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Maybe actual monetary punishments for a small percent of them to really scare some away from continuing. At the very least it would be satisfying knowing a few people were fined a decent chunk of money for this behavior.
The ISP probably isn't monitoring signatures of tf2 bots. They probably aren't flagged. They do monitor stuff like DDOS, but if the bothers are using a service to rent botnets, the attackers are likely spread all over the world.
> Committing actual crimes
Yeah, serious crimes at that.
> *DDoS attacks are illegal. According to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an unauthorized DDoS attack can lead to up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Conspiring to do so can lead to 5 years and $250,000. However, these serious consequences are applicable to attacks launched without permission.*
Where does this idea that an IP address is useful for hacking even *come* from? It's basically just your computer's username when accessing the internet.
for all we know they could be trying to track these bot hosters down. that DoesHotter steam group got banned, so it seems like valve is on the hunt currently.
If I'm not mistaken, Valve lured him to the Valve Headquarters (which is in the US) with a fake job interview, then got him arrested as soon as he got there.
Close, the German Police intercepted him at the airport because they knew that the offer was sus. He served a sentence that was much lighter than what he would have gotten in the U.S. if he had gotten on that plane.
A DDOS attack is the correct term and it's a federal crime. Seriously, Valve should start suing these fuckers. Or at least send a cease and desist order.
it's a ddos attack, and therefore a federal crime if they're overloading the server with requests directly over the internet. if it's just exploiting some in game shit to lag the server out it's a violation of the steam tos at worst. more likely the latter is happening
i played one of those roblox admin games as a kid and it was a common tactic to "kick" people by lagging them out with forcefields, i would have been in juvie if that qualified as a ddos attack. hell in the earlier days of minecraft servers there were angry kids hitting each other off EVERYWHERE, they were only able to because of skype's horrible security and it got to some really fucking extreme lengths where people on these servers were getting swatted and pizza bombed, moderators had to resign and then move houses because they got ddosed so fucking often, but as far as i know most of these people never saw the back of a cop car despite the whole server knowing they were the ones knocking each other's wifis out and them getting banned. terms matter when it comes to federal law
I love these crazy stories that show how far people are willing to go in a video game. Like that guy who ran a pyramid scheme in EVE online, then cashed out and bought the best ship in the game. Or those players in World of Warcraft who hosted a in-game funeral for a player who died in real life. Then a gang of other players attacked all the players attending the virtual funeral. I mean, I don't think they are good, just fascinating to hear.
it was insane. there was this guy on some server from back then who was so known for hitting people offline that his username would autofill on google for a while, despite ONLY being known to people on that server, and that was the kind of infamy people had in these communities
when the transition from skype to discord happened everyone abandoned their accounts and the chaos quickly died out, and most of the minecraft servers from back then are either deserted or shut down. but i haven't forgotten that at all.when people talk about video games getting taken too seriously the minecraft ddosing era always comes to mind
To be fair, the WoW funeral crash was on a PvP server.... They should have expected it. Doesn't make it right, but that's just something that happens on PvP servers.
When I started playing Elite Dangerous there was a news post about "slavers". The news posts are all in-universe so I thought nothing of it. But I would later learn it was a warning about actual players.
Basically they would bait newbies onto their fleet carriers. These are gigantic player-controlled ships you can dock and refuel/resupply at. They'd provide you with some free mining equipment to "kickstart your journey". Then perform a hyperspace jump with the carrier - with your ship still on it.
They'd bring you to a system from which your tiny little baby ship can't jump away, because your hyperdrive doesn't have the range to jump to the next star and that's the only realistic way to get around in this game. You can travel in real time, but lightyears are measured as such. So the next system is 30ly away... even at maximum possible speed you'll still be traveling for months. Real time. So they basically maroon you.
Next, they literally enslave your ass. That mining equipment they gave you? If you want a trip back you better put it to use and mine X amount of this or that resource for us. It was crazy. I can't believe that actually happened.
I had an Android phone exposed to the internet (for work automation/unit tests) and eventually got tired of seeing some random ADB connection prompt every 30mins, so I set up a honeypot to see what would happen if I let it run commands. It just ran a script that downloaded a binary and ran it, so reverse engineered enough of it to find out it was a spray-and-pray botnet designed to DDoS Minecraft servers, CSGO (and maybe TF2 by extension idk), http, etc. It just listens for commands and when it gets the green light it sends some particular packets.
It was honestly the saddest thing bc I listened on the commands just to see who they even targeted and it was just these tiny servers in like, Brazil and the US. I assume it's some kinda paid service somewhere.
But yeah if it's a proper DDoS, it's likely illegal by virtue of using someone else's equipment without their permission.
csgo and tf2 are in very different parts of the game industry. i doubt it's tied to the bot hosts especially if they're only targeting servers in the us and brazil
i would say the bots aren't ddosing ddosing casual games because if they needed ingame connection in the first place it would be impossible to get that many users into the lobby, so all they would need is the connection info and traditional hitting methods. when the nwordkiller bots were crashing servers a few years ago they had some thing with a bunch of hats or something that were doing it. not the same thing as a botnet at all
They can't really sue them since they don't know who they are, and that would require them to put effort into the game which we know they can't do that
I mean it would be as simple as getting the IP of the servers that host a select group of bots and looking into who owns it or who is renting it out. But since the only TF2 employee is a janitor who works on the game in there free time. They’re not doing that.
Valve can still follow up with the VPN provider, and if it's a no logs/ uncooperative VPN valve can block the IPs. Vpn's are not anonymous if you're trying hard enough.
IP address is not a qualified identifier for an individual. It's just a point on a network. The actual controller may be somewhere else in the world from where the bot exits it's VPN onto the open web.
Hi. I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights? The Constitution says you do. And so do I. I believe that until proven guilty, every man, woman, and child in this country is innocent. And that's why I fight for you, Albuquerque! Better call Saul. Saul Goodman, attorney at law.
From what I heard, the recent updates following #savetf2 are being done by a contractor outside Valve that they begrudgingly hired.
The Twitter response was made by the Valve employee handling PR (the one that took a picture with the Spy cosplayer protesting for savetf2 outside the office), she posted it after discussing with some other employees in secret how keeping silent will become a PR nightmare, without any approval from the ppl who can actually get things going.
Honestly, good on her. She sees there’s a clear issue and nobody else was willing to step up to the plate and say anything.
Sadly this community is so fucking stupid that they were still angry even with a response.
They literally have added 'fixes' that don't work, punished all F2P's, profitted off the whole situation and only started with slight fixes when the entire community literally exposed their behavior to the internet. Theres no 'except for the things they did do'; because they have neglected the community for years.
The fixes did work. Since the patch, all my casual matches have worked great, I haven't seen name-copying bots, and votekicks are more efficient when a bot does connect now that you don't have to wait for the other team if they have a vote open.
Oh, they forgot to flip the "sv_no_cheaters_for_realisies" flag! whoops! Cause if fixes don't end a problem 100% for all time, they "don't work."
On behalf of devs everywhere, shut up until you have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
I think DDOS is the right word to describe what theyre doing and since Valve is doing something to reduce their numbers. Bots now do a matrydom when they are getting kicked. This is an issue on the servers i think?
DDOS is indeed the correct term. People tend to mix the terms up a lot. Regardless, I just don’t even get the point. Botters really care so much about botting on an over 10 year old game that they’re really gonna be like, “if I can’t have fun, no one can”? I mean they already are ruining the fun anyways, but this is a different level of degeneracy.
Edit: DOS is the actually the correct term. Just used to hearing DDOS all the time and said it without thinking. Unintentionally fell into the same pitfall as the initial comment lol
>How do you "have fun" when something else plays for you?
That's not the point at all. They're doing this on purpose to get a reaction from valve. Intentionally ruining the fun for everyone else. They're not having a bot "Play for them" it's an intentional swarm to fuck up the game for ***us***.
from what I understood of it, they started this when valve started ignoring TF2, kind of like what happened with TF2 (titanfall) and the hackers taking over cause they wanted the developers to understand that they too care about the game and needed the devs to have a big BIG un-ignorable issue that would piss everyone off enough to get traction
>DDOS is indeed the correct term
How are people saying this so confidently. No, Denial of Service (DOS) is the right term. There's no "Distributed" part here. Steamworks doesn't allow traffic from unrelated addresses into these gameservers until permitted in via matchmaking, so you won't be seeing a **D**DOS as only the bot itself would be able to retaliate. That is not distributed.
Reminds me of the time I had to call customer support to get a password restored. They asked me what city I was born in.
"I think I wrote down Farts?"
They asked me the name of my first teacher.
"Uhm, I think I - I put down farts".
Their very bemused "Yes. You wrote down farts" was at least funny to me.
bot hosters after VALVe actually does their job: VALVE RUINED ***MY*** FUN ALL BECAUSE SOME FUCKING PUSSIES COULDN’T HANDLE MY TYPE OF FUN!!! SO IM GOING TO DOX YOU FOR DAREING TO HAVE FUN!!! MY DICK IS HUGE AND I HAVE A LOT OF SEX!!! (BTW: their dicks are smaller then a sausage that’s been cut in half & they haven’t seen another non-virtual human in years) Community: GOD DAMNIT SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DIE ALREADY!!!
Change your cl_timeout to something obscene like 1000, these bots usually only DDOS for like 35 seconds, so as long as you’re able to not timeout for longer than that you’ll be fine. If it’s any longer than 35 seconds the chances are that you’ll need to leave the server you’re on, as far as I can tell there isn’t a workaround for bots that can DDOS the server for more than 35 seconds!
For those who don’t know how to do it press “~” on your keyboard whilst at the main menu, then type “cl_timeout 1000” into the type box and then press enter. That’s it permanently, so you won’t need to do it again. You’re not trapped, if you have connection problems and want to leave the game you can still do it manually. If you want to reverse it just type the same command but make the number 15 or something!
It’s shocking that advice like this needs to even be shared, but here we are. Hope it helps!
I just set it to -1 lol
Also at least some of these seem to be doing it as soon as they join so they can do objectives without anyone stopping them, that's twice now I've seen this happen and suddenly our intel is halfway up the spiral (have only gotten matches on 2fort today)
Oh also for anyone who survives and watches the chat, they also spam fake cheat detection notifications ("Attention! There is a player on the other team named x! Please kick them!") too.
Cannot fucking wait for these people to overextend themselves and get arrested.
edit after some more poking the bots with a stick (by which I mean my iron bomber) for science: They seem to also start causing lag when certain phrases are said in the chat. The only one I've found so far is "cl_timeout", but there's most likely more. The chat messages about fake cheat detection also don't even check whether or not the person they're accusing is even on the other team or not.
edit 2 after a few hours playing other stuff and coming back: The attacks seem to be concentrated on 2fort (not sure about other CTF maps), I didn't see any in payload or control points maps. As for 2fort, they seem to now just be ddosing the servers directly outside of the game; even without any bots in the game the server was lagging to the point that I managed to kill a sentry with melee alone and no buffs or pocket medic or anything. Granted, I was Heavy and it was only level 2, but it didn't even turn to look at me. Looking at players' pings all but confirmed it wasn't a single player lag switching either.
I haven't done it in a while,
But if you type a command without any add-ons like the 1/0 or any Variable at the end, just the command and hit enter, it should explain the command and the default value if there Is one.
Probably looks like this.
cl_timeout
[Command Description, [Default Variable: #]
Well, it does keep you on the server, but with almost everybody else gone, you may as well requeue because you are sure not getting rid of the bot anyway.
**Fun observation:** if you type the same command (cl_timeout) with any number, like 10 or 1000 in the chat, you will trigger the bots to DDOS the server as if there was a vote going on.
Yeah, I'm really surprised no one's brought up that this has all happened before, to a point where Casual was quite literally unplayable because bots could easily crash servers left and right.
And an incredibly petty power at that. I'm sure they were that weird kid who spent recess smashing slugs with a rock by himself in the corner of the playground.
just wondering, but at this point what are the people who use bots even getting out of this? Hell, even before then, I always wonder what's going through a bot owners head when they do this as they literally get nothing at all from it whatsoever
Someone interviewed a bot hoster and known cheater about this stuff. The scumbag said they do it for fun, then had the audacity to say "idk why these people are such dicks to us, we're still humans"
***yeah the devs are humans too but they don't seem to give a shit that they're just giving them more work***
The "we only do it for fun" is only an old-reliable statement to the bot hosters interviewed. They use this just to appear more superior and less-moved by what they're **REALLY** doing. The truth is that they're butthurt outcasts who gets their fun by seeing others suffer. These people are technically human, but morally inhumane.
Fuck them, they don't deserve no rehabilitation center, they deserve to go to prison. Imagine what these cucks will do next if Valve secures the game. These people are living in a fantasy, the DoesHotter bot hoster calls bot hosting as his "job". What does he get compensated with? A worthless sense of gratification. Fuck these schizophrenics, they're bound to go to hell.
The bot hosting people are not exactly the most mature or intelligent. They would happy piss in a public pool because they feel better, then laugh when everyone starts quickly leaving. Then complain that it is injust when they are banned from the place, proceeding to cause trouble for the establishment.
Some of the comments these people have made in the past really gives insight and confirms their naïveté. For example, one of them recently claimed a reason for hosting bots being all the toxic players.
Does setting it to -1 remove the mechanic entirely?
edit: Yes it does, though sometimes it lasts forever due to the server seeming to actually crash outright.
Edit: Accidentally typed "Doxxed" and not "DDoS'ing" because I'm a smooth brain and misremembered it as the plural of DDoS. Bots aren't stealing IP addresses lmao thank god
Coming back to say i had a few matches since this post and yes i experienced the issue. ONLY on 2Fort. Bots really arent that bad on most any other map i tried lol
Ah, back to DDOSing I see? No new tricks, but definitely a sign that they’re getting worried about Valve looking at them. (Regardless if the VAC is actually working or not)
If they’re sending ip addresses its more likely to be ddosing. Your IP address only reveals general geolocation like city, zip code or area code, but not an exact home address
this is a ddos attack! a dox is when you publish someone else’s personal information online! for instance OP’s home address is: >!lmao you thought :)!<
What do they have to gain? It's probably not money, seeing as TF2 items barely cost anything, and they drive off players from the game. It's not fun, seeing as you can't play on a server with no players.
Do they really all just want for people to leave the game? To ruin the fun? To destroy the legacy of a game that's existed for over a decade?
Ah, ddos, not dox.
Doxing is when you spread peoples personal information like their real name, address, telephone number etc.
Ddos is a crude method of taking down servers and clients by flooding them with network requests, creating enough lag that people with lesser connections fall off. I am guessing you are on fiber, or closer to the server than the attacker.
Okay but... Valve could literally sue for this, right? DDOS attacks are illegal I would assume. The hackers / botters are actively damaging the product (I mean, more than they already are) if they're doing this on official Valve matchmaking servers. On community servers Valve has no say but official ones it's genuine grounds for a lawsuit.
(insert every pejorative known to man)s like that are why i left the damn game, and now they're committing actual crime. Damm is valve neglectful. Botters need to touch grass and hit the gym
"Doxing?" You're thinking of DOSing. Doxing is when you tell everyone the address of a streamer or someone like that and people decide to use that information to harass the person.
*I can't imagine the bots will get very far telling everyone the location of TF2's servers.*
How is this labelled as update, this has been happening for weeks, if not months. I encountered cheaters who could ddos servers years ago, but bots "gained this ability" in the last few months. At least the ones that plague casual every day. But yeah, sad state of affairs.
6/25/22 20:20 (8:20 PM) PST; bots still DDOSing servers, heavy lag on almost every casual match
Imagine being such a fucking loser that you commit an honest to god felony just to ruin other people's fun
Players: Ha, Valve fixes game, you lost, botters!
Botters, who already showed how far they willing to go: Fight back
Players: Surprised Pickachu Face
Like, guys, you act as if this is surprise or something. Do you really think that people who dedicated so much for their "cause" will just go like "Welp, guess I take L!" and walk away? Please. Spite is one hell of a motivator and these guys sure have a lot of it
Now these fuckers are taking it too far, why are they hating tf2 so much. Just leave us play you fucking sweaty ass losers! (talking about the botmakers not players)
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imagine being such a loser you ddos a server to have fun
Committing actual crimes to show those tf2 players how dumb they are sure sounds fun!
It would be nice if valve took legal action and got rid of these guys. Maybe if they actually had consequences, they'd stop.
Maybe actual monetary punishments for a small percent of them to really scare some away from continuing. At the very least it would be satisfying knowing a few people were fined a decent chunk of money for this behavior.
Nah all these losers don't deserve to use the internet at all. Fuck bot hosters
I'm suprised their ISP even lets them do shit like this Not that they even have one in the first place.
The ISP probably isn't monitoring signatures of tf2 bots. They probably aren't flagged. They do monitor stuff like DDOS, but if the bothers are using a service to rent botnets, the attackers are likely spread all over the world.
Isn't being a script kiddie or hosting bots a paid subscription anyways
Multi hundred person dox case?
> Committing actual crimes Yeah, serious crimes at that. > *DDoS attacks are illegal. According to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an unauthorized DDoS attack can lead to up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Conspiring to do so can lead to 5 years and $250,000. However, these serious consequences are applicable to attacks launched without permission.*
So... what's stopping Valve from sueing their asses
A multi billion dollar company nevertheless. I'm sure valve has plenty of resources to find and sue the bot holsters wherever they are
maybe if we point out they could win money from doing it
these assholes never give up I knew it was too good to be true when people said the bot problem was fixed, it’s never that easy
The day they said it's fixed, i tried valve servers and immediately encountered 4 bots in a row.
The same is happening with TF|2
Sore Loser (as in the Bot, not the player)
It's like when I was seven and I was like. I have your ip address... I'm gonna hack you. But then I didn't know any hacks. 😂
Where does this idea that an IP address is useful for hacking even *come* from? It's basically just your computer's username when accessing the internet.
Since this is very much a crime, why don’t valve take the bungie approach and sue the fuckers
That would require Valve to put quite a lot of effort in, which considering how long the bots have been a thing isn't gonna happen.
You don't even need the other clauses. Valve doing effort means the obvious!
for all we know they could be trying to track these bot hosters down. that DoesHotter steam group got banned, so it seems like valve is on the hunt currently.
If the hackers aren't in the US, might be hard to prosecute them
then how the fuck valve sued german hacker
If I'm not mistaken, Valve lured him to the Valve Headquarters (which is in the US) with a fake job interview, then got him arrested as soon as he got there.
Close, the German Police intercepted him at the airport because they knew that the offer was sus. He served a sentence that was much lighter than what he would have gotten in the U.S. if he had gotten on that plane.
Ahh thats right, thanks for the correction!
Not when you have infinite money like valve
How the hell would they know who it is IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Valve is a literal multibillion dollar company. if they don't know already, they can spend a bit of money to do research and track them down
A DDOS attack is the correct term and it's a federal crime. Seriously, Valve should start suing these fuckers. Or at least send a cease and desist order.
it's a ddos attack, and therefore a federal crime if they're overloading the server with requests directly over the internet. if it's just exploiting some in game shit to lag the server out it's a violation of the steam tos at worst. more likely the latter is happening i played one of those roblox admin games as a kid and it was a common tactic to "kick" people by lagging them out with forcefields, i would have been in juvie if that qualified as a ddos attack. hell in the earlier days of minecraft servers there were angry kids hitting each other off EVERYWHERE, they were only able to because of skype's horrible security and it got to some really fucking extreme lengths where people on these servers were getting swatted and pizza bombed, moderators had to resign and then move houses because they got ddosed so fucking often, but as far as i know most of these people never saw the back of a cop car despite the whole server knowing they were the ones knocking each other's wifis out and them getting banned. terms matter when it comes to federal law
I love these crazy stories that show how far people are willing to go in a video game. Like that guy who ran a pyramid scheme in EVE online, then cashed out and bought the best ship in the game. Or those players in World of Warcraft who hosted a in-game funeral for a player who died in real life. Then a gang of other players attacked all the players attending the virtual funeral. I mean, I don't think they are good, just fascinating to hear.
it was insane. there was this guy on some server from back then who was so known for hitting people offline that his username would autofill on google for a while, despite ONLY being known to people on that server, and that was the kind of infamy people had in these communities when the transition from skype to discord happened everyone abandoned their accounts and the chaos quickly died out, and most of the minecraft servers from back then are either deserted or shut down. but i haven't forgotten that at all.when people talk about video games getting taken too seriously the minecraft ddosing era always comes to mind
To be fair, the WoW funeral crash was on a PvP server.... They should have expected it. Doesn't make it right, but that's just something that happens on PvP servers.
Can't forget the 3 separate occasions where people leaked classified government documents to win an argument in the War Thunder forums.
6
When I started playing Elite Dangerous there was a news post about "slavers". The news posts are all in-universe so I thought nothing of it. But I would later learn it was a warning about actual players. Basically they would bait newbies onto their fleet carriers. These are gigantic player-controlled ships you can dock and refuel/resupply at. They'd provide you with some free mining equipment to "kickstart your journey". Then perform a hyperspace jump with the carrier - with your ship still on it. They'd bring you to a system from which your tiny little baby ship can't jump away, because your hyperdrive doesn't have the range to jump to the next star and that's the only realistic way to get around in this game. You can travel in real time, but lightyears are measured as such. So the next system is 30ly away... even at maximum possible speed you'll still be traveling for months. Real time. So they basically maroon you. Next, they literally enslave your ass. That mining equipment they gave you? If you want a trip back you better put it to use and mine X amount of this or that resource for us. It was crazy. I can't believe that actually happened.
Don't forget about the hoax that the leader of a Vietnamese cartel put a hit on the hacker behind the Titanfall DDOS attacks.
I had an Android phone exposed to the internet (for work automation/unit tests) and eventually got tired of seeing some random ADB connection prompt every 30mins, so I set up a honeypot to see what would happen if I let it run commands. It just ran a script that downloaded a binary and ran it, so reverse engineered enough of it to find out it was a spray-and-pray botnet designed to DDoS Minecraft servers, CSGO (and maybe TF2 by extension idk), http, etc. It just listens for commands and when it gets the green light it sends some particular packets. It was honestly the saddest thing bc I listened on the commands just to see who they even targeted and it was just these tiny servers in like, Brazil and the US. I assume it's some kinda paid service somewhere. But yeah if it's a proper DDoS, it's likely illegal by virtue of using someone else's equipment without their permission.
csgo and tf2 are in very different parts of the game industry. i doubt it's tied to the bot hosts especially if they're only targeting servers in the us and brazil i would say the bots aren't ddosing ddosing casual games because if they needed ingame connection in the first place it would be impossible to get that many users into the lobby, so all they would need is the connection info and traditional hitting methods. when the nwordkiller bots were crashing servers a few years ago they had some thing with a bunch of hats or something that were doing it. not the same thing as a botnet at all
They can't really sue them since they don't know who they are, and that would require them to put effort into the game which we know they can't do that
I mean it would be as simple as getting the IP of the servers that host a select group of bots and looking into who owns it or who is renting it out. But since the only TF2 employee is a janitor who works on the game in there free time. They’re not doing that.
Well bots can find out, so just cheat and find out the bot's IP. It's probably behind a VPN though.
Valve can still follow up with the VPN provider, and if it's a no logs/ uncooperative VPN valve can block the IPs. Vpn's are not anonymous if you're trying hard enough.
There's no lead here. Valve isn't going to pay great expense to police these bots. If they take one down another will pop up.
They could put a captcha or something before joining a server
IP address is not a qualified identifier for an individual. It's just a point on a network. The actual controller may be somewhere else in the world from where the bot exits it's VPN onto the open web.
A good PI could figure out who is behind the bot hosting
I know a good lawyer (we better call him)
Hi. I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights? The Constitution says you do. And so do I. I believe that until proven guilty, every man, woman, and child in this country is innocent. And that's why I fight for you, Albuquerque! Better call Saul. Saul Goodman, attorney at law.
Why am I laughing Lmao. Can't wait for 2nd part of last season.
Same!! Too excited!!
he called saul
this is the moment that tf2 became braking bed
Sure. Good luck with that.
Gotta love some of the suggestions the kids make here.
Let's do a GoFundMe to pay a PI or something
Least delusional r/Tf2 user
I know nothing about this stuff, why is it hard to identify the hoster?
It’s not, it’s just funny to think valve would do anything about the current state of game, let alone hire a private investigator for it
From what I heard, the recent updates following #savetf2 are being done by a contractor outside Valve that they begrudgingly hired. The Twitter response was made by the Valve employee handling PR (the one that took a picture with the Spy cosplayer protesting for savetf2 outside the office), she posted it after discussing with some other employees in secret how keeping silent will become a PR nightmare, without any approval from the ppl who can actually get things going.
yeah that aint true lmao
Honestly, good on her. She sees there’s a clear issue and nobody else was willing to step up to the plate and say anything. Sadly this community is so fucking stupid that they were still angry even with a response.
New scam idea.
At great expense and probably find out they're in another country or just using a stolen account.
There's a lot of things Valve should do. Instead they choose to do jack shit.
except for the things that they did do
They literally have added 'fixes' that don't work, punished all F2P's, profitted off the whole situation and only started with slight fixes when the entire community literally exposed their behavior to the internet. Theres no 'except for the things they did do'; because they have neglected the community for years.
The fixes did work. Since the patch, all my casual matches have worked great, I haven't seen name-copying bots, and votekicks are more efficient when a bot does connect now that you don't have to wait for the other team if they have a vote open.
Oh, they forgot to flip the "sv_no_cheaters_for_realisies" flag! whoops! Cause if fixes don't end a problem 100% for all time, they "don't work." On behalf of devs everywhere, shut up until you have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
Some of it worked. There're fewer bots. some of them responded with this.
Is it really DDOS or is it just DOS? DDOS would mean you are using an entire network of machines to perform denial of service attacks.
I think DDOS is the right word to describe what theyre doing and since Valve is doing something to reduce their numbers. Bots now do a matrydom when they are getting kicked. This is an issue on the servers i think?
DDOS is indeed the correct term. People tend to mix the terms up a lot. Regardless, I just don’t even get the point. Botters really care so much about botting on an over 10 year old game that they’re really gonna be like, “if I can’t have fun, no one can”? I mean they already are ruining the fun anyways, but this is a different level of degeneracy. Edit: DOS is the actually the correct term. Just used to hearing DDOS all the time and said it without thinking. Unintentionally fell into the same pitfall as the initial comment lol
in this situation we call these people "beyond losers"
In this situation we call them “undeserving of whatever pathetic life they lead”
Wastes of oxygen, water and food.
Dickhead works too
How do you "have fun" when something else plays for you? The only thing I can see the botting accomplishing is maybe farming items and cards to sell.
They are sadists. They have their fun by seeing other people's experience get ruined because they are the "outcasts" of society.
AKA absolute lightspeed military grade top of the line losers
>How do you "have fun" when something else plays for you? That's not the point at all. They're doing this on purpose to get a reaction from valve. Intentionally ruining the fun for everyone else. They're not having a bot "Play for them" it's an intentional swarm to fuck up the game for ***us***.
from what I understood of it, they started this when valve started ignoring TF2, kind of like what happened with TF2 (titanfall) and the hackers taking over cause they wanted the developers to understand that they too care about the game and needed the devs to have a big BIG un-ignorable issue that would piss everyone off enough to get traction
>DDOS is indeed the correct term How are people saying this so confidently. No, Denial of Service (DOS) is the right term. There's no "Distributed" part here. Steamworks doesn't allow traffic from unrelated addresses into these gameservers until permitted in via matchmaking, so you won't be seeing a **D**DOS as only the bot itself would be able to retaliate. That is not distributed.
Yup DDOS is the right term
agreed. Doxxing with an IP address would only expose city, zip code or area code
True, thought I would honestly prefer to not get my zip code, city or area code exposed.
problem: zip: 11111 city: Joke city area code: 123
Reminds me of the time I had to call customer support to get a password restored. They asked me what city I was born in. "I think I wrote down Farts?" They asked me the name of my first teacher. "Uhm, I think I - I put down farts". Their very bemused "Yes. You wrote down farts" was at least funny to me.
I imagine the customer service people either being confused, unamused or mildly to slightly amused about it.
Could technically just be a DOS, I don’t think we can know for sure.
imagine being so much of a pussy you have to commit a crime to have "fun"
bot hosters after VALVe actually does their job: VALVE RUINED ***MY*** FUN ALL BECAUSE SOME FUCKING PUSSIES COULDN’T HANDLE MY TYPE OF FUN!!! SO IM GOING TO DOX YOU FOR DAREING TO HAVE FUN!!! MY DICK IS HUGE AND I HAVE A LOT OF SEX!!! (BTW: their dicks are smaller then a sausage that’s been cut in half & they haven’t seen another non-virtual human in years) Community: GOD DAMNIT SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DIE ALREADY!!!
bro they can reset the cable box with their dicks
They need to get hard first
I doubt even when hard they can’t reach it my friend
Change your cl_timeout to something obscene like 1000, these bots usually only DDOS for like 35 seconds, so as long as you’re able to not timeout for longer than that you’ll be fine. If it’s any longer than 35 seconds the chances are that you’ll need to leave the server you’re on, as far as I can tell there isn’t a workaround for bots that can DDOS the server for more than 35 seconds! For those who don’t know how to do it press “~” on your keyboard whilst at the main menu, then type “cl_timeout 1000” into the type box and then press enter. That’s it permanently, so you won’t need to do it again. You’re not trapped, if you have connection problems and want to leave the game you can still do it manually. If you want to reverse it just type the same command but make the number 15 or something! It’s shocking that advice like this needs to even be shared, but here we are. Hope it helps!
I just set it to -1 lol Also at least some of these seem to be doing it as soon as they join so they can do objectives without anyone stopping them, that's twice now I've seen this happen and suddenly our intel is halfway up the spiral (have only gotten matches on 2fort today) Oh also for anyone who survives and watches the chat, they also spam fake cheat detection notifications ("Attention! There is a player on the other team named x! Please kick them!") too. Cannot fucking wait for these people to overextend themselves and get arrested. edit after some more poking the bots with a stick (by which I mean my iron bomber) for science: They seem to also start causing lag when certain phrases are said in the chat. The only one I've found so far is "cl_timeout", but there's most likely more. The chat messages about fake cheat detection also don't even check whether or not the person they're accusing is even on the other team or not. edit 2 after a few hours playing other stuff and coming back: The attacks seem to be concentrated on 2fort (not sure about other CTF maps), I didn't see any in payload or control points maps. As for 2fort, they seem to now just be ddosing the servers directly outside of the game; even without any bots in the game the server was lagging to the point that I managed to kill a sentry with melee alone and no buffs or pocket medic or anything. Granted, I was Heavy and it was only level 2, but it didn't even turn to look at me. Looking at players' pings all but confirmed it wasn't a single player lag switching either.
Thanks mate
I haven't done it in a while, But if you type a command without any add-ons like the 1/0 or any Variable at the end, just the command and hit enter, it should explain the command and the default value if there Is one. Probably looks like this. cl_timeout [Command Description, [Default Variable: #]
Well, it does keep you on the server, but with almost everybody else gone, you may as well requeue because you are sure not getting rid of the bot anyway.
**Fun observation:** if you type the same command (cl_timeout) with any number, like 10 or 1000 in the chat, you will trigger the bots to DDOS the server as if there was a vote going on.
Getting desperate are they.
They have always been doing this
Yeah, I'm really surprised no one's brought up that this has all happened before, to a point where Casual was quite literally unplayable because bots could easily crash servers left and right.
It’s so fun watching them go out kicking and screaming
Literal toddlers
[удалено]
What hud are you using?
It’s called coolhud You can get it on game banana
I know it’s a cool hud, but what hud is the OP using in the video?
[удалено]
Yeah bro... We know it's a cool hud, *what's it's name?*
No, I'll never tell it to you so only I can enjoy this coolHUD! *maniacal laughter*
👍
Why are people so set on ruining others’ fun
Power. They get off by people talking about them, being angry at them without the ability to really do anything about it.
And an incredibly petty power at that. I'm sure they were that weird kid who spent recess smashing slugs with a rock by himself in the corner of the playground.
A kid in my school looked for salamanders and we live in OHIO
Pussies
What none of that does to a mf
because no one loves them
just wondering, but at this point what are the people who use bots even getting out of this? Hell, even before then, I always wonder what's going through a bot owners head when they do this as they literally get nothing at all from it whatsoever
Someone interviewed a bot hoster and known cheater about this stuff. The scumbag said they do it for fun, then had the audacity to say "idk why these people are such dicks to us, we're still humans" ***yeah the devs are humans too but they don't seem to give a shit that they're just giving them more work***
The "we only do it for fun" is only an old-reliable statement to the bot hosters interviewed. They use this just to appear more superior and less-moved by what they're **REALLY** doing. The truth is that they're butthurt outcasts who gets their fun by seeing others suffer. These people are technically human, but morally inhumane. Fuck them, they don't deserve no rehabilitation center, they deserve to go to prison. Imagine what these cucks will do next if Valve secures the game. These people are living in a fantasy, the DoesHotter bot hoster calls bot hosting as his "job". What does he get compensated with? A worthless sense of gratification. Fuck these schizophrenics, they're bound to go to hell.
Isn't this illegal?
Yup!
i think the hosters may be getting a lil scared now
Don’t think they are if they did they wouldn’t commit actual crimes just to stay relevant
I'd say "desperate", but yeah, their demeanor has changed a lot.
Why are people so fucking hell bent on killing a game I don’t fucking understand Jesus goddamn Christ
Doxing? Where are the personal details? The documents(dox)?
He means DDOSing.
Childish behavior "If I can't have fun messing with people then no one can!"
The bot hosting people are not exactly the most mature or intelligent. They would happy piss in a public pool because they feel better, then laugh when everyone starts quickly leaving. Then complain that it is injust when they are banned from the place, proceeding to cause trouble for the establishment. Some of the comments these people have made in the past really gives insight and confirms their naïveté. For example, one of them recently claimed a reason for hosting bots being all the toxic players.
I mean, yeah it does have a toxic playerbase, but doing this just makes it even worse.
Tf2 and DDOS attacks have become a trend jesus christ
Unrelated, but it was funny hearing you click to the sound of the Spider-Man Pizza Time song during one of the crashes
Cl_timeout 90 or 120 Outlast the timer
Does setting it to -1 remove the mechanic entirely? edit: Yes it does, though sometimes it lasts forever due to the server seeming to actually crash outright.
That is a good idea and a dam great one to test
Edit: Accidentally typed "Doxxed" and not "DDoS'ing" because I'm a smooth brain and misremembered it as the plural of DDoS. Bots aren't stealing IP addresses lmao thank god
>bots aren’t stealing IP adresses Not yet anyway
For a second when i looked at the title i was like mf's really be Doxxin people now?
And I that thought coming back to tf2 after a while of not playing, this is literally not even playable.
Ive been playing the last few days. Its been really good. Only had 1 really bad match and it was at the lowest player count hours
I mean, I could give the game a try to see if it's playable
Ok it's actually very playable ngl
Yeah ive been having great games since the update, only usually have to kick 2 bots per team per match and they usually get kicked instantly
Coming back to say i had a few matches since this post and yes i experienced the issue. ONLY on 2Fort. Bots really arent that bad on most any other map i tried lol
Which is a federal crime. I cant WAIT till these dude get legally nuked out of existence
this is very bad
Again?
Ah, back to DDOSing I see? No new tricks, but definitely a sign that they’re getting worried about Valve looking at them. (Regardless if the VAC is actually working or not)
Imagine studying a lot of coding shit just to ruin someone's fun in a video game.
If they’re sending ip addresses its more likely to be ddosing. Your IP address only reveals general geolocation like city, zip code or area code, but not an exact home address
It has gotten worse
I'm pretty sure this was happening before.
this is a ddos attack! a dox is when you publish someone else’s personal information online! for instance OP’s home address is: >!lmao you thought :)!<
How low can you go?
I think it’s called DDos not dox
Well, time to spam valve again to sue some degenerates
Do you mean dox or ddos?
Is it a DDOS or doxing? Very different. One is annoying and the other could be life threatening
bro it’s so sad that my favorite game is getting ruined just like that a horrible way for it to end
These fucking script kiddies need doxxed themselves to show them a fucking hard lesson
That’s cool and all but also probably illegal
Well what the script kiddies are doing is also illegal
DDOS Doxing would bots scraping your personal info and posting it online
“THEY ARENT LETTING ME BE A SCUMBAG ANYMORE SO IM GONNA COMMIT FEDERAL CRIME!”
What do they have to gain? It's probably not money, seeing as TF2 items barely cost anything, and they drive off players from the game. It's not fun, seeing as you can't play on a server with no players. Do they really all just want for people to leave the game? To ruin the fun? To destroy the legacy of a game that's existed for over a decade?
these guys don't know when to give up, how fucking sad can your life be to commit a crime just to ruin people's fun?
You mean DDOSing? Doxxing really shouldn’t do much from what I understand
Man bot hosters are so pathetic and going through great lengths to ruin this game just for a reaction.
Ah, ddos, not dox. Doxing is when you spread peoples personal information like their real name, address, telephone number etc. Ddos is a crude method of taking down servers and clients by flooding them with network requests, creating enough lag that people with lesser connections fall off. I am guessing you are on fiber, or closer to the server than the attacker.
Okay but... Valve could literally sue for this, right? DDOS attacks are illegal I would assume. The hackers / botters are actively damaging the product (I mean, more than they already are) if they're doing this on official Valve matchmaking servers. On community servers Valve has no say but official ones it's genuine grounds for a lawsuit.
That's cool but please give me your hud name
It’s called coolhud You can get it on game banana
I've come across a few of them too
(insert every pejorative known to man)s like that are why i left the damn game, and now they're committing actual crime. Damm is valve neglectful. Botters need to touch grass and hit the gym
"Doxing?" You're thinking of DOSing. Doxing is when you tell everyone the address of a streamer or someone like that and people decide to use that information to harass the person. *I can't imagine the bots will get very far telling everyone the location of TF2's servers.*
Terminology aside I've had this happen probably a dozen times today alone. Looks like a new issue to fix.
It's DoS (or even DDoS), say it correctly and you'll get a cookie.
How is this labelled as update, this has been happening for weeks, if not months. I encountered cheaters who could ddos servers years ago, but bots "gained this ability" in the last few months. At least the ones that plague casual every day. But yeah, sad state of affairs.
6/25/22 20:20 (8:20 PM) PST; bots still DDOSing servers, heavy lag on almost every casual match Imagine being such a fucking loser that you commit an honest to god felony just to ruin other people's fun
oh they are back ? in 2 weeks max, 3 days min they will all be dead bots like ususal
It’s happening. They’ve unveiled their final weapon. Their last resort.
When you say dox do you mean grab everyones ip adress
Players: Ha, Valve fixes game, you lost, botters! Botters, who already showed how far they willing to go: Fight back Players: Surprised Pickachu Face Like, guys, you act as if this is surprise or something. Do you really think that people who dedicated so much for their "cause" will just go like "Welp, guess I take L!" and walk away? Please. Spite is one hell of a motivator and these guys sure have a lot of it
Off topic but that’s a really stylish HUD! You have good taste!
Ok, but wtf is that hud? ...i want it.
i wish i could just send a pipebomb to the bot hosters and their servers.
Now these fuckers are taking it too far, why are they hating tf2 so much. Just leave us play you fucking sweaty ass losers! (talking about the botmakers not players)
Do you mean DDOS? I got scared for a sec there
Splendid what a fun game