I feel like it should be up to valve to fix this no? It feels like it should be possible to require an email for everyone that wants to start a server and then boot all of the ones that cannot be bothered to reply to your messages to stop spamming the server browser.
No comments yet
password4321 · 2h ago
Related recent discussion 1 week ago, with a 200+ comment initial sub-thread on how the server browser was a key part of the "good old days":
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers.
rimunroe · 1h ago
The person who used to run the server network I was describing replied to me, but alas I think they didn’t see my reply[1]. This is one of the few times I wish HN notified you of replies. Maybe I’ll run into them again in another decade or two.
Play casual matches! They only match you with players nearby and its a lot of fun. I regularly see the same people and its a lot of fun getting to know everyone and banter throughout the game (I only play the hostage gamemode as well).
The only issue I've had is the amount of bots. When I play I regularly get into matches where 19/20 players are all bots and they auto kick you the moment you join. Its very frustrating
leftyspook · 3h ago
That really is not a solution.
Third party servers used to host plenty of non-standard gamemodes that Valve does not provide. Retakes, mentioned in the blogpost, is one of those modes.
beckthompson · 3h ago
of course! But there isn't much else to do so I'm just giving a solution that works for me
homebrewer · 3h ago
I recently looked at 1.6 servers for the first time in maybe 10 years. There are tons of active servers out there now, far more than there were ten years ago, and they're filled to the brim with bots, which definitely was not the norm back then. You used to see just a few active servers filled with real players, and the rest were simply empty, with either zero or just a couple of players who knew each other.
What changed? Was this lunacy adopted from CS2?
beckthompson · 3h ago
I'm pretty sure the bots are farming "Drops" which they'll sell for money. Every week you get a free case (or skin I think) which the bots are taking advantage of
Farming game drops via custom clients is prohibited since the TF2 days. Farming cards doesn't seem to be though. The support pages recognize the existence of "Steam idlers".
squigz · 2h ago
Err, no. Bots (in the context of 1.6 at least) are not tied to a Steam account and can't earn anything.
Anyway, GP's is not my impression of 1.6 back in the day: lots of bot servers back then too.
dankwizard · 1h ago
Not bot in the traditional sense of the game's AI, but bots as in accounts loaded up with the bare basics to join games and AFK - They level the account, get the steam free drops, and then sell that drop + the account eventually.
There is decent money in it. Back in CSGO I had a VM running two full bot servers at a run cost of ~$3.xx per week to earn ~$30 fully automated.
Aeolun · 3h ago
Just another variation of Eternal September?
colejohnson66 · 3h ago
An all bot server kicking the only human player?
rtldg · 3h ago
Yes. People make software to control accounts (botting) and to farm experience in CS2. They'll later sell the accounts or use them for spamming reports against real players and other such things. So they fill up a Valve-ran casual server so real players cannot join and report the bots to Valve.
xeonmc · 3h ago
They could also use the Minecraft approach, where you're free to join servers via IP/domain addresses from a simple UI instead of being obliged to trudge through the browser.
diath · 3h ago
Has anything changed in CS2? You could always just `connect host:port` in the console in Counter-Strike.
wiredpancake · 2h ago
Console isn't even enabled by default. The average player would need to:
1. Enable Developer Console in Settings
2. Find a server via a third party website
3. Use said IP + Port to connect.
* This results in low dedicated server player counts due to effort and the issues mentioned in the blog above.
Valve has expressed intentions directly and indirectly to remove the console from CS2 and operate almost exclusively out of the in-game Settings menu.
Over the years, this setting menu has increased in options. Although to cover the vast amount of commands is simply impossible.
Yet known the debug or cheat-protected commands.
leftyspook · 3h ago
Nothing changed, you need to know that host:port first, and that's where the problems with the official serverlist being flooded with fake entries become apparent.
Bulbasaur2015 · 1h ago
I'm in the group of people looking forward to CS:Legacy. it is a fan-made project to revitalize the classic game, based on Valve's public 2013 SDK https://x.com/cslegacygame
b_e_n_t_o_n · 1h ago
Hmm... Servers with more than 10 players are common for different game modes, like deathmatch, scout vs scout, gun game, dueling servers, zombie modes etc. A server with 32 active players isn't automatically fake.
jamesu · 2h ago
I play SvenCoop a lot and mostly just stick to a handful of servers. The amount of servers is such that discovering new ones is pretty easy. However it also makes it a bit vulnerable to your favourite server getting hit by a DDOS attack or protocol exploit (thankfully that one was eventually patched!).
So there are problems at both extremes.
matheusmoreira · 1h ago
Why would someone DDoS a Sven Coop server of all things? Is there anything to gain by doing that?
denkmoon · 58m ago
Never underestimate salty gamers. One entirely reasonable moderation decision against a mentally underdeveloped player with too much money or time and you'll inevitably be ddosed.
comex · 2h ago
> This should be a warning sign to any game wanting to have community servers. This is not a feature you leave running in the background. It requires maintenance.
Which, to most game developers, looks like a great reason to not have community servers.
I don't have any solution for this.
ryandrake · 1h ago
When developing anything (including games, but really anything that accepts user-generated content), the developer MUST ask and address in their design: “What possible ways will this be used to make spam?” Humans suck, and always eventually turn every unmoderated resource on the Internet into spam. I wish we could edit this shitty gene out of human nature, but we can’t.
protoster · 46m ago
Welcome to 2025, where any channel of human attention will be tragedy-of-the-commons'd into dust to squeeze out some kind of profit. Settle in and watch the malthusian trap slowly shut.
No comments yet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44941369 (460+ comments) Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44953109 (of course, rACEmic might just not be interested in reconnecting, which is obviously okay)
The only issue I've had is the amount of bots. When I play I regularly get into matches where 19/20 players are all bots and they auto kick you the moment you join. Its very frustrating
Third party servers used to host plenty of non-standard gamemodes that Valve does not provide. Retakes, mentioned in the blogpost, is one of those modes.
What changed? Was this lunacy adopted from CS2?
Anyway, GP's is not my impression of 1.6 back in the day: lots of bot servers back then too.
There is decent money in it. Back in CSGO I had a VM running two full bot servers at a run cost of ~$3.xx per week to earn ~$30 fully automated.
1. Enable Developer Console in Settings 2. Find a server via a third party website 3. Use said IP + Port to connect. * This results in low dedicated server player counts due to effort and the issues mentioned in the blog above.
Valve has expressed intentions directly and indirectly to remove the console from CS2 and operate almost exclusively out of the in-game Settings menu.
Over the years, this setting menu has increased in options. Although to cover the vast amount of commands is simply impossible.
Yet known the debug or cheat-protected commands.
Which, to most game developers, looks like a great reason to not have community servers.
I don't have any solution for this.