August 31 update: Idlers BEWARE

[Jinx]

[Stormcaller3801]

Wait wait wait- what's that about Pyros burning people? Do they mean you can't hit them with the flamethrower at all, or just that there's no afterburn?

[MaskedJackal]

[Stormcaller3801]

I've eaten lobsters that argue differently.

This impacts my map design too. Damn.

[RetroArmadillo]

Looks scary. o.o Ah well, dose not look like a problem thou. Here, have a look, those files have been in place for a long while now, before the idle program was made. :p

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... p?t=953346

Still, it'ed be a good idea to check the steam forums now and then to make sure you won't get into trouble before you run the program.

[Sekh765]

I still see people idling, and things are still being dropped. I left mine on overnight and collected a few items over that span and have yet to see a message. I have serious doubts that the TF2 staff would being wantonly warning/banning folks without a blog post, as they have done in the past every time someone has tried to circumvent their system. Valve is known for just stuffing random code into their patches as jokes, this time I believe its just random junk to scare people into idling less. Either way, if something ACTUALLY happens, and people on the forums can prove it besides just jumping up and down screaming fire, I'll stop. >_>

[Listy]

Looks like Valve got sick of not being able to tell which of their friends are actually playing TF2 and which are idling as well. But seriously, it'll be interesting to see what all comes of this. The idler does seem pretty cheap way of getting stuff, but with such a tiny drop rate for hats, it does make me wonder just how many hats would be out there if there was no idler.

[Arcalane]

If Valve didn't want people idling, the best method would be to increase the frequency and chance of hat drops.

Let's face it, people only idle these days because of the hats.

[Purplecat]

Expect a large shitstorm if Valve did anything to the idlers items. Since it's a large part of their userbase.

They should really just overlook the system as whole, and probably not make it based on how many hours you logged in. Someone suggested to make it a daily/weekly system where you need to put in some play performance for it, but there's a roof on how much too... making it pointless to farm, which Valve is concerned about making it based on progress (they know quite well that data from the server/client can be faked...)

[miniskunk]

Personally I don't think it is right for idle servers to exist at all. Anyone who cries it isn't cheating is only lying to themselves. Just because there is a hole (read exploit) that doesn't prevent it from happening doesn't justify it being done. It would serve all who got their hats in that manner right to lose them all given how many players that do not use idle servers are still without a single item despite hours and hours of playtime. They didn't earn them in actual gameplay. I suspect Valve does limit the number released in a given timeframe and players are being denied them as a result.