Valve is allowing racist bots to invade ‘Team Fortress 2’
For the past two months, Team Fortress 2 has been under attack by a horde of racist, homophobic, sexist robots. Valve hasn't done anything about them.
www.engadget.com
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Valve is allowing racist bots to invade ‘Team Fortress 2’
- Thread starter Rvaan
- Start date
www.engadget.com
Holy hell that's a massive fuck up on valves part. The fact that their enabling racist behavior is shameful and should be scrutinized. Especially during these massive protests that are criticizing the exact behavior that is occuring here. I know tf2 is mostly dead but it's no excuse to do this regardless.
It's not that their allowing this. The way it's gone is very hard for them to block.
These people have also been pushing fake AI players into games. I mean there's one person running medic bots because he was complaining that there wasn't enough medic players.
Let's be real, the community is kicking them because they're bots not because of their name.
Don't they have like an AI network dedicated to anti-cheat or something? Surely they should be able to block or censor hate speech automatically, particularly in their own games. Maybe even do something relevant like replace all instances of hate speech with "Black Lives Matter".
I haven't seen "myg0t" in what.... 15 years now? holy fuck those incels are still a thing?
they were og incels before 4chan incels
to join myg0t back in the day you had to bake a cake and write "myg0t owns me" on it in icing and it was literally 12 year olds. i feel bad for the mums who baked them cakes
they were og incels before 4chan incels
to join myg0t back in the day you had to bake a cake and write "myg0t owns me" on it in icing and it was literally 12 year olds. i feel bad for the mums who baked them cakes
Valve: "Oh dang. Guess you all will have to give up your expensive cosmetics and switch over to CS:GO. And buy expensive cosmetics there. Don't worry, you'll get a gun skin."
*looks at screenshot*
I get what you're saying, but I think there's a pretty clear starting point? I know they'll start changing to alternate "look-alike" characters and symbols, and alternative writings, but you could at least start with "Hey, this entity is spamming obvious slurs." Given that they literally own Steam too, I think there's some amount they'd be able to trace this back?
*looks at screenshot*
I get what you're saying, but I think there's a pretty clear starting point? I know they'll start changing to alternate "look-alike" characters and symbols, and alternative writings, but you could at least start with "Hey, this entity is spamming obvious slurs." Given that they literally own Steam too, I think there's some amount they'd be able to trace this back?
then they need to shut down tf2 if they arn't going to give the attention they need to give to the game. make it open source encourage private servers. Sometimes games need to be retired.
Doesn't matter their using thousands of thousands of new steam accounts to do this
Frankly doesn't even need it.
https://openfortress.fun/ exists and is basically just that.
Most of these bots get banned the same day, they just get replaced almost immediately. Such is the world of free games.
Make everybody play on private servers that may not have any sort of bot detection at all, great solution!
Make everybody play on private servers that may not have any sort of bot detection at all, great solution!
Again, that sounds like a REALLY OBVIOUS starting point for the company that owns Steam. WHY can they create thousands and thousands of new accounts? How are they doing it? Are these accounts just signing up, logging into TF2, and spamming? If so, does there need to be a minimum purchase amount on the Steam account as a whole before they're allowed to start using TF2? But will that lead to more stolen credit card usage? There aren't easy answers, but I really hope they're not just sitting on their hands, despite how it looks publicly.
Well it's more that they are login and the actual clients these bots join are completely headless (requires no graphics at all) these almost entirely use no resources to run.
hey at least people have more authority over the racist ones which is the problem for me.
Why are you surprised? This is Valve. They don't care. It's not the first time.
www.pcgamer.com
www.wired.com
www.vice.com
Valve and Steam have been the safe space for hate groups for years.
Dota 2 pro will boycott upcoming major unless Valve addresses racism complaint
Alexei 'Solo' Berezin spoke out against comments made by Sébastien '7ckngMad' Debs.
The ADL Calls Out Steam for Giving Extremists a Pass
The nonprofit has identified hundreds of profiles that espouse hate, with little attempt from the gaming platform to stop them.
Steam Is Full of Hate Groups
Valve's hands-off approach to moderation has filled its giant platform with bile.
www.vice.com
Valve and Steam have been the safe space for hate groups for years.
Okay, but you still need a Steam ID in order to play a game of TF2. Which means account. So maybe you have to have spent at least $9.99 on a Steam account to play TF2, and any other F2P games that opt into this new system. The main flaw I can think of off the top of my head, besides a rise in stolen CC usage, would be money laundering games where they buy a friendly game to qualify, and the net profits get channeled back to them. That's already a problem on Steam, and money is more traceable.
But, you know, do something, right? Make it harder. They can't just throw up their arms and give up. Hopefully they're not doing so. This is going to continue being a problem in other and future titles.
Why are you surprised? This is Valve. They don't care. It's not the first time.
Dota 2 pro will boycott upcoming major unless Valve addresses racism complaint
Alexei 'Solo' Berezin spoke out against comments made by Sébastien '7ckngMad' Debs.
The ADL Calls Out Steam for Giving Extremists a Pass
The nonprofit has identified hundreds of profiles that espouse hate, with little attempt from the gaming platform to stop them.
Steam Is Full of Hate Groups
Valve's hands-off approach to moderation has filled its giant platform with bile.
Valve and Steam have been the safe space for hate groups for years.
can you imagine if it came out that Gabe was a milkshake duck? the internet would quake
Well are they just letting the takeover happen, or can they just not keep up with getting rid of them? You could potentially be forgiven for thinking either because of how quiet Valve can be. They need more PR people.
There's been a botnet or something systematically making accounts and mass joining games for around 3 months now. Usually with some kind of identifiable name and micspam, sometimes with bigoted chat spam. I'm not exactly sure what you have to do on the technical side to combat this, but it really needs to be addressed. Maybe articles like this will get light a fire under them.
And for the record, bots have been a things since like, the inception of TF2. But the last few months specifically have been different than they ever were before, with a dozen bots or more appearing per game (though the community is rather swift in kicking these days).
And for the record, bots have been a things since like, the inception of TF2. But the last few months specifically have been different than they ever were before, with a dozen bots or more appearing per game (though the community is rather swift in kicking these days).
It took years for valve to ban repeat habitual offenders in their most popular game (Dota 2) why is it a surprise that they don't give a fuck about what they would most likely consider a dead game at this point? Valve has gotten pathetic.
I mean they could have tried to fix it but Valve doesn't care and the community is leaving for OpenFortress already.
And yeah they could potentially stop this but it's either that or they've completely bypassed the steam wall for this and are just attacking TF2 directly.
He's a billionaire. He's probably a supporter of turbocorporations that have no rules or laws holding them back. I'm also willing to bet he low key donates to politicians that support relaxed tax laws for the Elite.
There are receipts many years back that shows he donated to local Democrat candidates. But yeah, he's probably a billionaire first that follows the Michael Jordan philosophy of "Republicans buy games too." His (and Valve's) silence on BLM is very disappointing.
Would it really be a milkshake duck for a community that regularly refers to themselves as 'the master race'?
Look, at least they really made up for that with that BLM commitment.Why are you surprised? This is Valve. They don't care. It's not the first time.
Dota 2 pro will boycott upcoming major unless Valve addresses racism complaint
Alexei 'Solo' Berezin spoke out against comments made by Sébastien '7ckngMad' Debs.
The ADL Calls Out Steam for Giving Extremists a Pass
The nonprofit has identified hundreds of profiles that espouse hate, with little attempt from the gaming platform to stop them.
Steam Is Full of Hate Groups
Valve's hands-off approach to moderation has filled its giant platform with bile.
Valve and Steam have been the safe space for hate groups for years.
Yeah. I can vouch for this. There is not a single game you can play within Valve's servers that doesn't have one of these bots or will have one of these bots join midgame. It's insane. Even if Valve is working on a solution, my trust in them has degraded severely. I don't expect a solution for months.
It's actually been a problem for more than two months. It's gotten way worse since Jungle Inferno.
There is no filter for hate speech in chat and player names so you'll have bots with racist names spamming chat with all kinds of nasty shit.
Valve doesn't have the basic systems to disallow or block that shit. It's pathetic.
There is no filter for hate speech in chat and player names so you'll have bots with racist names spamming chat with all kinds of nasty shit.
Valve doesn't have the basic systems to disallow or block that shit. It's pathetic.
I installed this again a couple of weeks ago unaware of the problems and the first match I joined was filled with these bots with racist usernames, safe to say I left the match and uninstalled it straight away, shit needs fixing and fast.
They probably aren't working on it. I doubt the few people at Valve who still work on the game even work on it full time. Some of the more senior people who worked on TF2 like Dave Riller and Eric Smith are long time Valve veterans who likely worked on Alyx because of their Half Life experience. Riller worked on the original Half Life and Smith came on during Half Life 2 development. Maybe they're back on TF2 now that Alyx shipped no one really knows.
I am hoping most 12 year olds are incels at least the -cel part if you have any idea what it means
the in- part is not really correct though, if you behave like a racist POS then it's not really involuntary anymore now is it?
LOL.
Would it?
They've said nothing about Black Lives Matter. Their forums are full of hate.
I'm not sure on Gaben's personal opinions, but Valve is definitely very tolerant of hateful groups and games on Steam.
Knowing that someone used its free time (or got paid for, who knows) to create this makes me lose faith in humanity
Valve is a very diverse company so it's possible they have a large number of #whitelivesmatter neckbeard employees that would be devastated if Valve made a #blacklivesmatter statement.
If you will stand up for your fellow human than you also have to stand up for your fellow racist (sub) human right?
I am still hoping they make a statement though
If you will stand up for your fellow human than you also have to stand up for your fellow racist (sub) human right?
I am still hoping they make a statement though
It's funny how this is apparently the only thread where it has been noted that Valve hasn't said anything about what's happening, while Nintendo had one dedicated thread and a whole narrative of them being racists going on when they were just respecting the blackout Thursday.
Shouldn't it be time already to hold Valve accountable about their inaction, both in moderation of their communities and forums and in regards of BLM?
Shouldn't it be time already to hold Valve accountable about their inaction, both in moderation of their communities and forums and in regards of BLM?
There are like a dozen people on this forum who actually play PC games, and most of them use it for Fortnite and Overwatch and don't know or care about what Valve is doing. Everybody else only cares about Valve when they think they can use them as leverage in their weird console wars, which the BLM thing doesn't fit as neatly into, and at any rate an Era boycott of Valve would lose them like fifteen dollars in profit.