Valve's Corporate Hierarchy and the TF2 Bot Crisis

I think that keeping the game in a playable state and solving cheating once and for all are two very different things. By solving cheating once and for all you would finally get off the treadmill, but if that solution is too complicated, at least something else should be done. The scope of a restaurant is to feed the customers, not to solve world hunger. Maybe the future really does lie in hiring contractors to work on the game until the problem is at least somewhat under control.

Wow so essentially it's "Work on whatever you want, but if it's not impressive you're fired." That makes a lot of sense as to why there's so little maintenance across all of their products.

The Final Hours of Half-Life Alyx already state they've been moving away from a flat structure since 2016. This actually points to the flat structure helping TF2 as 2016 was the time where the TF team got stripped out rather suddenly

“Breaking news” “This just in the entire valve staff found dead in their office due to lack of oxygen consumption because they called it treadmill work.”

BRUH NOT THE INTRO 💀

This was the most soul crushing video I have ever seen. I mean no hate when I say that, I simply mean that this video is so well constructed that its hard to find optimism within the cracks of Valve's philosophy. I remain optimistic, however. I really do believe that we will stir up internal interest in TF2 with our protest. But for how long it will interest remail? Unsure

It's still Valve's fault. They released live-service online game that requires constant maintenance, yet they dropped their responsibility. "But it's a treadmill work!" Good grief, at this point it's no more than a tantrum. Valve really should stop cherry-picking the things they like. ...Low hopes, but that's how things should work.

This meme is relevant: All Valve Employees found dead after they realised breathing is treadmill work "What is the point in breathing, if a few seconds later, I will need to do it again?"

The impersonation of content creators and distribution of CP under the guise of someone else is a good federal lawsuit in the making.

Curious how a lot of the complexities stem not from technical solutions, but from the organizational structure of Valve and how solving this problem will just not help the developer's careers.

“Because people suck” is the perfectly succinct explanation for a lot of problems with society or any of its subsets, unfortunately 🤷🏽‍♂️

Valve employees realizing that Game dev is not usually that fun and enjoyable: 😭😭😭😭👺👺

9:40 Actually, it was recently proven that 70% of those "players" are just bots. Like not even cheater bots, but idle bots that are just sitting in private servers to farm item drops. Valve definitely needs to get rid of that crap as well. I personally think the best option is to go scorched earth - they need to make the game pay2play again, and do one huge ban wave, where they remove both cheater and idle bots.

This video is STUPIDLY long, even by my standards. But TF2 is a game that's quite near and dear to me - I had a lot of good memories of goofing off in it for countless hours with friends back in high school, and it still remains fun to this very day. I still enjoy logging in for a casual game every once in a while, especially around October. There's a LOT I wanted to talk about it, and this is the best time to do so. To see it fall in such a state is not only dismaying, but also infuriating. As a game designer myself, part of the reason why I took an interest in games was to inspire and create fun to others. People who actively ruin the fun of an online experience for others via cheat scripts infuriate me, because they basically destroy a developer's intent and other people's enjoyment for no reason. And if there's financial profit involved.... well... I'll just say I'm a firm supporter of Nintendo's legal practices for many reasons. Maybe this all really is just pointless - Valve is one of the most powerful game companies in the world after all, and I'm just a small fish of a game dev who isn't even from the USA to begin with. This video might not make a difference. But some things still have to be done, even if they are pointless. Unrelated point - This also explains why Valve takes forever to do anything. Good luck trying to corral this many people to sit down and see a project through to it's entire completion without someone needing to force them to do so.

The petition's benefit isn't necessarily to get Valve to "do" something, it's to act as a beacon, a single focal point to rally supporters and get media coverage. "300k people want something to happen" makes for a good story and its that expansion of the story hitting the wider online community which can drive actual change.

Valve's work model is viable only because they managed to create, accidentally or not, an endless stream of revenue which allows them to be as perfectionist or idealistic as possible. There is no correlation between getting shit done and not going bankrupt. Just thing about all the passionate game developing companies who were very passionate, but didn't get shit done in time. John Romero and his Daikatana comes to mind. Imagine if his company had an endless revenue stream that he didn't had to worry about, he would be making Daikatana for 20 years, then quietly scraping in favor of some VR game or whatever the newest greatest tech in gaming would be at the time. Instead, he didn't get shit done because he was chasing the latest and greatest tech like a child who wants the next new shiny toy and wants it NOW, was forced to release a half-baked product and went bankrupt. If Valve didn't have Steam, they would be either releasing games at least every few years, or would become bankrupt long ago.

I wonder what's going on at Valve right now. I like to think they seen what's happening and are working on some in the hope to give the fans a true apology...buts that's the optimistic in me

It is unclear when the bot problem started? No! The first bots were sighted in late 2017 as far as i know and in early 2018 they started to become a problem. I have screenshots of bot hordes spawn camping the other team from March 2018.

i wasn't expecting to get jumpscared by Von Karma today but it is what it is

Anyone else notice the song in the background. It keeps changing between the smash ost and various meme songsXD