You probably noticed that many servers spoof/fake their ping on the server browser to get more visibility. It used to be just UGC and Skial but now theres tons of others too, even shounic's server does it. If you sort by ping, you will find dozens, maybe even a hundred servers or so that fake their ping for the TF2 server browser somehow in order to get shown at the top when sorting by ping, and also evading ping filters.
Other servers (Fastpath EU) even create fake servers posing as different communities completelly unrelated to each other, which all redirect to the same server. And theres also the issue of having fake players by giving bots more convincing loadouts, ping, etc.
Why is this so rampant? is there no TF2 ToS on like, not lying to players through these kind of scummy tactics on the server browser?
At this point the only decent way to browse tf2 servers are third party sites like serverbrowser.tf or mastercoms' qucikplay but the majority of players wont know about these and will either be fooled by the fake pings or dismiss the browser as pretty much unusable, hurting the legit pub servers out there...
You probably noticed that many servers spoof/fake their ping on the server browser to get more visibility. It used to be just UGC and Skial but now theres tons of others too, even shounic's server does it. If you sort by ping, you will find dozens, maybe even a hundred servers or so that fake their ping for the TF2 server browser somehow in order to get shown at the top when sorting by ping, and also evading ping filters.
Other servers (Fastpath EU) even create fake servers posing as different communities completelly unrelated to each other, which all redirect to the same server. And theres also the issue of having fake players by giving bots more convincing loadouts, ping, etc.
Why is this so rampant? is there no TF2 ToS on like, not lying to players through these kind of scummy tactics on the server browser?
At this point the only decent way to browse tf2 servers are third party sites like [url=https://serverbrowser.tf/]serverbrowser.tf[/url] or [url=https://comfig.app/quickplay/]mastercoms' qucikplay[/url] but the majority of players wont know about these and will either be fooled by the fake pings or dismiss the browser as pretty much unusable, hurting the legit pub servers out there...
A lot of the ping spoofing is advertised by the server hosting companies (especially in other source games like Garry's Mod) under the guise of "ddos prevention" and I think a lot of the servers fall into this trap but others lean into it and use it to throw themselves up at the top of the server list. I think Garry himself addressed it by blacklisting servers that were doing this but I'm not sure if that is a feasible option for tf2
A lot of the ping spoofing is advertised by the server hosting companies (especially in other source games like Garry's Mod) under the guise of "ddos prevention" and I think a lot of the servers fall into this trap but others lean into it and use it to throw themselves up at the top of the server list. I think Garry himself addressed it by blacklisting servers that were doing this but I'm not sure if that is a feasible option for tf2