Valve kill 32 man TF2 servers.. but what is next...

This was posted on the HLDS mailing lists (list.valvesoftware.com) a little while ago today. It made me laugh for a bit but it also made me think a bit too.

Read it and see...

Hello, Let's run a book on which servers Valve will randomly filter out next, without even so much as the decency to tell us.

1) Australian servers. Let's face it, it's those pesky Australians who are so far up Valves sweet asses it must be embarrassing for Valve. Those Australians need to be taught a lesson to counter balance all of that Pacific rimming that's going on.
2) Servers that have an unusually high number of players with 8 digits. Come on let's face it. The 8 digit crew are all noobs, snotty nosed teenagers and haxors.
3) Servers outside the Western United States that have an unusually high number of players with 6 digits. If a server attracts the old and wise, they're community is going to be too smug.
4) Servers running FF.
5) Servers that sends the player into a different world where there is 1000's of custom skins and the admins have been sad enough to invest 500 odd man hours into creating a work of art, not to mention the modding communities whose total output dwarfs anything that has come out of Valve.
6) Servers that attract the top players. C'mon something has to be wrong, they're all hacking.
7) Servers that attract too many noobs. No scrub that, they're all in Washington State.
8) Servers that are running that new plugin, which lies about the total number of available slots.there's 32 slots but 24 are advertised!!!
9) Servers with unsuitable chat language for minors. 10) Servers with 2 slots, passworded, that say "Valve doesn't listen to server admins" as their server name.

Right. That's my list. Odds anyone?

Fact is Valve killed off 32 player servers by filtering them out of the master server list (as far as I follow it). IMO that's fine - it is hardly a killer blow to any servers and it's their choice after all! But the amount of craziness this move invoked has been staggering. I mean are Valve REALLY likely to start picking and choosing which mods (or types of mods) are allowed to run and filtering out servers running "unauthorized" ones?

Dammit they provide and API and SDK to allow people to make mods -they are not going to kill any off (unless of course they do serious damage - in which case such a move is understandable).

Plus how the hell will they pick out specific mods and kill them off? It would be a stupidly difficult task - and not one they are going to undertake (it's not as if they are Valve servers - you can do what you like with it!).

So yet again we get silly hype and scaremongering and Valve get a load of bad press in the server admin community. Sure they're not perfect and their updates do often break things or make silly changes. But give them a break - the service they provide is pretty damn fine considering they are still churning out game after game and, despite regular massive breakages, the engine is fairly stable and very powerful.

Why cant we all just enjoy the game for once???

(And I STILL haven't had time to buy and Orange box GRRRRRRR I'm running 7 TF2 servers and I'm not able to play any of them - THAT's a problem!)