If I read correctly, the TOS doesn't allow external applications that give a competitive edge to the user (I'm open to correction here). The idler program didn't really do that in my opinion. People here have argued that the idler allows you to get items without actually playing, but play was never required to begin with as evidenced by the existence of idle servers. It's not like players weren't already hitting spectator mode and alt-tabbing to do other shit, so while the program might have been a convenience, it did not give an actual advantage other than saving you some CPU cycles.

If Valve has an issue with people misleading their Steam service, then that's understandable. But don't paint this up as if the idler prog was some kind of unfair hack. They were silent for months when they could have put their foot down instead of letting the community guess at their position. That we're even having this debate shows that this wasn't such a clear-cut matter for many players. People like to say that this is just another example of players wanting to be instantly gratified. But I think you'd see the number of idlers shrink if they were given some path toward being proactive in obtaining items.

Oh right. Crafting and trading. Where are those again?

So delete the items, okay, fine. But I don't appreciate their attempts to marginalize the idling issue with that BS 4.5% statistic given how many people were using the app at any given time. Nobody wants to be called the "bad minority", which Valve essentially did with the whole blog post and halo hat.

Pretty much every online game does delayed reactions. DII would wait weeks before banning bot users, VAC waits weeks before banning hackers, why would people think TF2 should give instant user feedback about whether or not this was okay?

WWGS?

Pretend I asked gabe, "I'm using an idler program to find items, is that okay?" Which response would you wager $100 on? yes or no? I would hope you'd be smart enough to guess "no."

edit: but that's exactly what happened, idlers weren't 100% sure of valve's stance on the situation, so they made a guess, and they guessed wrong.

****ing lol'ed.

Same. Still lolling actually.

Might wanna brush them teeth.

And excel, at the very least an earlier response would have spared players who used the idle prog out of curiosity or only a few times. I think Valve is within their right to prohibit the app's usage and delete acquired items, but they could have handled it much better.

They're picked and brushed there. They're just not inhumanly white and I'm lit by a yellow bathroom light.

Then at least remove the hawt dawg in yer mouth. It actually made me feel uneasy looking at it.

Wait, those are not tears.

There were probably a few people who didn't realize it wast against the rules, but I seriously doubt they were in the majority. And as I've said, they should have seen how people were punished in the past for using outside applications. I don't think you exactly have to be "screwed up" to think it'd be against Valve's rules to use such an application; I'd argue you'd have to be horribly naive not to see it that way.

Personally, I don't have any sympathy for the people who find it necessary to create this divide in the community. Oh no, your feelings are hurt? Man up and grow a pair, hats don't even create any difference in gameplay.

I also like people claiming the 5% is bullshit because they just know it's bullshit. I'm not making any claims either way, but you people realize that you have even more reason to sound biased than Valve and have no real way to actually deduce what the number was anyway? gj there

This whole Hat-gate is an experiment in social engineering. Some servers are banning the halos or replacing with a pink neon GAY. People are changing their nicknames. Smirks and counter-smirks on voice chat. The Steam forums are shear entertainment at the moment. Flame wars the size of Verdun or the Somme. I find this all very entertaining tbh.

Also on the commercial side of things, hats off to whomever came up with this. Valve has managed to associate the name of one of the most popular shooter franchises ever with TF2. This is guerrilla marketing at its finest.

Christ, I was in the middle of a big long post that responded to a lot of the points made by half a dozen people since I last posted, until I typo'ed in such a complex and mystical way that I managed to shut the entire browser.

So just take it as read:
*INSERT SOME REALLY GOOD STRONG POINTS HERE*

I'll at least deal with the 5% thing because it is so simple (so simple, in fact, that I'm surprised it's not self-evident).

From looking at the official Steam Stats page, it's apparent that the number of concurrent TF2 users today topped out at 23,425 (a number which ironically will include a few thousand honest, non-cheating players of achievement_idle, but never mind that for the moment). At any point over the last week or so, at least, Steamstats (the fake idler program) had no less than 8k people connected to it on average, and very often had in excess of 10k. These numbers fluctuated by a good few thousand depending on the time of day, so it was apparent that a significant proportion of people were connecting and disconnecting to be replaced with others at different times. There's also likely to be a sizeable number of people who tried the idler and didn't use it regularly/ever again because they didn't like it, or understand it, or see it as useful. Those people would swell the overall number of 'cheaters' without necessarily bolstering the average number of fake idlers.

In any case you have an average user figure for the idler which is just less than half of the peak number of TF2 players - many of whom will also be fake idler cheater arseholes! It doesn't take a genius to see that a 4.5% figure for a proportion of the active player base sounds a bit suspect. The mismatch of Valve's stat with the high number of average idlers, when considered in light of the commonness of haloes in-game (nowhere near 95% in my experience, more like half), and also in light of the fact it would actually be quite a complex thing for Valve to calculate an accurate total number of active players in the first place - after all, what constitutes an active player? Someone who plays once a week/month/lifetime? - suggests to me that Valve haven't really worked out 4.5% as a meaningful statistic. It looks much more likely that they've just compared the number of fake idlers with the total number of people who own TF2, and then plonked that in their 'let's-tell-our-customers-off' blog post.

Isn't the real statistic 35% of the active population? I found the 4.5% one pretty hard to believe.

I don't know, I haven't been reading discussions or keeping up to date with all this (except via this thread), but 35% at least sounds easier to swallow than 4.5%. Do you have a source?

Brick: Greatest. Rebuttal. Ever.

The 4.5 % includes all TF2 owners, including those who bought the Orange Box and never opened TF2. Look at the achievement stats, only 59.4% of players have the easiest achievement, kill 5 people in one life.
1/3 of the playerbase is a pretty good roundabout estimate, from what I've seen in actual servers, granting the fact that some people won't wear the halo, or others who rarely play haven't put it on yet.


Honestly, if they'd just taken the idled weapons and not bothered with a 'reward' hat, I doubt there would be such an outcry in the community.
Remember people who used the achievement unlocker a few months ago? Imagine if everyone who didn't use the program got an achievement for that! That's where we are now.

There's actually an e-mail from Robin regarding that statistic. Let me see if I can find it.

Here we go:

From the Steam forums.

Finally some actual facts! So that's where they got the number.
But my point about dealing with this like they did the weapon unlocker still stands.

My Halo went missing.

wtf.

I can understand why some people feel that it was in bad taste to give out halos instead of just deleting the fake-idled items. Personally, I'm kind of fed up with it and I've been avoiding playing TF2 to avoid the drama. But I don't really blame Valve for the uproar, since as CMD noted--their handling of TF2 has always been fairly tongue-in-cheek. I'm frustrated with the people taking this whole thing way too ****ing seriously; it's a hat. It doesn't even affect gameplay. TF2 has never been a serious business game. Oh my god. Get over it.

On the other hand, I kind of get where Valve is coming from with creating the halo. It's like when you kill a roach, and you leave its little roach corpse lying on the kitchen counter for all the other roaches to see as an unambiguous warning. He's dead, Jim, and he doesn't even have a halo. He was not immune to the wrath of our merciless God and neither are we.

And then they scurry out of your house as fast as their tiny roach legs will permit.

You fool... stepping on roaches spreads their eggs.

It's all well and good to say the hats don't mean anything, but I think you underestimate a lot of players.

There are people in World of Warcraft who will spend exuberant amounts of time and gold for a pet, a tabard, or a mount that are functionally no different than any other. Why? Because my Ancient Green Proto-Drake looks totally awesome. There is clearly demand for the items, and whether they like it or not, Valve played a large part in creating that.

"Why so serious?" doesn't really make up for Valve's lack of foresight. People will play to win and to acquire all the cool crap in your title.

The amount of butthurt over this is so funny. I used an idle app and lol'd when I loaded TF2 and saw the halos(hadn't seen the update news about the halos prior to playing) on players.

This is just it isn't it? It's worth so much to them because of the time and effort put into obtaining those items. Using a programme to fake idling doesn't really take any effort at all.

My halo is worth something to me, because I know I didn't resort to cheating the system (as opposed to other players). Are you saying I should have it taken away? Because that's not fair you know. Why should I get my halo taken away when I worked so hard to get it?

I don't know how you come away thinking I believe you deserve to have your halo removed.

The demand for such items is due to the same reason: Rarity. The difference is that such items in an MMO are things you can work towards, often with secondary or tertiary rewards (Gold/XP/etc). It may require farming and grinding, but ultimately the player has the capacity to influence what he gains. You talk about effort in obtaining a hat. But what effort exactly? I think we've established that it requires none, only that your computer be running TF2.exe. You say you got rewarded for not cheating the system, but this is what players are doing every day in achievement maps despite Drunken Fool's program.

So you get large groups of gamers with collector/competitive mentalities - something you'd think would be taken for granted now for any online game, so I don't understand the shock and disgust on this board - and you give them no way to be proactive towards the items they want (except for vague promises of future features). What do you think is going to happen? It's Valve's game and they make the rules, so I won't say what they've done is wrong, but it is pretty damn naive.

So, once more, let's be clear. Valve takes issue with a third-party app playing games with their service. Not with idling itself (which is just as effective either way if you leave TF2 running or use the idler). The problem isn't with the idler really, but what it has clearly exposed as shortcomings and ill-thought design in the drop system. As I said earlier, if players had the ability to work towards the drops they want, you'd probably see idling dwindle, if not virtually disappear. Players will put up with long waits and improbable droprates if they feel their actions actually factor into the rewards received.

People used the idler (and still idle in servers today) because they thought it was a reasonable recourse to an unreasonable system, not because they wanted to pull a fast one. I imagine a lot of the "butthurt" comes from aspersions of being greedy, impatient, cheaters.

My comment about the halo was a parody of what I've been hearing, but I suppose it didn't really come across like that. I honestly don't care about how many hats I have, aside from the fact that I'd like to wear an afro.

As I said before, I think this has been rather tongue in cheek, and it's the sort of response I would have expected from valve. Perhaps they could have given more warning, but I still don't think that people should be so angry about it. Healers Against Halos is actually (as someone I know said) a fairly creative way of responding, but there are also reports of people being banned from servers for wearing a halo; which is just childish.

I wonder if people would be bitching as much if the cheaters got devil horns too.

Probably not.

I don't think most of the people who idled really protested the removal of their items. It's more the insult that was added to the injury what with the halos and all the connotations that came with it. I personally found it odd that Valve thought that non-idlers merited a freebie, especially given the 4.5% statistic they cited. The majority of non-idlers likely never even heard of the app. So it was a move calculated specifically to punish the alleged abusers and poke them in a sore spot rather than reward good behavior.

I guess that's what underlines the whole issue. It's not really the halo itself so much as the sentiment behind it.

Devil horns are cool, so that would make it a reward in a sense.

I agree, myself and friends just can’t be bothered to hope on games where everyone is spending more time bitching and moaning at each other than playing the game. As I stated before this has to a certain degree divided the TF2 community as now everyone has become petty depending on if they do or don’t have the halo. Just get rid of the damn tacky thing or give it to everyone, the people who did use the idle program now know Valve mean business so it’s unlikely they will be doing it again. Hopefully soon this will be something else that people will get over just like when the system was first introduced.

I've yet to join a server where the players were divided based on their halo status.

But, who cares.

I lost a hat from idling, but got a better one last night.

Crying, wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc. All so much rubbish, obviously. Any argument which hinges on a sense of persecution felt by (ex) idlers, or a sense of superiority on the part of angels, is ridiculous. BOO HOO. I say this as someone who has about 2 extra weapons and 0 hats, and someone who is not bothered but slightly amused at the appearance of halos.

But detached from these dramatic issues I can't find much intellectual sympathy for the "suck it up" argument. Valve instituted a system whereby your rewards had nothing to do with your efforts. Imagine if a videogame worked like that - if instead of having achievable, understandable goals you simply had an infuriatingly unpredictable random element with irritating wildcards like duplicate items. When players practice a form of 'cheating' that is, as far as I can see, victimless, and that is in substance no different from methods you could perform 'legitimately', they respond by stripping away the fun things gained (I won't say earned; since the abandonment of achievements, nobody has 'earned' items). And they might be accused of rubbing salt in the wound, although personally I think that's being oversensitive.

One of the things I've always admired about Valve is their casual flouting of understood contractural rules. They weren't obligated to sell the Orange Box so cheap, or to keep updating TF2 so dilligently and so entertainingly. They did it because it was a good idea, and of the kind that endears them to the community. If the news about L4D2 was ever disappointing it wasn't truly because Valve had 'promised' more than they'd given. It was because this grim sticking to ordinary commercial rules seemed so uncharacteristic of them. And this is the same: why did they feel the need to fill their game with awesome extra cool stuff, then tie that stuff to a stupid boring system? (PROOF THAT THE SYSTEM IS EVILL!!!) And why when people flout that system do they really need to do anything about it? Who does it help, what does it prove, and what good does it do? Blizzard - and this is an MMO developer, MMOs being the biggest cash-cows around - has repeatedly made big changes to its game that drastically cut the work it takes to get through the early stages. Technically there's no need for that. The game-system is established, in a fairer and more reliable way than the achievement system: you do this, you do that, and this will happen. Keep doing it and you'll climb. They could reasonably say "this is the system and it's not broke, so we're not fixing it." But instead they've deliberately tried to make sure that new players can accelerate as fast as possible into the new and exciting things they are adding at the top end. That's a nice example, and as I said, the Blizzard game-system is concrete with known efforts and rewards, even if its looting depends on random chance. You can possibly say that WoW players worked for what they got. But you can't really say that about people who received items via the current TF2 system. So their 'hard work' doesn't need defending.

My point: obviously the TOS and their legal and creative control of the game gives Valve the right to do this. But it's still stupid. That's why the "moral high road" line in the OP doesn't make much sense. The crime and punishment are pretty much divorced from moral issues, and are strictly legalistic. That's why the only feeling this inspires in me - save bemused smiles at 11-page forum threads - is a mild disappointment at Valve for being lawyers and (shit) for not displaying just a little bit more Christian spirit.

EDIT: okay seriousy Ayn Rand would murder me for this post, and I wouldn't blame her too much, since, re-reading, I feel vaguely uneasy at myself for making such arguments and I know a little of the rage that she must have felt

Also, I love this post. It's true. Pick a symbol, any symbol. On top of the connotations it already carries, invest that symbol with emotional and political weight. Then let it divide people, let them rally behind it or opposing it, let them argue about its implications and its significance, let them gather up every detail of the situation the symbol has been put into and every aspect of their circumstances and use it all as ammunition. In terms of sheer culture-power it's like banking. You invest just a little power in the symbol. And then you sit back and watch as everyone else makes sure investment rises. I'm not sure what return you actually get, though.

I wish 'social engineer' were a TF2 class.

EDIT: Wait a minute. I never really bothered idling. That means...that means I have a halo!

Neutrality is impossible! Refusing to take sides is taking a side after all!

The thing is that the halo really doesn't hold any sort of value beyond just being a joke, because the vast majority of the TF2 community has one. The reason people try to get hats is because they're rare and no one else has them, and essentially, that's why the idling programs were unfair to other players. Hats becoming more common devalues them and then when the trading system comes along all the plebs will have hats and that will destroy the entire economy because they're all a bunch of looters and moochers and--oh my god, oh my god what have I become

Damn you, Dodds, for making this an Objectivist vs. mentally sound people argument. Damn you to hell.



(Plus I have to agree that the current method by which you find hats is a bit iffy and I'd rather it be something based more on actual play)

Stupid trading system.

The reason I like my halo is because when idlers see it, they know they'll never have it...


and that makes me feel good.

And I know I'll never want it.