The Guy Behind The Team Fortress 2 Anti-Free-To-Play Mod, And Its Controversy
Not too long ago, Valve announced that one of their best-selling titles would be going Free-To-Play. That game was Team Fortress 2, and it’s not as if the game wasn’t insanely cheap in the past, as it’s been reduced to just a few bucks in the past during sales. One wouldn’t think too much about it, but in this case there is a big difference between any amount of cash versus a game being free.
Team Fortress 2 has one of the most devoted player bases in all of PC gaming. Since the game’s launch in 2007, it’s picked up the most dedicated bunch of PC gamers, modders, and fans the community has ever known. Though when the decision came to make the game F2P, a lot of players out there became disgruntled, and not everyone responded to this decision with a positive mentality.
Asher Baker is a well-known modder in the Valve community, as he’s created many different Valve-related plugins and workarounds. He is most recently known for creating “Free2BeKicked (Anti-F2P),” a mod plugin that detects whether a player has a premium TF2 account or not. Those who actually purchased the game before it went F2P were automatically granted a premium membership, and those who don’t have one can receive one by simply purchasing an item off of the in-game store. Basically, the mod kicks you off the server if you don’t have a premium account.
The mod is happening only on exclusive servers, and not those of Valve’s. What this means is, those who have taken the time to create their own servers are mainly using this mod to ensure that they don’t get clouded up with tons of new players, which can cause server issues.
What started this whole ordeal was when Baker was asked by one of his friends to create some such mod. Here is a transcript between Baker and “dvander,” the founder of Alliedmodders where Baker’s plugin is hosted:
<dvander> personally i put it in the same category as banning high ping people which i hate
<dvander> but valve has created a problem
<dvander> a community needs a barrier to entry and it needs a way to heal itself if there is a misbehaving member
<dvander> if there is no barrier to entry – and no recourse against those people – it could be bad
<dvander> but its too early to tell
<asherkin> there are also a large number of tf2 servers aimed specifically at trading, the non-premium players can’t start trades and therefore just end up in these servers taking up a slot and begging for items
<asherkin> (it’s a trade server owner that originally asked me for the plugin)
<asherkin> and yeah, I also dislike high ping kickers, that silly cross-game vac ban detector, and even this one
<asherkin> but I figured it was better to do it myself properly before someone released something that did something silly like parse their backpack page to see how many slots they had etc.
Between being asked by his friend through private conversations, and the teeming amount of public requests, Baker relented and created Free2BeKicked, In an e-mail, Baker explained, “Basically it just boils down to a demand for it, yet there being very few developers who had the necessary background knowledge to do it without ‘hacks.’ I was in a unique position to work on Open Steamworks.” Right now, according to Source Mod, there are about 16 different servers running Baker’s mod.
We’re having a hard time believing that Valve is okay with this new development, and they’ve been asked for their word on the matter. We’re waiting for a response. Even Baker himself stated that he “would doubt Valve are okay with [this] method.” Though he acknowledges the thought, he tries to explain his feelings on the matter, while providing a stance from the company’s viewpoint:
“While Valve may wish to prevent the plugin from operating, it would only end up with a large amount of work and worse methods being used to the same effect. As long as there is demand a version of the plugin will exist, although probably not written by myself. I anticipated a negative response from the general player base and a positive response from the server operators. I hadn’t anticipated it to be this strong either way, even including receiving death threats. I don’t really have a personal opinion about TF2 going free to play, it’s brought in lots of new players, but I’m not sure it’s worth the long-term cost. I think that once the droves of inexperienced players dies down, we’re going to be left with a (slow) steady stream of new players (good), but primarily just cheaters and people evading server bans.”
And just to clarify with you players out there, though you may think that Baker is one of the many outraged at Valve’s decision to make the game Free-To-Play, this is not true. Baker says his loyalty “is to the server operators.” When looking at the grand scheme of things, it’s understandable that there would be much animosity among the community as the game wasn’t F2P from day one. If it were, however, the recoil would be much less. After seeing this for yourselves, what’s your take on the mod, and Valve’s decision to make Team Fortress 2 a Free-To-Play game?
