and I hosted servers for other games that we would play on together with others. As he got older though, he started to idolize nazis,and did some stupid things lile fake his grandparents death for donation money. At one point he started to threaten my little sister, at which point I got his ip (since I hosted the servers, so I had them), got his images, and did some backtracking to get his address, real name, and number, and then threatened to call the police and hand them all my evidence if he ever approached me or my family again. Years later, still working.

For the same reason you didn't get automatically banned for writing this post

I wonder if this is mostly a regional thing too. Like some parts of the world will likely be a very different experience to others. I'm Australian, obviously, and I've been playing TF2 since launch. I can honestly say that off the top of my head I cannot recall any genuinely 'toxic' experiences I've ever witnessed playing this game, although I'm sure there may have been some real nasty people in rounds I played... At most I would guess my 'bad experiences' in the game could be summed up on one hand. Or is this more of a post-free to play thing. Because I have played far far less of the game since then. I actually just started playing it again after an almost 2 year break, and I'm having such a fun time. People still swear and talk shit and carry on but it's all in such good fun. But maybe that's just the Aussie mentality shining through, it's all mate this and cunt that. It's great. And I play with a bunch of females who seem to have zero issue at all. We get one little youngun once in a while that makes a shitty 'girls in games' joke and they get kicked from the servers so fast it's a genuine non-issue.

What game has Valve not forgotten?

I got thinking more and more about this story with uberchain and I seem to recall a vague story about a player's significant other getting a lewd video leaked by the player's teammate, and I can't seem to remember anything coming of that. I don't even remember the people involved or when it happened. I wonder if there's more cases of this kind of thing with the boy's club of top players being dickblisters to others and Valve's passiveness coming through once again to not bother, since it's doesn't affect the bottom line. https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/ I hope with the TF2 article and this article posted here something comes of it, and the various journalists doing the investigative journalism and looking to spread the stories of hate and bring the venom that lies beneath Valve's various forms of cashflow can be halted or curbed until things change. Even if that hope is quickly gutted by the company not even bothering to listen to anyone and do whatever the hell they want, for the good or the bad when it comes to games or services they provide.

If you (or really anyone) think Steam groups are the issue, you are absolutely hopeless. I mean for fucks sake, look at some of the groups featured: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/213440/ad96de18-7322-4998-b6f0-582054718a95/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/213440/5c686946-dac7-49a0-84a1-21e6c16eeec7/image.png These are "hate groups" like milk is water. The only thing I agree with in that article was that valve needs to go after repeat offenders that breach their group policy.

After reading the article and looking at the entire thread seeing that most peoples responses were "haha it's just people being soft just mute them it's just part of the game" disgusts me seeing as they probably just saw the title one minute and brushed it off the next. To the topic of it I think that Valve/the TF Team should do something to curb all of the awful toxic behavior by trying to introduce a new setting to the whole report system in-game. Cause while the three options are good at trying to get rid of some annoying script kiddie or scammer it definitely needs that new option to try and get rid of edgelords and other assholes ruining the game's community. But knowing how Valve is who knows what they'll do.

The title-based reactions and backlash is why I tested having just a link to an article at the start of a thread one time with nothing else, the first replies are so make or break. (test result was that it gets your thread locked. oops.)

if all the events being discussed took place outside the game, and also outside the competitive leagues associated with it, is it really a problem with the game? does TF2 really have a toxicity problem? the writer in the article is calling that valve should be doing something, what do you really want them to do? don't get me wrong, these people are absolutely trash for all in game stuff, you have the tools to mute whoever is bothering you, and I don't want shitty chat filters or people getting banned for behavior shit, the more you try to make your game a disney land the more toxic the community becomes, as shown on league of legends and overwatch. if it's harassment in a community competitive match and such, leagues already ban people for behavior that happens inside those leagues if it's outside the game, just speak up, let others know what kind of person they are, that will be by far more effective than them getting banned. however, I still don't think people should be getting banned in game, league or anything for actions that happened outside of it. the only part that I think Valve could do better at is the workshop/maps part, they should not be doing business with people being assholes to other creators on their own platform

Every experience I've had with comp players in casual has almost always been toxic which has really put me off playing comp tf2.

f you kill a guy and you call them a nigger, a tranny or a faggot... in-game?? on-line??? w/e, cool, subscribed--brofist. if you do it in real life..in person??. fuck off idiot also..regardeing online.. steam workshop.. steam community.... you can either control what everyone says to you. and thinks of you,,.. or grow thicker skin.. harassed on steam once every few months for being transsexual? sorry buddy but you are your first line of defense... its unreealistic to expect people 2 be not a dick to you,, perhaps u should log of,f, nut up,,, or choose not to divulge personal info on line. . or block... PEACE.

Maybe it would help if the title wasn't garbage and implied that all this is somehow Valve's fault. Because it's not. Toxicity in random TF2 leagues is not Valve's problem, and neither is toxicity on game subforums on Steam. The latter have dedicated moderators just like any other forum, and thus its their job to clean up. As for the workshop, Valve should just disable the comments for TF2 items. Nothing of value has ever been said in a comment on the TF2 workshop.

It is Valve's fault that some people who have items in game and are still being paid and still get new items put in are part of the "toxic" problem.

https://static1.fjcdn.com/comments/Here+you+go+_1e22d7e0df2067fb7e37dfbfd4fb5f27.png

Dota 2 and CSGO, obviously Artifact as well, I guess

It isnt, but at the same time if tf2 had official comp leagues with real consequences for being racist dickheads from the beginning, the community wouldnt have become this cesspool. Just got read the tftv thread created after the two players called uberchain racial slurs on her twitter post about her sexual assault. Half the players were defending them. Some guy even said "you should expect that from white people, they are the superior race". And guys were still calling them racial slurs in the thread. How tf such a small scene becomes such a racist shithole where that shit is completely acceptable, it reads like kids who have nothing else to do with their time but try and one up eachothers toxicity. This shows what happens when top players are toxic and absolutely no one has the authority to kick them out, it poisons the whole well overtime. You need league officials kicking out the bad elements from the start or we end up with this shit.

Like, I don't necessarily disagree with you but that's not how the burden of proof works. You're the one making the claim. Personally I feel like it's highly dependent on the subforums and even specific threads. Like usually the threads in the gaming section are overall very civil but PD is a dumpster fire. It's hard for me to think of FP as toxic when over the years it taught me to be tamer and more level-headed.

what if someone just really isn't bothered?

because shit doesn't work and you can be an ass in voice chat anyway.

If they're not bothered, ignore it. Why would you need to go out of your way to say "stop creating drama!!" if you weren't bothered by it. The phrase essentially means "shut up, because I said so". Don't care? Move along.

Did you read the article.

I've never seen this on private or public servers but I also never engaged the ESports scene even with some offers. I just get too mad to easily.

To me, the article just screams of: "We've been beating the "Overwatch is toxic" drum for so long that nobody gives a shit anymore. What other game can we say is toxic?" "What about TF2? It's similar enough to Overwatch! It's also a game that Valve fans are saying they're neglecting, so we can spin that whole angle as well!" Honestly, I'm surprised I'm not seeing articles about the toxicity in something like Fortnite. Toxicity is really an issue in all online games, but screaming about it and trying to fight it is really the wrong way to go about it. By giving it attention, you're essentially making it worse. The only ways to deal with it are to just ignore it, or by propping up positive interaction in a genuine way that can't be gamed.

I think the matchmaking definitely contributes. A privately run dedicated server naturally fosters a certain community from regular players, and these are typically small enough that you can name most regulars, and I think this humanizes them to an extent (its harder to talk awful shit to someone you'll see again, whereas you'll almost never be matchmade with the same person again outside of top-level matchmaking).

TF2 development increasingly seems that way, thanks to Valve's shitty corporate structure - but the game still has tens of thousands of active players every day. You can get connected to a casual match almost instantly on any day of the week, and the match is always full. And the TF2 team at least takes cheating seriously and bans alts almost as soon as they appear, which has made matchmaking a far more pleasurable experience recently. I'm guessing you don't even play the game anymore, because if you did, you'd be aware of this shit.