Left 4 Dead Steam Connection Cycling Bug: Do You Have It?

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Postby NikkyVix » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:43 pm

I used to think a mere minority of people were afflicted with this issue, myself included, but in recent days I've come to learn differently. Symptoms are thus:

Failed connection to--or disconnection within 20 seconds from--any Left 4 Dead matchmaking lobby.

Simultaneous disconnection from Steam Friends and all Steam chats.

Cycling of connection in Steam Friends between online and offline when attempting to join a lobby or game-in-progress, often within a handful of seconds between cycles.

Error message when launching the game relating a failure to synch with Steam Cloud.

Instability of Steam connection when attempting to host for a Dedicated server match.

Cessation of symptoms upon exiting Left 4 Dead.

Failure to alleviate symptoms even following disabling other system processes, applications, resetting of the modem/router and the computer itself.


If these sound familiar to you, you are not alone. There is a thread devoted to this problem you can view on this forum here. The issue has been in Left 4 Dead since the pre-release demo. Valve has failed to provide a fix nor any reliable support or assistance for frustrated players who are afflicted with this bug beyond the safe and sterile 'Open a bug ticket. We are looking into this issue'.

I spent a bit of down time at work reading through the entire thread. These post numbers are topics of interest I found for people who are also afflicted with the bug:

59
71
115
144
167 (first Valve rep post)
170
192
198
215
222
238
291
320 (concerning nvidia firewall)
324
331 (second Valve rep post)
334 (possible VPN fix for the bug..the latest attempt at a fix)

As it stands, it seems the problem is entirely a Left 4 Dead issue and may lay in how the game handles connections, or possibly a software issue with one of the updates. ISP tampering has been ruled out due to the bug being prevalent across worldwide networks. The current hope for a temporary fix is relying on a VPN to circumvent an alleged bad server connection in the backbone, but this has not been verified as a fix for more than one submitter yet.

At the moment, Valve seems to be relegating this to a minor issue while they focus on other things...even though it is a bug which essentially renders the game unplayable online with friends (as I and a couple of my friends afflicted with it can testify). More attention should be given if there is going to be any resolution for it. But if you can't find any information or feedback about the bug, or know someone who has described the symptoms listed above to you, then the aforementioned thread is a good place to go.
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