Everyone hates the GMod server list for having player spoofing servers. Will anything be done to prevent this in S&Box?
Perhaps the master list could perform some sort of “routine check-up” procedure where it checks that all the players a server reports match up to their steam status (just a rough idea).
Would you even need to do something to prevent player spoofing if you’re going to be using SteamNetworking?
Steamworks probably provides an API for verifying that players are indeed playing on a server that a server claims to report.
Even if not, its possible to require servers to negotiate their player lists with a game coordinator to acquire “proof” that certain players are playing there. Players browsing the game list would then be able to request that list from the server and verify that it is legitimate (through DSA or ECDSA or some other cryptographic signature).
I’m sure Facepunch is taking this problem seriously since @garry doesn’t take kindly to server spoofing.
Not having a serverlist should help a lot
No lie, I don’t think the absence of an official serverlist would be the end of the world.
Take minecraft for example with all these different server listing websites.
that absolutely kills small communities
didn’t the server list kill small communities anyway? 
This was sort of my thought too, the easiest way to get a community started I’ve found is to just get a group of friends on to bump it up in the list to begin with. I don’t see the server lists being done any differently from Garry’s Mod minus the spoofing maybe
the way it was done, yes, but try starting a small minecraft server with their 3rd party listing sites anyway.
The game needs more than just a server list to help small servers get found. A list will always be used to sort by the best rating/highest player count.
Yeah, I think it’s likely that a different approach is being taken for s&box, the server browser is pretty shit. Making anything unique that isn’t DarkRP or StarwarsRP or any other mainstream gamemode is pretty much impossible because gamemodes with lower player counts are dropped to the bottom of the list, preventing people from knowing they even exist.
Solving this but keeping a server browser could be done by creating “categories” of game types/modes, but eventually you will run into the exact same issue with unique content getting thrown to the bottom, unless there were some sorting method that would put “featured” or “new” servers/gamemodes near the top, or for the game developers to manually feature a new gamemode on the front page.
The game would work much better if it was sorted into gamemodes, especially if it had a new and featured section. Part of the reason GMod is losing popularity is because the server list is too cruel to new servers and gamemodes, so no one gets to see new content.
Would a tag system be good? It’s possible with the legacy browser but wasn’t used at all in Garry’s Mod server listing which I think is a shame.
Most small Minecraft servers give you expensive items for voting for their server.
I don’t see this as being good.
Best way to handle this is to blacklist servers that are doing player-spoofing from the master list.
Alternatively, just make a system where player numbers on servers don’t matter. Or take player number reporting away from the servers and done somewhere else.
I think using the way it’s done in Gmod but reworking the ranking to be based on player rating is good.
If you sort by players by default and give users the option to sort by name, map name and user rating it’s even better.
But that’s just my opinion. I just don’t like the idea of external server lists like for Minecraft or Discord where communities try to bump their servers with player votes and VIP memberships on these lists.
I’m in a discord for a popular Minecraft server and as a result, I get at least 5 messages a week from bots spamming me with links to other Minecraft server discords. I’d hate to see s&box servers take a similar route and I think a lack of a server list might encourage people like that somewhat.
I don’t think we should fall into the trap of thinking in terms of GMod, this isn’t GMod.
