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Quoted from foxy_dave

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Hey, can you let me know all the times anyone on the TF2C admin team has been caught stealing money or abusing their position for financial gain? Or if not, could you refrain from the wild accusations without proof? Cheers!

Some of the tf2center admins (not all) have terrible attitudes, have frequently handed out incredibly petty bans and abuse their position (closing other peoples lobbies so their own fill, banning people for being friendly and inviting them to their teams mumble, etc). Most of your users are children and some of the admins don’t behave any better than them. It’s easy to understand why trust is so low even though there haven’t been any instances of theft yet.

Quoted from EmilioEstevez

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Sums it up very well.

Quoted from EmilioEstevez

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Some of the tf2center admins (not all) have terrible attitudes, have frequently handed out incredibly petty bans and abuse their position (closing other peoples lobbies so their own fill, banning people for being friendly and inviting them to their teams mumble, etc). Most of your users are children and some of the admins don’t behave any better than them. It’s easy to understand why trust is so low even though there haven’t been any instances of theft yet.

Amen buddy.

I have to say I am really disappointed. As a former TF2C admin and regular this was one of the things I was most excited about. Back when I was still working in TF2C I warned you guys that leaving it too long to implement advanced lobbies would cause TF2C to lose a lot of the more skilled players to TF2pickup and cause problems for us further down the line. I recently started playing TF2 again and started out playing TF2C lobbies and even at peak hours it’s hard to find mumble required lobbies in the EU and this never used to be as much of a problem as it is now. The general skill level in TF2C is noticeably lower these days and it’s sad to see that many of the higher skilled players that used to play there are noticeably missing.

When I saw this announcement, I must admit I was slightly relieved that this had happened (albeit a little too late in my opinion) but then when I read the original post and the replies I was thoroughly shocked at how this has been handled. None of the TF2C admin staff have really addressed the, frankly legitimate, issues raised by the users posting here. I too have a problem with the fee charged despite it being small. In my opinion an organisation has to have a pretty good reason to take any money from people when the same thing is offered elsewhere for free and arguably better in some respects. The only real advantage to TF2C is the better UI which frankly is a lot prettier than TF2Pickup’s and regardless of what you think of Mother Theresa as a person, he did do a sterling job on the site design. However that’s not to say TF2Pickup’s UI isn’t functional and aside from that I don’t see any benefits that would warrant even the smallest of fees and I’m clearly not alone in my assessment.

I’m not going to waste anymore time repeating what others have said. Instead I will say that the question of what happens to the money is a serious problem with your model and as someone who has talked and worked with almost all of the current admin staff I must admit I don’t 100% trust you either. I’ve had admins admit to me that they have closed lobbies because theirs aren’t filling (even after the update which stopped someone from making the same lobby with the same map), acted on personal grudges by banning players from the site entirely and I’ve had arguments with senior staff over the way they handle their public image. Combative statements like:

Hey, can you let me know all the times anyone on the TF2C admin team has been caught stealing money or abusing their position for financial gain? Or if not, could you refrain from the wild accusations without proof? Cheers!

are not how you should be speaking to people regardless of whether they are in the wrong or not. You’re an organisation, not a person, so if you have nothing nice to say then don’t say anything lest you piss off some of your users (like most of TC). In my opinion given the previous actions of some admins I’m not surprised that people are questioning where the money is going even if they have no previous record of taking money. I personally don’t think any admin would do that but I can certainly see why people would.

I feel that TF2C is a great site with so much potential that has been tarnished by poor management (I’ve had senior admins tell me they don’t like the way the development is run), admin abuse & corruption and the absolutely dire PR.

TL:DR – TF2C needs to remove the fee, remove the top 20% of TPR players requirement (or at least reduce it to the top 5-10%) , clamp down on admin abuse to regain the communities trust and sort out your PR!!!

Quoted from Casino

I feel that TF2C is a great site with so much potential that has been tarnished by poor management (I’ve had senior admins tell me they don’t like the way the development is run), admin abuse & corruption and the absolutely dire PR.

TL:DR – TF2C needs to remove the fee, remove the top 20% of TPR players requirement (or at least reduce it to the top 5-10%) , clamp down on admin abuse to regain the communities trust and sort out your PR!!!

[Edit] Removed some wrong information about REM’s admin history. Sorry REM!

Back to the point at hand, though. There are legitimate concerns raised in this thread, yes. We’ve mentioned what the money will be put towards a few times. We’re sponsoring DeutschLAN. We’re looking to sponsor another LAN next year. We have operational costs which need to be paid.

We put out a survey gathering information. We’re using that information for decisions we make, like we said we would. This information is one of the most recent sources of information at the moment, from a reasonable number and range of people. Individual feedback has been analysed and taken into account. If you’re going to criticise us for using the information we collected, then I honestly don’t know what to say. We advertised the survey for 2 weeks across a range of media, and if you didn’t fill it out then your opinions may not be represented in it.

TF2Center hosts hundreds of lobbies a day, for thousands of users. The majority of the time the site has been running (until donations started), operating costs had been paid for by a single person out of the kindness of his heart. The costs ran into the $1000s. But that’s fine, and I’m honestly not saying this to get sympathy or donations or anything like that. As said before, we knew what we were getting ourselves in to and we accepted it. But what I will say is, there is a difference between liking / respecting the admin team and appreciating the services TF2Center offers.

Yes, this is a paid service, and the money will go towards TF2Center as a project. Current plans are that this money will be used to further the project and the community, via hosting costs, sponsorships, events, etc. Depending on the amount raised and the general future these plans may change. I can’t, and wont, make any promises here for future plans because I don’t know them.

One final thing I will say though, as a rhetorical question. How many of you reading this have bought games on the current steam sales? How many of you will play them? How many hours of entertainment will that game give you, if you do indeed get round to playing? And how many hours a week/month do you spend on TF2Center?

Quoted from foxy_dave

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Forgive the unprofessionalism for a second, but as 5-year-old me would say, “you started it”.

This proves really well what emilio said about the attitudes

Quoted from foxy_dave

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If you want to discuss this further then talk to me on steam, but please don’t derail this thread further.

I’d say what he says is a valid point. Very few people trust you. It doesn’t matter if R.E.M was responsible for some admin abuse, if anything that only solidifies the fact that your admins are sketchy.