My adventures in trying to figure out why I can’t get the TF2 servers up and running on AlmaLinux have felt akin to running through a maze of infinite walls, but I may have possibly found the problem. So far it looks like it might be due to a newer libcurl library. I’m going to pirate the libraries from my CentOS7 install for a little experimentation. That’s something I’ll have to save for next week… I’m in need of a break. I haven’t played anything, or done any animation… I might have to pick a game out after work tomorrow to chillax.
srcds
Valve, you’ve gone too far.
Some of you might remember awhile back when I wrote about the pro’s and con’s of Steam, where I pointed out the good and bad with their recent choices. Probably one of the biggest points I touched on was the Steam Mobile Authenticator. I went into detail about how dependent Steam is on having your account tethered to a cell phone at the client level. But what about people who run dedicated servers for TF2, CS:GO, etc? I’m one of those people, and you want to know what the status is? Fucking stupid.
Last year I had to close down my CS:GO server when I discovered that I had to have a phone number attached to my account in order for it to function in anything but LAN mode. I decided to say screw it since it was the least popular server that I ran. Today however I noticed that for whatever reason my MvM Quickplay server was running insecure despite being set otherwise. Upon doing some research I discovered that a phone number must be associated with the Steam account the server is running off of. Oh, it’ll run. But in insecure mode, great huh? I feel like I’m being blackmailed… Either give us your phone number or your quickplay servers will never be secure again.
Fuck you Valve, and fuck the lowest common denominator for being stupid enough to get scammed, and practically forcing server owners like me to suffer the consequences of their stupid fucking actions. What the hell is the point of having a phone number tied to a server? I can at least kind of sort of see the point in clients having a phone number tied to their account for security reasons and VAC banning users who hack on an alt account tied to the same phone number, but why servers?!?!?!?!
The server software Valve provides for their Source Dedicated Servers is free, creating Steam accounts is free. It doesn’t take much to make an alt account with a cheap cellphone and a small game purchase on your account. So what fucking point are they trying to make?
Now I’m in a position where I’m contemplating if it’ll be worth it to get a cheap android to prevent this from happening to my other servers, or if I should just shut down when their time eventually comes. My MvM server was one of the more popular TF2 servers in my collection and I hate seeing it go because of Valve wanting a fucking cell number. If I do get an android though I’ll only use it for my alt server account. I’ll remove the battery and shove it in the drawer when I’m done. I fucking hate this.