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.
you think if companies would've figured out a universal solution to cheating, they would have done it by now? of course they would! but for each popular live service game, there will inevitably be bad actors toiling away in their free time to try finding chinks in the armor, gaps in the security systems and will eventually get around it. but i do agree that valve really needs to consider hiring outside workers to manage their live service games if they do not want to assign their employees to the necessary grunt work needed to maintain these games. a company like this that doesn't want to assign or obtain personnel for this duty shouldn't be making live service games to begin with
If Valve doesn't want to be on the treadmill themselves, they need to use contractors. It's the only way to avoid that treadmill. There is no simple solution to the bots, at least not in the short term. Long term AI is probably the best option, but it takes a long time to train an AI to accurately detect cheats and fairly issue bans. CS2 is still working toward this, and they have had all of CS:GO and CS2 to try and gather data to feed the AI and they still aren't catching a large portion of bot/cheaters. Even games like League of Legends who do pay people to stay on the treadmill and catch players manually as well as with AI, still don't catch every cheat immediately. It is an infinitely complex problem because as soon as the cheat detection catches the cheater, the cheater changes how they cheat, and the cheat detector has to be modified to catch the new cheating method, and then the cheat method is changed again, and around it goes endlessly as the cheat creator looks for new and better ways to circumvent the system.
@@limecoveredbrickYou can't. That's why I don't like arguments that boil down to "X solution is useless because it will eventually be bypassed" and shit like that because the point isn't to create some sort of universal cheating fix that prevents any and all cheating from happening at all, rather we're just asking for *something* since we currently have nothing in terms of anti-cheat.
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.
Yeah, why would anyone want to work on bug-fixes, safety-leaks and cheater detection, when it's less exciting and also might get you fired because it doesn't look like you're innovating.
Since 2016, this is not how Valve has functioned. They were failing to push anything out the door so they dropped the "desks on wheels" philosophy so they could actually make Alyx happen, and since then the devs have not had the previous freedom. That's the reason for the lack of maintenance. No one is being assigned to it and they no longer are allowed to just go do it themselves.
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
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
“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.”
I don't think you listened during the "it's hard and very expensive to make people liable who dont reside in US legislation" so no. It's not. It should be, but its highly unlikely.
@@zacharyscovel1017 no, you said "in the making" which suggest that they will inevitably sue bot hosters. it is misleading. On the other hand, obviously everyone would agree this would be the grounds for one.
@@MoundNI don't the bot hosters would be sued, but Valve totally could be for allowing their game to reach a state where such things are being done in mass with no moderation in sight; i know TF2 is an online game and Valve doesn't have control over every individual's actions, but when thousands of bots are performing illegal activities inside your game, the least they should do is roll out a ban wave, which they seemingly haven't done in a while.
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.
From my point of view it looks less like a tantrum and more of a avoidance of career suicide. It seems like if you were to try to do treadmill work it would result in backstabbing from your coworkers to the point you would be fired. It seems it less of a "I'm not going to do treadmill work cause that's boring" and more "I'm going to avoid doing treadmill work because if I seem interested in that I'm going to be gossiped, talked behind my back, lose friends, and lose my high paying job that supports my family!"
Agreed. Ever since the bot problem has become worse, I've started to say Valve is a company with little to no sense of responsibility, with their flat hierarchy not only encouraging but even forcing their employees to chase after the latest shiny thing for the sake of clout, otherwise they'll risk to lose their job. Sure, their work culture may have enabled them to come up with some of the finest products and features out there, but it is unsustainable for things like long ongoing services. It's just not good. They _need_ a mix of traditional and flat organization like some other companies have realized and done since nearly 10 years ago, but I'd hardly imagine them doing that in the near future.
I think Valve will hopefully figure out that you can't create a live service game without the treadmill work. If the game is going to stay up, it needs constant care and attention. Most of the industry hasn't learned it though... At least TF2 still exists, in the hands of Ubisoft or some other big publishers it'd have been taken down a decade ago. The live service trend is making eyes roll _because_ so many publishers aren't willing to put in the money to keep developers doing treadmill work.
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.
The only way to really get rid of those idle bots is by removing the ability to earn real life money through their items. I'm sure we can all see why valve and a huge portion of the community won't let that happen
@@tim14022000 Another way would be to change the item drop system to only drop items for ACTUALLY playing the game. Sure, people can have bots walk around and pretend to play the game, but that would cost bot hosters a lot more resources to run. Ther's a reason there are so many idle bots, compared to bots actually playing the game.
Pay2Play scorch Earth approach would only work long term if they commit to "lE TrEaDmIll wOrK" of actually working on TF2. Also they'd need to rework idle item drops system to remove the main bot population, idle bots and cheats still exist for paid games so they'd still need to commit to anti cheat or sumn
@@danielsurvivor1372 Yeah, the fabled treadmill work... But even aside from that, they will likely just never touch the game again, unless someone gets forced onto the task. Valve's stucture just sucks so badly that nobody, even the ones who do still care, want to work on it. Hopefully they just contract it out to a third party... or y'know, some community members who know their shit, of which there quite a few.
Eh, i think some people are just a little hot headed or dumb, doesn't mean they are bad, plus i think everyone is capable of change. Also sometimes long term good can only come after the original flawed foundation has rotted away and been destroyed.
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.
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.
Yo, it's okay that it's this long. Everybody would rather watch a documentary over a TH-cam Short. I am literally going to have it on in the background just like I do with all of my videos, that's what video essays are for... Am I right? I will reply with what I think of the video, too.
You still have a bigger platform than any one of us commentors have. And if anything, I at least appreciate the insight into Valve's company culture and why TF2 is so poorly maintained.
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?"
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.
@@SirDavid290 Oh yeah, that too. Actually, I think this is precisely what would happen to Valve without Steam. They would be working for a decade on Half-Life 3, but it would never be as perfect or groundbreaking as they would like, and eventually some publisher would buy them and give them an ultimatum: either release what you have or you are closed.
I think Valve work model can be somewhat improved upon. There should be two separate pools of developers: junior developers who work under a traditional hierarchy and do maintenance and other work current Valve employees find mundane or not worth it, and senior developers who are free to do anything and may act as project managers if they so choose. So, Valve either hires devs with tons of experience and immediately gives them freedom and resources to express their creativity, or hires now so experienced people who would work under experienced devs to gain experience and over time have a chance to be promoted to senior dev. I mean, look at American McGee, he started up at ID as a level designer and basically did the work John Romero didn't have time or desire to do, and ended up developing an iconic video game series a few years after, but ID did not benefit from that. Imagine if that progression happened within ID.
20K to 30K daily players is still a more than desirable number for a multiplayer game like TF2, and the fandom it has is orders of magnitude bigger, so the IP itself is highly valuable. Valve could harvest a ton more of money from it if they had the initiative, but they don't.
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.
For anyone else trying and failing to find the source video of the rant at: 27:48 Is the LazyPurple "How it FEELS to SUFFER in SFM (sp00ky) [Behind the Scenes]" video from 5 years ago.
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.
For the record, the pronunciation of "Arceus" changes based on the language. No I'm not kidding. And the Silvally is the pronunciation guide for your language. I'm still not kidding. In English, Silvally's ability is "RKS System." R-K-S, Ar-Kay-Us, Arceus. In Japanese, Silvally's ability is "ARSystem." Ars-Eee-Us, Arceus
From a reddit post about this question with a valve employee answering, They still have a Flat structure for the early stages of development. Guessing they only do hierarchical structures when they move out of pre-production or something.
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
Valve is too busy counting all the money they make form Steam to work on old games. They can't even be bothered to work on a functional anti-cheat for their new games like Counter Strike 2.
@@necrotafeio Personally, I would NOT dare to defend a multi-million dollar company simply because they are “uncomfortable” supporting a live-service game
@@necrotafeio I know, I work in SFM and Hammer Nintendo really fearful of losing its API icon, or something But not about this, it's still not a point to defend literally developers that MADE this games, and only not so long ago start to work on S2
Genuinely though, what's to stop Valve from just cutting official server support and handing online games through community made servers? "Quick Play" just connects a player to an available community server and outright putting "Browse Servers" front and center. They could still keep item servers up because it's a separate system. It'd kill/lower casual quick play, but at the same time it's not like they are supporting the game much anymore. Essentially like what Battlefield did with 3 and 4.
If nothing else comes from this, I hope Valve finally realizes just how utterly stupid their system of work is. the "Treadmill work" comment is proof enough that this system, while great on paper, utterly fails in execution. The phrase that comes to mind is "Someone will always have to work at McDonalds." When no one is obligated to work on the hard stuff, the hard stuff doesn't get done, and you end up with situations like the bot crisis, and a billion dollar mega corp getting accused of gross criminal neglect.
Thank you so much! I remember some of your pokemon related videos, specifically the cynthia one. So surprised to see you cover a TF2 topic, a game so neat and dear to me. Thank you so much for giving such insight on this topic and the complexity of the situation!
Honestly, learning how valve runs is uterly fascinating to me. And while I do feel bad for the tf2 community and how valves "hierarchy" affects them. Im still glad that valve went this route. Because its an interesting way to run a company which as shown, has both pros and cons (both of which can be pretty extreme). Espically since you see plenty of people who have massive issues with the run of the mill kind of organisation/companies, with different teams with strict heirachies that tricle up to an upper management, and how people consider a lot of said upper management just heartless moneymen that are completely out of touch. Where valve has significantly less of this. And kinda of is, I don't know how to describe this, a counterpoint? A showing of how a company with a flat hiierachy might run (especially when you arent talking about a small team of like, 1-4 people, but instead an entire organisation), actually potentially works, both its beauty but also the ugliness as well. Just seems like a good thought experiment in contemplating which would be the "best" way to run a company, with neither being "obviously better". Espically since most people tend to have an idealized alternative way to run a company (or any solution to problem for that matter) and rarely think of the issues/consequences that might ensue.
I recently discovered your channel and have been binging a lot of your videos, so before anything I just want to say that they are really great, keep it up! I'm leaving this comment because I'm a DOTA 2 player and Valve fan, it is one of my favorite games ever to the point I made a TH-cam channel to post DOTA memes/shitposts and all that, and I'm extremely grateful the game is in the hands of Valve Software. The game had experienced some content droughts in the past, with patches/updates taking a while to come out, but when they come they almost always overdeliver. I would probaly say it is the one Valve game that gets treated the best, with a lot of love and care from Valve. I won't get into specifics because as you said, you're not familiar or experienced with it, but you can trust me when I say DOTA 2 is thriving in the hands of Valve and I don't think any other company would be able to do it like they do. If you're interested in learning more about DOTA 2's past updates and maintenance from Valve I would be more than happy to talk about it more. On another note, I heard the TF2 bots case were handled recently in a massive banwave, so that's some good news! Cheers ❤
I love the game and have played it for many years. TF2 community in general was what partially inspired me to start up a channel talking about game design - they seem obsessed with looking into the design of even the most minute things, which made me realize people actually kinda care about this stuff. And their content creation is extremely high quality and impressive from an artistic standpoint - far better than most other "essay" makers. At any rate, I've been wanting to talk about Valve for some time anyway. Their corporate hierarchy is interesting from both a business AND a game developer standpoint, and for all the praises sung about the company, that hierarchy does produce issues which most gamers don't think about or realize. So, TF2 is a good springboard for this topic
Huh, I'm also someone who got an IB diploma, considered law but decided to go into the arts, who fondly remembers playing TF2 in high school. Small world? Honestly, even if the bot problem is solved I doubt I'll spend much time in TF2, since most of my multiplayer time is spent in dota 2, but I'm invested in the bot problem simply because I believe TF2 is one of the best games of all time and want people who haven't experienced it yet to be able to do so in the best environment possible. Though certainly, if solving it for TF2 could lead to a better experience in Deadlock, a game I'm looking forward to simply off the fact that Icefrog (main person behind dota 2's balancing) is rumored to be working on it, and I've found his work and approach to game design phenomenal. Plus valve made games are nearly always outstanding. Even Artifact, may it rest in peace, was a game with some genuinely incredible design that was let down by its monetization and the community's dislike of it for simply not being half life 3. Oh, and as a dota player I can say that the game has clearly been somewhat abandoned, but to nowhere near the degree TF2 has. The people working on it have acknowledged that the team isn't as big as it used to be and can't do all the things it used to, but they are trying to adjust their development approach to compensate, and it seems to be working. The latest event (replacing the old battlepasses) has been excellent as has the most recent balance patch. My only real complaints are how long the periods between balance patches have gotten, and how little community interaction valve has (but that's always been a problem).
A really good and more in depht perspective about tf2‘s problems was really interesting and enlightening to watch, i had never thought about valve‘s management and the issues that come with it. Editing was amazing too, thanks for the video!
Don't villify Yuzu like that. We need emulation. Piracy is a problem of service. Also, bot hosters advertized child pornography in a game once. That's certainly illegal and should be taken action against. They aren't "bad people;" they're absolute degenerates. I think Valve's solutions are either deleting their servers to let the community and their servers thrive, or CREATE A NEW BRANCH IN THE COMPANY THAT OPERATES LIKE A NORMAL COMPANY: get the endless supply of young game devs to work on this under management and have them all do it the same way.
Much as the Yuzu situation sucks, I have to concede they brought that one on themselves, which is all that's being pointed out in the video. They sold, emphasis, SOLD a more up-to-date release of Yuzu via their Patreon that allowed you to get TOTK running smoothly (as stated in the video, a week ahead of the game's actual street date), and that is likely what brought Nintendo's hammer down on them in the long run. The bigger tragedy to me is that Citra got caught in the crossfire. The Switch at least still has Ryujinx, but the 3DS is already dead and buried and Citra was basically the only thing keeping it alive outside of official hardware. And now it's just stuck in a "usable, but needed more time to cook" state indefinitely.
Yuzu emulator did not sell copies of games. People have to find roms themselves and put them in the emulator, as far as i remember the part about Yuzu that was illegal was them having compatibility keys that made people's roms of the game work on the emulator. So vasically, giving people a game-specific DRM bypass, rather than the game itself
They gotta do something more drastic if they wanna do something, atleast this one has SLIGHTLY more teeth. I say the biggest bullet against Valve's treatment of TF2 is that they want to make Deadlock, but why should anyone play it when you look at how abandoned and bot riddled CS and TF2 are? Who's to say Deadlock won't become just like them? I don't think Valve will do jack shit with that said, not with this weak movement.
If its a weak movement but yet everyone knows that Valve won't keep up with Deadlock's security after awhile and so like you said why bother, so at the very least this movement has informed people Valve don't do shit.
@@ukyoize even though the state TF2 is in is horrific, it is *just* a game, harassment isn't a warranted course of action against the developers (especially considering the way valve operates), now the bot hosters on the other hand...
9:40 TF2 has nowhere near as many players as the chart indicates, since the majority is composed of bots. And that's why the problem is serious. 11:13 "Toxicity" is by far the most fake problem gaming ever had. Banter and trash-talking in competitive games have been a thing since multiplayer games were a thing, and no one had a problem with it until the hobby got invaded by killjoys who ruined everything by forcing moderation teams into the mix to ban anyone for any reason.
Solution to bot problem is simple, really. Just revert back to quickplay. Quickplay servers managed by community and meet certain criterias to appear in the search bar. Community get to deal with bots on their own terms and have their own anti-cheat (which is better than VAC currently) while allows Valve for this easy fix to move on to "more important" stuff and avoids "treadmill work" for them for now (it's gonna be pain in the ass for CS2 community eventually, but they got VAC-net there and actually seems to be dealing with cheaters there by banning them manually from leaderboards, so whatevs) Also bringing back quickplay make people happy, since "Meet your match" update almost killed the game and no one wanted "Casual" in the first place.
Counterpoint: copious amounts of empty servers that get automatically hosted by bots when only one player joins in, abusive admins, and Pinions Pot'o'Gold Also, who's to say these bot hosters won't just create servers that match or overshadow legitimate community server as traps for newbies
Deadlock is thankfully the main reason something will be done if anything does get done. Valve obviously doesn't care about words people say, but if their new game flops as hard as Artifact did (remember that? It figures if you didn't) then they're more or less going to be forced to take a critical look at how things are run at Valve and learn the hard way exactly what people want and expect from them. Regardless of their corporate hierarchy, Valve is still a profit driven company and still needs to make money, and if they don't learn that the REASON people are fond of them and trust them is that they make and MAINTAIN people's trust. The second that trust is gone, the company will evaporate like any other one does.
too bad that when said "trust" in valve's games is gone, steam will still be lining valve's pockets, regardless of what they would do. without the pure luck of valve being the first to make a DRM which also is the closest to a "good samaritan" you can get nowadays, valve would've gone bankrupt a long, long time ago. think duke nukem forever with it's 20 year development time basically killing 3D realms entertainment.
13:46 If this supposed structure should help Devs create more art than under pyramid model then why do we rarely see them create stuff these days? We got what. Alyx? Steak deck? And maybe you can stretch and say CS2... That's pretty disappointing, Valve USED to innovate, both steam and valve games vise
We just want the game to work properly....if that's TOO much for Valve, then take down the game. It's suffered long enough with all these bots picking the corpse's bones for the last 5+ years. And then suffer the backlash that will come from CSGO2 players' economy crashing, etc.
14:54 Oddly reminds me of co op economic models some socialists still try to push, but ironically enough, there's always still competition or inefficiencies etc
it should be noted that the change in reviews of tf2 is not review bombing, which carries malicious connotations. people are simply appropriately updating their reviews to reflect the state of the game.
So that's why there's a coconut in the TF2 files, however put it was incentive by Valve. At this point Valve need to focus in Steam (if there's no incentive to screw over) and have a different approach to manage their projects, the day Gabe is no more what's gonna happen if there's no guidance and their ideology seems not going to work in the long term?
I don't care if it's treadmill work. It needs to be done. I don't care how, I don't care who. As long as TF2 sits in the corner without proper maintenance, then I'm not playing deadlock. Counterstrike 2 was Valve's shiny new toy, and it didn't last. Why should I trust Valve to keep this one running either?
Well... Your video is amazing; your arguments and your point as a whole are flawlesly correct, and that just makes me feel like we're f*cked :c New sub btw
Honestly, if valve struggles with making anticheat due to their hierarchy... why not outsource it or make a sister company whose dedicated to "treadmill work" to insulate them from the existing corporate culture and vice versa. Other studios have done this like how Stellaris has a secondary group dedicated to maintaining and balancing the smaller details of the game while the major team works on new expansions.
I'm sorry, but Valve is ABSOLUTELY at fault for this one. What good is blaming the criminal evading the law if the law isn't going to hold them accountable? Answer me that.😠
There really is no easy answer for anyone involved. I doubt that Valve wants to do a traditional hierarchy because I would imagine the people working on something cool, and then suddenly being forced to work on a janky old game with a community that's constantly yelling at them would not be plesant in the slightest.
It may be a neverending treadmill that they have to run on, but while they run that treadmill, they get paid. They don't want to do the treadmill work, but they expect to make the treadmill money. They can get fucked. Actively working on banning cheaters and bots is the *bare minimum* of operating a live service like TF2. If they didn't want to deal with that, they shouldn't keep releasing live service multiplayer games. If they don't want to keep doing the *bare minimum* for games that still make them a ton of money, they can therefore get fucked, and lose that income.
I don't get one thing. Why not simply let the community maintain TF2? Look at Black Mesa. The community has trained developers who make such iconic mods for free. It was so good that they were allowed to sell it. Fill vacancies for TF2 maintenance volunteers who have expertise in this area. Give them access to look after the game same way real devs do. They'll be like reddit mods. For better or worse. Though can't be worse at where we stand.
correct me if I'm wrong but I think Gaben has himself stated they have since reorganized their structure to formally assign people to projects now? This was a recent development post-covid iirc
You're basically correct, but it was Robin Walker who said that they started moving away from the "everybody chooses what to work on" structure in 2016 according to The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx. Now people are assigned to projects.
You were too nice to Valve at the end. If you live in a flat where rats constantly steal your cheese, do you blame the rat, or do you blame the neglectful landlord who refuses to seal up the mouse holes despite you begging him for years?
I feel like the sentiment of "changes in structure are hard so it's not happening" just gives Valve a free excuse. If you pull away from everything and ask: "Does Valve have the means to hire (and benefit from) a team of dedicated anti-cheat developers?", the answer is overwhelmingly yes, but they haven't done it. It might be a more complicated and unique form of bad management, but it's still bad management regardless, Valve needs to concede that their management strategy has issues, and then work on addressing those issues.
So I knew the issue was complex, but not this complex. Have to say that if and when Deadlock releases it's going to be dragged down right out of the gate by the mistreatment of TF2 and CS2. People are not going to want to play a game from a company that for a number of reasons is unable or unwilling to handle upkeep down the line.
I remember when cheaters weren't necessarily malicious. About half the time when you encountered one, you were gonna have a good time. These non malicious cheaters would do wacky things like spawn a building made out of crates, or turn themselves into a car or something. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
I've been thinking a lot about Valve and how they internally work and how that actively harms TF2's chances SaveTF2 and FixTF2 have made me consider that I do not envy any Valve employees at ALL
My $0.02: The short term solution are the community servers. They'll keep the flame alive, at least for a while. People say they are too harsh for newcomers, but TBH I haven't seen anyone being roasted or anything similar on skial and other servers for not playing like a pro, quite the opposite actually - it's easier to happen a tryhard newbie kill everyone in a conga party at 2fort sewers and when this happens he/she is booed for everyone at worst. Mid term solution: implement changes in the ban mechanism, like restricting the number of votes a f2p can take part in a day (reducing the power of bots), and maybe implementing some captcha checking to one be able to vote. The long term solution ? TF2 cannot stay 100% free anymore unfortunately. Valve can sell it for $5 bucks just to discourage bothosters. I am afraid they will end up opting for that solution because it's the simplest and the backlash will be huge. But frankly ? I am okay with that, it would certainly make a dent in the bothoster's purse to keep things as they are now, and the money could revert to a task force with the mission to fix/replace VAC.
This used to be case prior the match making update, which replaced the quickplay gamemode, a gamemode that placed players in designated community servers, with Causal and this also applies with other games in the 2000s not just by Valve too.
Generally, yes, It'd be beneficial to set a precedent that bot hosting will land you in legal trouble. Most bot hosters would stop dead in their tracks and turn around. The only ones who won't are foreigners based in places like Russia, but a vast majority of TF2's playerbase is in the US, including the bot hosters. It wouldn't get rid of the bots; getting rid of them permanently is impossible, but it's possible to greatly reduce their frequency.
Eh, Nintendo is lawsuit happy but I'd say the way they've gone about it does a lot more harm than good, considering they actively go after things that are not only harmless, but even beneficial for the company and community. Yea, them going after emulators that are selling access to games, especially current games, is justified, but they've gone after far, far more than that. Seriously though, I get that it's a complicated problem, it absolutely is, but the fact of the matter is that other companies have absolutely handled this perfectly fine, and COMMUNITY SERVERS have handled it better. And no, community servers aren't going to be a viable long term solution because you run into that same problem of entirely relying on volunteers to keep things running. When bot-hosters realize people are playing on community servers AND those servers become unprotected for one reason or another, they will absolutely overrun those servers as well. Valve may not be to blame for people being dickheads, but they are absolutely to blame for nothing being done about it.
I guess valve's flat hierarchy shows that; when there are no real rules that enforce what you do, you and your co-workers will make a set of arbitrary rules. You will latch onto any kind of ruling that can come to mind. That often turns out to be alot like high school cliques, opposing gangs, and the worse kinds of office politics... who knew.
>walk into valve on the first friday of the job >buy everyone a pizza, wear clothing that they'd notice but not anything too obvious >repeat a few weeks later, basically make people sub consciously associate you with good things (free food) >make no enemies, be friendly to everyone, no one wants to be the guy that hates pizza mike, focus on befriending everyone instead >get stuck in peoples heads, make them want to spend time with you, joke around, tell stories, etc, ask questions in a way that makes other people feel important and useful >go time >work near exclusively on tf2, some other projects here and there to maintain relationships but mainly tf2 >other workers will join in, if only to hear more stories or to get more praise >no ones gonna review you poorly, youre pizza mike >slowly get more people to work on tf2 >work together as a team to fix bot problem, leveraging tactics used earlier to break down peoples defenses so theyre more open in the tf2 room >more pizza parties in the tf2 room, imbue the soul of pizza mike into the tf2 room >free pizza whenever a new advancement is made in bot safety >social engineering has your job locked secure and the whole team rooting for you because if pizza mike is happy, it means free pizza >save tf2 with pizza >refuse to elaborate >leave, but have someone continue the tradition of tf2 pizza parties >oh and draw furry art to cover the pizza costs, those are gonna be high
it makes sense that valve employees not working on tf2 isnt a case of them "wanting to" but more of them being scared to work on it. pretty much explains why only Erik works on tf2 because iirk hes a valve og, so his workplace is pretty much secured. it will also make sense if hes the one who got the contractor to work on tf2
bro I love your videos and I like long videos but that background music for a long video is making me crazy ahaha also greetings from another game designer!
What bothers me is there still making money on it and letting it stay in this state. If they didn’t make a dime from it I would understand but they make money off of it every single day yet they’re giving us a broken product in return
I’ve heard so many times about community servers and how Valve could make it easier and better to use it And yet most of these fix tf2 videos don’t mention it Is there an issue with it
*VALVE ALREADY HIRED ONE CONTRACTOR FOR TF2 SO THEY CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM BY HIRING JUST TEN MORE FOR HUNDRED THOUSAND BUCKS A YEAR AND STILL MAKE A HUGE PROFIT!!!*
Why you're convident that 11 workers would Solve problem ? and where did you took 100 k a year figure? If my math serves me right by dividing by 10 employees and them by 12 months we get 757.75 per month, which is as much as my neighbour earns in hardware store with having some experience in retail... In rural Poland, and that's not taking taking into account. Taxes and other expenses that will depend on country(like insurances) and add to employee cost.
Valve devs making code only understandable by them is the most dogshit behaviour I heard, and valve is equaly shitty for keeping this insane behaviour, no wonder they no longer making games
Valve don't know how work they own code... Well it was a good time we had, I'm heading towards TF2 classic, at least there are people working on it and they understand what they're writing.
Honestly we would be so much better off if Valve let the community periodically vote on what content to add, something that would have a minimun number of required votes and a minimum percentage The actual community would have passion driving them and they've alreasy showed what they can do when they put their mind towards a common goal
The CURRENT community has enough potential to succeed when it comes down to important stuff, once it gets going new players would be drawn in and infuse new life in the game. I'd rather have another End of the Line update than no update at all, way more workshop items would finally get included, the game would be alive after 8 years The specific organization is what has to be decided but the elements for success are there
No maintaining or giving away the codes for old games = No future for the next one as well Let it die and disband into 20 indie studios with games we will enjoy and support instead of corporate copium for Whales
![Instant Kill Mechanics (and why they tend to suck) [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fV2Pz-8BEJU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Instant Kill Mechanics (and why they tend to suck) [Game Designer Explains]](/img/tr.png)
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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.
you think if companies would've figured out a universal solution to cheating, they would have done it by now?
of course they would! but for each popular live service game, there will inevitably be bad actors toiling away in their free time to try finding chinks in the armor, gaps in the security systems and will eventually get around it.
but i do agree that valve really needs to consider hiring outside workers to manage their live service games if they do not want to assign their employees to the necessary grunt work needed to maintain these games. a company like this that doesn't want to assign or obtain personnel for this duty shouldn't be making live service games to begin with
yeah hire me i'll do it
If Valve doesn't want to be on the treadmill themselves, they need to use contractors. It's the only way to avoid that treadmill. There is no simple solution to the bots, at least not in the short term. Long term AI is probably the best option, but it takes a long time to train an AI to accurately detect cheats and fairly issue bans. CS2 is still working toward this, and they have had all of CS:GO and CS2 to try and gather data to feed the AI and they still aren't catching a large portion of bot/cheaters. Even games like League of Legends who do pay people to stay on the treadmill and catch players manually as well as with AI, still don't catch every cheat immediately. It is an infinitely complex problem because as soon as the cheat detection catches the cheater, the cheater changes how they cheat, and the cheat detector has to be modified to catch the new cheating method, and then the cheat method is changed again, and around it goes endlessly as the cheat creator looks for new and better ways to circumvent the system.
"fixing cheating once and for all" how do you imagine that
@@limecoveredbrickYou can't. That's why I don't like arguments that boil down to "X solution is useless because it will eventually be bypassed" and shit like that because the point isn't to create some sort of universal cheating fix that prevents any and all cheating from happening at all, rather we're just asking for *something* since we currently have nothing in terms of anti-cheat.
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.
Yeah, why would anyone want to work on bug-fixes, safety-leaks and cheater detection, when it's less exciting and also might get you fired because it doesn't look like you're innovating.
Since 2016, this is not how Valve has functioned. They were failing to push anything out the door so they dropped the "desks on wheels" philosophy so they could actually make Alyx happen, and since then the devs have not had the previous freedom. That's the reason for the lack of maintenance. No one is being assigned to it and they no longer are allowed to just go do it themselves.
@@Serphentin And yet we still got Dota Underlords. I dont know if this makes any sense
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
Moving away doesn't mean it happened already. Valerie is a company and as such it's slow.
@@GAMEFAN27 No they have
Only the big earners get priority and we didn't make the cut
The flat structure still contributed one lasting downside to TF2... Confusing to understand code
@@GAMEFAN27 ... Valerie? 🤣 I love autocorrect typos
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
I mean, I guess the problem really transcended from "people creating bots" to "there is a problem with Valve's core structure" 😅
“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* 💀
Don't forget DL-6!
English major btw
VON KARMA NO
Von Karma! that’s just scummy
VON KARMA NO
The impersonation of content creators and distribution of CP under the guise of someone else is a good federal lawsuit in the making.
I don't think you listened during the "it's hard and very expensive to make people liable who dont reside in US legislation" so no. It's not. It should be, but its highly unlikely.
@@MoundN I'm saying it would be the grounds for one, not saying they can or should.
@@zacharyscovel1017 no, you said "in the making" which suggest that they will inevitably sue bot hosters. it is misleading.
On the other hand, obviously everyone would agree this would be the grounds for one.
@@MoundN it implies where to start a lawsuit if one desires.
@@MoundNI don't the bot hosters would be sued, but Valve totally could be for allowing their game to reach a state where such things are being done in mass with no moderation in sight; i know TF2 is an online game and Valve doesn't have control over every individual's actions, but when thousands of bots are performing illegal activities inside your game, the least they should do is roll out a ban wave, which they seemingly haven't done in a while.
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.
Idiot
From my point of view it looks less like a tantrum and more of a avoidance of career suicide. It seems like if you were to try to do treadmill work it would result in backstabbing from your coworkers to the point you would be fired. It seems it less of a "I'm not going to do treadmill work cause that's boring" and more "I'm going to avoid doing treadmill work because if I seem interested in that I'm going to be gossiped, talked behind my back, lose friends, and lose my high paying job that supports my family!"
Agreed. Ever since the bot problem has become worse, I've started to say Valve is a company with little to no sense of responsibility, with their flat hierarchy not only encouraging but even forcing their employees to chase after the latest shiny thing for the sake of clout, otherwise they'll risk to lose their job. Sure, their work culture may have enabled them to come up with some of the finest products and features out there, but it is unsustainable for things like long ongoing services. It's just not good.
They _need_ a mix of traditional and flat organization like some other companies have realized and done since nearly 10 years ago, but I'd hardly imagine them doing that in the near future.
I think Valve will hopefully figure out that you can't create a live service game without the treadmill work. If the game is going to stay up, it needs constant care and attention. Most of the industry hasn't learned it though... At least TF2 still exists, in the hands of Ubisoft or some other big publishers it'd have been taken down a decade ago. The live service trend is making eyes roll _because_ so many publishers aren't willing to put in the money to keep developers doing treadmill work.
Hence the solution of having the community running the treadmill itself. It's kind of how Minecraft survived for well over 15 years at this point
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.
The only way to really get rid of those idle bots is by removing the ability to earn real life money through their items. I'm sure we can all see why valve and a huge portion of the community won't let that happen
@@tim14022000 Another way would be to change the item drop system to only drop items for ACTUALLY playing the game. Sure, people can have bots walk around and pretend to play the game, but that would cost bot hosters a lot more resources to run. Ther's a reason there are so many idle bots, compared to bots actually playing the game.
(But like that's ever gonna happen. Valve won't ever touch this game again, unless a shift in company structure happens.)
Pay2Play scorch Earth approach would only work long term if they commit to "lE TrEaDmIll wOrK" of actually working on TF2.
Also they'd need to rework idle item drops system to remove the main bot population, idle bots and cheats still exist for paid games so they'd still need to commit to anti cheat or sumn
@@danielsurvivor1372 Yeah, the fabled treadmill work... But even aside from that, they will likely just never touch the game again, unless someone gets forced onto the task. Valve's stucture just sucks so badly that nobody, even the ones who do still care, want to work on it.
Hopefully they just contract it out to a third party... or y'know, some community members who know their shit, of which there quite a few.
“Because people suck” is the perfectly succinct explanation for a lot of problems with society or any of its subsets, unfortunately 🤷🏽♂️
It's a very lazy explanation that's for sure
@@tasty8186 doesn't make it any less true
@@tasty8186What more is there to say? People that shouldn't exist unfortunately continue to, that's all there is to it
Eh, i think some people are just a little hot headed or dumb, doesn't mean they are bad, plus i think everyone is capable of change. Also sometimes long term good can only come after the original flawed foundation has rotted away and been destroyed.
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.
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.
29:15 cs2 is struggling. Massive cheating problem, especially at high levels. Multiple pros or content creators have quit for other games.
Yo, it's okay that it's this long. Everybody would rather watch a documentary over a TH-cam Short.
I am literally going to have it on in the background just like I do with all of my videos, that's what video essays are for... Am I right?
I will reply with what I think of the video, too.
I think that 12:40 is wrong - I heard that this was changed, and that Valve now has a hierarchy. And has had one since around 2016.
Funny enough, If I recall TF2 used to be 20 bucks. Or maybe that was just the Price of the "orange box".
You still have a bigger platform than any one of us commentors have. And if anything, I at least appreciate the insight into Valve's company culture and why TF2 is so poorly maintained.
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?"
Idiot
i wasn't expecting to get jumpscared by Von Karma today but it is what it is
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.
Reminds me of Duke nukem forever...
@@SirDavid290 Oh yeah, that too. Actually, I think this is precisely what would happen to Valve without Steam. They would be working for a decade on Half-Life 3, but it would never be as perfect or groundbreaking as they would like, and eventually some publisher would buy them and give them an ultimatum: either release what you have or you are closed.
I think Valve work model can be somewhat improved upon. There should be two separate pools of developers: junior developers who work under a traditional hierarchy and do maintenance and other work current Valve employees find mundane or not worth it, and senior developers who are free to do anything and may act as project managers if they so choose. So, Valve either hires devs with tons of experience and immediately gives them freedom and resources to express their creativity, or hires now so experienced people who would work under experienced devs to gain experience and over time have a chance to be promoted to senior dev. I mean, look at American McGee, he started up at ID as a level designer and basically did the work John Romero didn't have time or desire to do, and ended up developing an iconic video game series a few years after, but ID did not benefit from that. Imagine if that progression happened within ID.
9:41 Most of these aren't real players. Around 70% of the playerbase are bots gathering item drops in private servers.
20k real player, is not bad at all for a old game.
@@Some1-2most of whom are real players gathering item drops in private servers, lol
20K to 30K daily players is still a more than desirable number for a multiplayer game like TF2, and the fandom it has is orders of magnitude bigger, so the IP itself is highly valuable. Valve could harvest a ton more of money from it if they had the initiative, but they don't.
@@Some1-2 Hahaha
Clicker game Banana 782,899 players
TF2 is dead game
@@TheDragShot savetf2 got 300k signatures so the fandom is definetely big
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.
For anyone else trying and failing to find the source video of the rant at:
27:48
Is the LazyPurple "How it FEELS to SUFFER in SFM (sp00ky) [Behind the Scenes]" video from 5 years ago.
Anyone else notice the song in the background.
It keeps changing between the smash ost and various meme songsXD
I recognize it as a SilvaGunner soundtrack way too quickly. I noticed the shift to memes and could not unhear it
Yeah it was a old remix of the first smashes beat with other songs. Can find it with some digging.
@@ReikuYin source please? 🙏
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.
For the record, the pronunciation of "Arceus" changes based on the language. No I'm not kidding. And the Silvally is the pronunciation guide for your language. I'm still not kidding.
In English, Silvally's ability is "RKS System." R-K-S, Ar-Kay-Us, Arceus.
In Japanese, Silvally's ability is "ARSystem." Ars-Eee-Us, Arceus
Thank you for chiming in on the situation. Having an insider's perspective on this is super important.
Didn’t valve get rid of the “free for all” structure? I thought they mentioned that in the final hours of half life alyx
From a reddit post about this question with a valve employee answering, They still have a Flat structure for the early stages of development. Guessing they only do hierarchical structures when they move out of pre-production or something.
@@reignandbongao9497 oooooh, ok that makes sense, thanks!
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
Valve is too busy counting all the money they make form Steam to work on old games. They can't even be bothered to work on a functional anti-cheat for their new games like Counter Strike 2.
@@rake483Idiot
@@rake483 Don`t worry they are making deadlock, i bet it will have no problems at all..
Great video and excellent point. One thing I would recommend is to us less music it was a bit distracting at times.
Valve employees realizing that Game dev is not usually that fun and enjoyable: 😭😭😭😭👺👺
That’s why I keep gaming as a hobby only. Working on them makes you sick of them fast.
personally i believe the work conditions of the devs comes first than your experience with an old ass video game
@@necrotafeio Personally, I would NOT dare to defend a multi-million dollar company simply because they are “uncomfortable” supporting a live-service game
@@jecksfoxofficial the guy on the vid literally defended nintedo and you clearly dont know how brain damaging it is to work on the 2007 source engine
@@necrotafeio I know, I work in SFM and Hammer
Nintendo really fearful of losing its API icon, or something
But not about this, it's still not a point to defend literally developers that MADE this games, and only not so long ago start to work on S2
Genuinely though, what's to stop Valve from just cutting official server support and handing online games through community made servers? "Quick Play" just connects a player to an available community server and outright putting "Browse Servers" front and center. They could still keep item servers up because it's a separate system.
It'd kill/lower casual quick play, but at the same time it's not like they are supporting the game much anymore. Essentially like what Battlefield did with 3 and 4.
If nothing else comes from this, I hope Valve finally realizes just how utterly stupid their system of work is. the "Treadmill work" comment is proof enough that this system, while great on paper, utterly fails in execution.
The phrase that comes to mind is "Someone will always have to work at McDonalds." When no one is obligated to work on the hard stuff, the hard stuff doesn't get done, and you end up with situations like the bot crisis, and a billion dollar mega corp getting accused of gross criminal neglect.
8:49 - further to this, account creation for free games can be automated, so there isn't even a time-sink disincentive
Thank you so much! I remember some of your pokemon related videos, specifically the cynthia one. So surprised to see you cover a TF2 topic, a game so neat and dear to me. Thank you so much for giving such insight on this topic and the complexity of the situation!
Honestly, learning how valve runs is uterly fascinating to me. And while I do feel bad for the tf2 community and how valves "hierarchy" affects them. Im still glad that valve went this route. Because its an interesting way to run a company which as shown, has both pros and cons (both of which can be pretty extreme). Espically since you see plenty of people who have massive issues with the run of the mill kind of organisation/companies, with different teams with strict heirachies that tricle up to an upper management, and how people consider a lot of said upper management just heartless moneymen that are completely out of touch. Where valve has significantly less of this. And kinda of is, I don't know how to describe this, a counterpoint? A showing of how a company with a flat hiierachy might run (especially when you arent talking about a small team of like, 1-4 people, but instead an entire organisation), actually potentially works, both its beauty but also the ugliness as well. Just seems like a good thought experiment in contemplating which would be the "best" way to run a company, with neither being "obviously better". Espically since most people tend to have an idealized alternative way to run a company (or any solution to problem for that matter) and rarely think of the issues/consequences that might ensue.
I recently discovered your channel and have been binging a lot of your videos, so before anything I just want to say that they are really great, keep it up!
I'm leaving this comment because I'm a DOTA 2 player and Valve fan, it is one of my favorite games ever to the point I made a TH-cam channel to post DOTA memes/shitposts and all that, and I'm extremely grateful the game is in the hands of Valve Software. The game had experienced some content droughts in the past, with patches/updates taking a while to come out, but when they come they almost always overdeliver. I would probaly say it is the one Valve game that gets treated the best, with a lot of love and care from Valve. I won't get into specifics because as you said, you're not familiar or experienced with it, but you can trust me when I say DOTA 2 is thriving in the hands of Valve and I don't think any other company would be able to do it like they do. If you're interested in learning more about DOTA 2's past updates and maintenance from Valve I would be more than happy to talk about it more.
On another note, I heard the TF2 bots case were handled recently in a massive banwave, so that's some good news! Cheers ❤
Didn't know you were into TF2, a surprise to be sure but a welcome one.
I love the game and have played it for many years. TF2 community in general was what partially inspired me to start up a channel talking about game design - they seem obsessed with looking into the design of even the most minute things, which made me realize people actually kinda care about this stuff.
And their content creation is extremely high quality and impressive from an artistic standpoint - far better than most other "essay" makers.
At any rate, I've been wanting to talk about Valve for some time anyway. Their corporate hierarchy is interesting from both a business AND a game developer standpoint, and for all the praises sung about the company, that hierarchy does produce issues which most gamers don't think about or realize. So, TF2 is a good springboard for this topic
Huh, I'm also someone who got an IB diploma, considered law but decided to go into the arts, who fondly remembers playing TF2 in high school. Small world?
Honestly, even if the bot problem is solved I doubt I'll spend much time in TF2, since most of my multiplayer time is spent in dota 2, but I'm invested in the bot problem simply because I believe TF2 is one of the best games of all time and want people who haven't experienced it yet to be able to do so in the best environment possible. Though certainly, if solving it for TF2 could lead to a better experience in Deadlock, a game I'm looking forward to simply off the fact that Icefrog (main person behind dota 2's balancing) is rumored to be working on it, and I've found his work and approach to game design phenomenal. Plus valve made games are nearly always outstanding. Even Artifact, may it rest in peace, was a game with some genuinely incredible design that was let down by its monetization and the community's dislike of it for simply not being half life 3.
Oh, and as a dota player I can say that the game has clearly been somewhat abandoned, but to nowhere near the degree TF2 has. The people working on it have acknowledged that the team isn't as big as it used to be and can't do all the things it used to, but they are trying to adjust their development approach to compensate, and it seems to be working. The latest event (replacing the old battlepasses) has been excellent as has the most recent balance patch. My only real complaints are how long the periods between balance patches have gotten, and how little community interaction valve has (but that's always been a problem).
25:10 Getting rid of cheaters in the og game and therefore improving in-game engagement (purchases) by 10% sound pretty good to my ear
A really good and more in depht perspective about tf2‘s problems was really interesting and enlightening to watch, i had never thought about valve‘s management and the issues that come with it. Editing was amazing too, thanks for the video!
Don't villify Yuzu like that. We need emulation. Piracy is a problem of service.
Also, bot hosters advertized child pornography in a game once. That's certainly illegal and should be taken action against. They aren't "bad people;" they're absolute degenerates.
I think Valve's solutions are either deleting their servers to let the community and their servers thrive, or CREATE A NEW BRANCH IN THE COMPANY THAT OPERATES LIKE A NORMAL COMPANY: get the endless supply of young game devs to work on this under management and have them all do it the same way.
Much as the Yuzu situation sucks, I have to concede they brought that one on themselves, which is all that's being pointed out in the video. They sold, emphasis, SOLD a more up-to-date release of Yuzu via their Patreon that allowed you to get TOTK running smoothly (as stated in the video, a week ahead of the game's actual street date), and that is likely what brought Nintendo's hammer down on them in the long run.
The bigger tragedy to me is that Citra got caught in the crossfire. The Switch at least still has Ryujinx, but the 3DS is already dead and buried and Citra was basically the only thing keeping it alive outside of official hardware. And now it's just stuck in a "usable, but needed more time to cook" state indefinitely.
Yuzu emulator did not sell copies of games. People have to find roms themselves and put them in the emulator, as far as i remember the part about Yuzu that was illegal was them having compatibility keys that made people's roms of the game work on the emulator. So vasically, giving people a game-specific DRM bypass, rather than the game itself
They gotta do something more drastic if they wanna do something, atleast this one has SLIGHTLY more teeth.
I say the biggest bullet against Valve's treatment of TF2 is that they want to make Deadlock, but why should anyone play it when you look at how abandoned and bot riddled CS and TF2 are? Who's to say Deadlock won't become just like them?
I don't think Valve will do jack shit with that said, not with this weak movement.
Any ideas on how they could make the movement stronger while avoiding harassment territory? (I'm not a very creative person)
If its a weak movement but yet everyone knows that Valve won't keep up with Deadlock's security after awhile and so like you said why bother, so at the very least this movement has informed people Valve don't do shit.
@@BRNG2042joining forceses with CS??
@@BRNG2042Why avoid it?
@@ukyoize even though the state TF2 is in is horrific, it is *just* a game, harassment isn't a warranted course of action against the developers (especially considering the way valve operates), now the bot hosters on the other hand...
9:40 TF2 has nowhere near as many players as the chart indicates, since the majority is composed of bots. And that's why the problem is serious.
11:13 "Toxicity" is by far the most fake problem gaming ever had. Banter and trash-talking in competitive games have been a thing since multiplayer games were a thing, and no one had a problem with it until the hobby got invaded by killjoys who ruined everything by forcing moderation teams into the mix to ban anyone for any reason.
So called "Toxicity" and "Banter" fans when they can no longer spam 843 different slurs in over 100 countries.
Solution to bot problem is simple, really.
Just revert back to quickplay.
Quickplay servers managed by community and meet certain criterias to appear in the search bar.
Community get to deal with bots on their own terms and have their own anti-cheat (which is better than VAC currently)
while allows Valve for this easy fix to move on to "more important" stuff and avoids "treadmill work" for them for now
(it's gonna be pain in the ass for CS2 community eventually,
but they got VAC-net there and actually seems to be dealing with cheaters there by banning them manually from leaderboards, so whatevs)
Also bringing back quickplay make people happy, since "Meet your match" update almost killed the game
and no one wanted "Casual" in the first place.
Counterpoint: copious amounts of empty servers that get automatically hosted by bots when only one player joins in, abusive admins, and Pinions Pot'o'Gold
Also, who's to say these bot hosters won't just create servers that match or overshadow legitimate community server as traps for newbies
Deadlock is thankfully the main reason something will be done if anything does get done. Valve obviously doesn't care about words people say, but if their new game flops as hard as Artifact did (remember that? It figures if you didn't) then they're more or less going to be forced to take a critical look at how things are run at Valve and learn the hard way exactly what people want and expect from them. Regardless of their corporate hierarchy, Valve is still a profit driven company and still needs to make money, and if they don't learn that the REASON people are fond of them and trust them is that they make and MAINTAIN people's trust. The second that trust is gone, the company will evaporate like any other one does.
Idiot
too bad that when said "trust" in valve's games is gone, steam will still be lining valve's pockets, regardless of what they would do.
without the pure luck of valve being the first to make a DRM which also is the closest to a "good samaritan" you can get nowadays, valve would've gone bankrupt a long, long time ago.
think duke nukem forever with it's 20 year development time basically killing 3D realms entertainment.
13:46 If this supposed structure should help Devs create more art than under pyramid model then why do we rarely see them create stuff these days?
We got what. Alyx? Steak deck? And maybe you can stretch and say CS2...
That's pretty disappointing, Valve USED to innovate, both steam and valve games vise
We just want the game to work properly....if that's TOO much for Valve, then take down the game. It's suffered long enough with all these bots picking the corpse's bones for the last 5+ years.
And then suffer the backlash that will come from CSGO2 players' economy crashing, etc.
new spy meta: disguise as enemy sniper and look straight up. Never get spy checked again
Don't forget to constantly spam 'Good shot, mate!' With the voice command!
14:54 Oddly reminds me of co op economic models some socialists still try to push, but ironically enough, there's always still competition or inefficiencies etc
11:12 the vars thumbnail caught me by surprise
it should be noted that the change in reviews of tf2 is not review bombing, which carries malicious connotations. people are simply appropriately updating their reviews to reflect the state of the game.
So that's why there's a coconut in the TF2 files, however put it was incentive by Valve. At this point Valve need to focus in Steam (if there's no incentive to screw over) and have a different approach to manage their projects, the day Gabe is no more what's gonna happen if there's no guidance and their ideology seems not going to work in the long term?
the coconut was a myth
whoever added that coconut.jpg, you can have a golden star
@@Tritibellum the coconut is a myth, its just a texture for an unused particle effect, its also a vtf not a jpg
just finished the video, very comprehensive, very game, very commentary 👍👍👍
excitedly looking forward to the next one
I don't care if it's treadmill work. It needs to be done. I don't care how, I don't care who. As long as TF2 sits in the corner without proper maintenance, then I'm not playing deadlock. Counterstrike 2 was Valve's shiny new toy, and it didn't last. Why should I trust Valve to keep this one running either?
Well... Your video is amazing; your arguments and your point as a whole are flawlesly correct, and that just makes me feel like we're f*cked :c
New sub btw
Honestly, if valve struggles with making anticheat due to their hierarchy... why not outsource it or make a sister company whose dedicated to "treadmill work" to insulate them from the existing corporate culture and vice versa. Other studios have done this like how Stellaris has a secondary group dedicated to maintaining and balancing the smaller details of the game while the major team works on new expansions.
big fan of the background music!!
I'm sorry, but Valve is ABSOLUTELY at fault for this one. What good is blaming the criminal evading the law if the law isn't going to hold them accountable? Answer me that.😠
Beautifully comprehensible, commenting for algorithm purposes
There really is no easy answer for anyone involved. I doubt that Valve wants to do a traditional hierarchy because I would imagine the people working on something cool, and then suddenly being forced to work on a janky old game with a community that's constantly yelling at them would not be plesant in the slightest.
THAT INTRO IS FOUL NAHHH WTF MAN 😭
It may be a neverending treadmill that they have to run on, but while they run that treadmill, they get paid. They don't want to do the treadmill work, but they expect to make the treadmill money. They can get fucked. Actively working on banning cheaters and bots is the *bare minimum* of operating a live service like TF2. If they didn't want to deal with that, they shouldn't keep releasing live service multiplayer games. If they don't want to keep doing the *bare minimum* for games that still make them a ton of money, they can therefore get fucked, and lose that income.
I don't get one thing. Why not simply let the community maintain TF2?
Look at Black Mesa. The community has trained developers who make such iconic mods for free. It was so good that they were allowed to sell it.
Fill vacancies for TF2 maintenance volunteers who have expertise in this area. Give them access to look after the game same way real devs do. They'll be like reddit mods. For better or worse. Though can't be worse at where we stand.
correct me if I'm wrong but I think Gaben has himself stated they have since reorganized their structure to formally assign people to projects now?
This was a recent development post-covid iirc
You're basically correct, but it was Robin Walker who said that they started moving away from the "everybody chooses what to work on" structure in 2016 according to The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx. Now people are assigned to projects.
You were too nice to Valve at the end.
If you live in a flat where rats constantly steal your cheese, do you blame the rat, or do you blame the neglectful landlord who refuses to seal up the mouse holes despite you begging him for years?
As a massive TF2 fan, love this insight!
I feel like the sentiment of "changes in structure are hard so it's not happening" just gives Valve a free excuse. If you pull away from everything and ask: "Does Valve have the means to hire (and benefit from) a team of dedicated anti-cheat developers?", the answer is overwhelmingly yes, but they haven't done it. It might be a more complicated and unique form of bad management, but it's still bad management regardless, Valve needs to concede that their management strategy has issues, and then work on addressing those issues.
So I knew the issue was complex, but not this complex.
Have to say that if and when Deadlock releases it's going to be dragged down right out of the gate by the mistreatment of TF2 and CS2. People are not going to want to play a game from a company that for a number of reasons is unable or unwilling to handle upkeep down the line.
I remember when cheaters weren't necessarily malicious. About half the time when you encountered one, you were gonna have a good time. These non malicious cheaters would do wacky things like spawn a building made out of crates, or turn themselves into a car or something. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
I've been thinking a lot about Valve and how they internally work and how that actively harms TF2's chances
SaveTF2 and FixTF2 have made me consider that I do not envy any Valve employees at ALL
16:33 So wait IS THAT WHY THE FCK TF2 HAS SPAGHETTI CODE?!? DUE TO, A FCKING WORK CULTURE?!? 😤😤😤🤬🤬🤬👿
My $0.02:
The short term solution are the community servers. They'll keep the flame alive, at least for a while. People say they are too harsh for newcomers, but TBH I haven't seen anyone being roasted or anything similar on skial and other servers for not playing like a pro, quite the opposite actually - it's easier to happen a tryhard newbie kill everyone in a conga party at 2fort sewers and when this happens he/she is booed for everyone at worst.
Mid term solution: implement changes in the ban mechanism, like restricting the number of votes a f2p can take part in a day (reducing the power of bots), and maybe implementing some captcha checking to one be able to vote.
The long term solution ? TF2 cannot stay 100% free anymore unfortunately. Valve can sell it for $5 bucks just to discourage bothosters. I am afraid they will end up opting for that solution because it's the simplest and the backlash will be huge. But frankly ? I am okay with that, it would certainly make a dent in the bothoster's purse to keep things as they are now, and the money could revert to a task force with the mission to fix/replace VAC.
This used to be case prior the match making update, which replaced the quickplay gamemode, a gamemode that placed players in designated community servers, with Causal and this also applies with other games in the 2000s not just by Valve too.
Generally, yes, It'd be beneficial to set a precedent that bot hosting will land you in legal trouble. Most bot hosters would stop dead in their tracks and turn around.
The only ones who won't are foreigners based in places like Russia, but a vast majority of TF2's playerbase is in the US, including the bot hosters.
It wouldn't get rid of the bots; getting rid of them permanently is impossible, but it's possible to greatly reduce their frequency.
They say RTGame was called the “drift king” in college…but when it comes to Mario Kart…
Eh, Nintendo is lawsuit happy but I'd say the way they've gone about it does a lot more harm than good, considering they actively go after things that are not only harmless, but even beneficial for the company and community. Yea, them going after emulators that are selling access to games, especially current games, is justified, but they've gone after far, far more than that.
Seriously though, I get that it's a complicated problem, it absolutely is, but the fact of the matter is that other companies have absolutely handled this perfectly fine, and COMMUNITY SERVERS have handled it better. And no, community servers aren't going to be a viable long term solution because you run into that same problem of entirely relying on volunteers to keep things running. When bot-hosters realize people are playing on community servers AND those servers become unprotected for one reason or another, they will absolutely overrun those servers as well. Valve may not be to blame for people being dickheads, but they are absolutely to blame for nothing being done about it.
as someone in the us, yeah they can file a lawsuit for damages in profits (i forgot]
destiny had similar lawsuits if i remember? i dont remember
I guess valve's flat hierarchy shows that; when there are no real rules that enforce what you do, you and your co-workers will make a set of arbitrary rules. You will latch onto any kind of ruling that can come to mind. That often turns out to be alot like high school cliques, opposing gangs, and the worse kinds of office politics... who knew.
>walk into valve on the first friday of the job
>buy everyone a pizza, wear clothing that they'd notice but not anything too obvious
>repeat a few weeks later, basically make people sub consciously associate you with good things (free food)
>make no enemies, be friendly to everyone, no one wants to be the guy that hates pizza mike, focus on befriending everyone instead
>get stuck in peoples heads, make them want to spend time with you, joke around, tell stories, etc, ask questions in a way that makes other people feel important and useful
>go time
>work near exclusively on tf2, some other projects here and there to maintain relationships but mainly tf2
>other workers will join in, if only to hear more stories or to get more praise
>no ones gonna review you poorly, youre pizza mike
>slowly get more people to work on tf2
>work together as a team to fix bot problem, leveraging tactics used earlier to break down peoples defenses so theyre more open in the tf2 room
>more pizza parties in the tf2 room, imbue the soul of pizza mike into the tf2 room
>free pizza whenever a new advancement is made in bot safety
>social engineering has your job locked secure and the whole team rooting for you because if pizza mike is happy, it means free pizza
>save tf2 with pizza
>refuse to elaborate
>leave, but have someone continue the tradition of tf2 pizza parties
>oh and draw furry art to cover the pizza costs, those are gonna be high
hey did u see that they fixed tf2
@@nicreven Pizza Mike strikes again
@@troncrash7912 i love your vibe dude xD
it makes sense that valve employees not working on tf2 isnt a case of them "wanting to" but more of them being scared to work on it. pretty much explains why only Erik works on tf2 because iirk hes a valve og, so his workplace is pretty much secured. it will also make sense if hes the one who got the contractor to work on tf2
16:28 Wow! Good thing I'm already good at making horribly complicated, poorly commented code!
bro I love your videos and I like long videos but that background music for a long video is making me crazy ahaha also greetings from another game designer!
What bothers me is there still making money on it and letting it stay in this state. If they didn’t make a dime from it I would understand but they make money off of it every single day yet they’re giving us a broken product in return
I’ve heard so many times about community servers and how Valve could make it easier and better to use it
And yet most of these fix tf2 videos don’t mention it
Is there an issue with it
*VALVE ALREADY HIRED ONE CONTRACTOR FOR TF2 SO THEY CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM BY HIRING JUST TEN MORE FOR HUNDRED THOUSAND BUCKS A YEAR AND STILL MAKE A HUGE PROFIT!!!*
Why you're convident that 11 workers would Solve problem ? and where did you took 100 k a year figure?
If my math serves me right by dividing by 10 employees and them by 12 months we get 757.75 per month, which is as much as my neighbour earns in hardware store with having some experience in retail... In rural Poland, and that's not taking taking into account. Taxes and other expenses that will depend on country(like insurances) and add to employee cost.
Valve devs making code only understandable by them is the most dogshit behaviour I heard, and valve is equaly shitty for keeping this insane behaviour, no wonder they no longer making games
That common thing to do. You must be new to the concept of job or something?
14:25 Last one shows their dark side: "Eh it doesn't matter customer service is bad, we already make da mulla! 🤑"
Don't worry guys. I want TF2 to die but I'm forbidden from having what I want so it will never die.
You're welcome.
Valve don't know how work they own code...
Well it was a good time we had, I'm heading towards TF2 classic, at least there are people working on it and they understand what they're writing.
Idiot
Those people used Valve's leak code. I doubt they understand anything either, and just adding in the easy part.
Valve Employees when they find out breathing is treatmill work: 💀
What happened to the reaction to the latest Nintendo Direct? Did it get stricken down? I liked hearing your insight on it…
My bad. I think I had accidentally set it to unlisted while adjusting some details. It’s back to public now
@@GoldenOwl_Game Thanks!!
Honestly we would be so much better off if Valve let the community periodically vote on what content to add, something that would have a minimun number of required votes and a minimum percentage
The actual community would have passion driving them and they've alreasy showed what they can do when they put their mind towards a common goal
There is no community more prone to self-sabotage than the TF2 community
No
@@ninjadanoite1560bait used to be believable
@@engineergaming1669 what bait,it's serious
The CURRENT community has enough potential to succeed when it comes down to important stuff, once it gets going new players would be drawn in and infuse new life in the game. I'd rather have another End of the Line update than no update at all, way more workshop items would finally get included, the game would be alive after 8 years
The specific organization is what has to be decided but the elements for success are there
Yo that smash bros mashup you got going in the background goes HARD. What is it called?
Why do I feel like I watched this very same video with a slight few changes years ago from the same TH-camer? Weird feeling...
I was trying to figure out why un Owen was her was in the background till I realized it was a siiva mix
Almost jumped when I heard armor clad of faith
The Janitor is our only hope.
Well made video.
I'm glad you took the time to explain something as complex rather than trying to simplify a complex thing
great video! i might suggest lowering the music volume tho tbh
thanks for the video nfkrz
youtube needs more sg creators
No maintaining or giving away the codes for old games = No future for the next one as well
Let it die and disband into 20 indie studios with games we will enjoy and support instead of corporate copium for Whales