People creating these kinds of groups should be hung at the towns square.

if you choose to try and work around the system, then its fully at your own risk. *everyone* should know VALVe punishes this kind of behavior if you take a look at their past actions.

And fyi, i've been the one who reported the tool to VALVe initially It just took them some weeks/months to figure out what to do with it.

I'd guess this is primarily for those who have been manually getting the items through that fake server sug0b set up

EDIT: Oh

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slurper

Well I guess there is a bit of panic, number of idlers down by about 3000

I hope Bart gets all his hats deleted.

too bad that trading isn't working yet, I would gladly keep those hats for you guys ...forever

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BAM!
"Player with nothing to live for" - PsychoStats

nice find edeph, this looks interesting.

does this mean I can feel smug for not idling? yes, I think it does :3

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ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

who be deleting my posts

i used the idling program 1 hour after i updated my tf2, and i did not recieved any shit ^_^ yay me

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"The bots came, saw Saints post count and gave up instantly."-[SpA]futari

Hats are overrated. Though wouldn't mind the spy camera beard though, but as long I got me trusty ol' clock n' dagger you lads better be watching ye'r backs ;)
Besides, idling is too troublesome :p

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"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

Which posts?

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

wait.. o0!

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"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

me

Why saint, why! cookye's posts are normally so insightful D:

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

I CBA to read the whole thread - I just wanted to inform everybody that I didn't lose a single item, I just checked, but then again I stopped idling a long time ago. Still, I only got one hat but 90% of my normal items were gained with the idling program since I checked the option to auto-delete items of lower level (if levels ever mean anything, I'll be prepared ^^).

Also, I have absolutely no problems whatsoever with Valve punishing people for using a third party program hooking into Steam BUT SaintK is still very much a dick in this matter for reporting such a program. Of course his reports probably didn't change anything and many others did the same thing but I find people like that to be dicks in general, since they report things that don't affect them in any way and shouldn't be of their concern out of sheer blind righteousness or jealousy coupled with fear of being punished themselves (so sometimes they both ARE dicks and HAVE small dicks ;-). The idling program did EXACTLY the same thing as idling with TF2 on (which SaintK does too and even encourages other people to do to fill SpA servers) but uses less resources. It's like reporting Foxit Reader for using less resources than Acrobat Reader to open PDF files (keeping in mind that in this case the program is legit from a legal perspective, unlike the idling thingie). ;-)
It's not a cheat in that it doesn't cheat anybody, not even the system, which it still adheres to - it's illegal from a "Terms of Use" perspective but shouldn't be condemned by players or server admins themselves - it concerns only Valve and the creator of the program.

I'm not really upset, just observing, so take the last paragraph with a dose of irony. ^^

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

That means, SaintK was born as a small dick and then grew up around it?

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

Well I find it rather annoying, since it just means I'll have to find an achievement idle server.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Who gives a fuck?

probably about 11000 people

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

So it is indeed OVER 9000!? :-D

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I reported it because some nutcases selected our servers to idle in

The idle program doesn't make you idle in proper servers, it's run on a server by Drunken F00l... If anything you should have been happy with the tool because it made it so less people tried to idle on proper TF2 servers.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Perhaps the later version of the tool does. The early versions had an option to select your own chosen IP.

Well I started using it a while ago and I never saw an option to select my own IP, I guess it was out for quite a while before I started using it then

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Nah - it never did and I know that for sure since I've been using it since day 1 after release. However, when the whole fact that idling gives you items became known, people started idling wherever they could, including our servers, simply by minimizing TF2. I think you got both facts confused since you didn't explore what the tool is all about in the first place. :-P

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

The problem was we counldn't boot the clients, they'd autoreconnect.

Ah, perhaps somebody else made a similar tool - there are many TF2 hacks out there, all using the steamapi.dll. Drunkenf00l is luckily a responsible guy, he codes some useful TF2 stuff after all (like SourceOP) - he wouldn't have released a tool allowing to connect to other people's servers. However, there's a disclaimer when you launch the program, stating what its place of origin is and that it's free. Apparently many hack sites have stolen the program and even charged money for it, so that's where the problematic players might have come from.
But well - if we had fake clients connecting to our servers than a report was indeed in order.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

so, someone actually has his idling items removed so far? or....

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BAM!
"Player with nothing to live for" - PsychoStats

Nope...

They'll be removed in valve time, so when the soldier update comes next year-ish o: