Left 4 Dead will use the new matchmaking system we’ve been working on.

The new matchmaking system replaces the traditional server browser.  By running a public dedicated server your server will be added to a list of servers available for clients to use when playing.  Games are started from a Game Lobby by clients, who are then connected to a dedicated server when they start the game.  When they’re done, your server is added back to the list of available servers.  Clients will be able to “Quick Match”, “Play Online”, and “Play With Friends” when they want to play a game.

[...]

 

-Eric Smith (erics@valvesoftware.com)

Valve hates you
They must think you’re too dumb and stupid to choose your own server. What you end up is a “smart algorithm” designed to connect a player to other players and the server. What it also means: you have no control over your online multiplayer experience. Want to play on a regular server with the same crowd every day, the community experience? Unless you add all people to your friends list you’re out of luck. Also Valve decided you’re not allowed to think for yourself and they will pick the server for you.

The matchmaking system is used on low-level games on the consoles, where servers are nothing more than players running the game on their console. For the PC this is only used on games that do not have dedicated servers like the Command & Conquer series.

Valve used to support servers pretty good. They are still releasing updates for games like Counter Strike 1.6 and CS: Source. With Left 4 Dead they clearly fail to live up to their standards. There are so many zombie communities for Zombie Mod, Zombie Master, Zombie Run and other zombie Source modifications. The i3D.net community is one of the largest zombie communities out there with 25 servers online and multiple servers in the global top 100. If the community cannot host their own game servers, cannot manage and cannot ingame admin these servers, there is no point of playing this game.

Our servers have a large number of regulars, around 50 admins from 3 continents and a huge fanbase of ex-admins, regular players and fans. I think we’ll pass this game and won’t bother supporting it unless Valve decides to support the online communities all over the world by giving them more control over their own community game servers.

- Stewie

That is a bad hit for the community … That servers were always full and people loved it …

The issue began with gamers using hex-editors to enable 32 slot mode in the beta of TF2.  Valve would update the serverside software every other day to break this hack. After a week a mod was released that allowed every server to run 32 slots without file editing. Large parts of the community moved on to 32 slots for public gameplay. In a response, Valve started the censorship of the ingame serverbrowser. As servernumbers stayed up, playernumbers started to drop. TF2 is still in beta, but as the game is released only to people who bought the game (in the Orange box combo pack), there is absolutely no difference between beta and gold for the players.

All source games are technically great for modifications; new maps, mods, plugins are all easy to integrate. This is the first time Valve tries to stop a new modification and limit the gameplay in a way they shouldn’t.

• Quake Wars
• Crysis
• Call of Duty 4
• Medal of Honor Airborne
• HL2 episode 2 with the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2
• Unreal Tournament 3

I am professionally looking forward to Quake Wars, Crysis and Call of Duty 4. TF2 will be a  very unique game, too bad it’s only sold with HL2.  The first three games will feature perstitant statistics, much like Battlefield 2 introduced to the public. I am looking forward to work with Activision and EA, and their developers IW and Crytek. Already we have a very warm contact with SplashDamage, developer of QuakeWars. Those guys know what they are doing, and take their time in their commitment to quality.

Valve really wants to push both games. The episodic content is much less sold as expected, and it takes too long before a new episode is released. It’s not a new game, but they certainly take their time. They will push TF2 now the same as they tried to push CSS and DoD: Source earlier. Where CSS became a hit, Day of Defeat Source flopped. 
With Half Life 2 & Episode 2 and TF2 combined in one package, it seems Valve is trying to sell more copies of HL2. TF2 has the potential to become a big hit, even without pushing it to die hard HL2 gamers.
Now STEAM opens up to more and more developers and publishers, it’s ironic Valve is the only publisher who’s selling their products in forced combined packages.

Valve: Steam

A better model is used by Valve, the Steam network. Steam is an all-in-one solution for buying, playing, downloading, patching and previewing games. In Steam you can do everything you want as a basic computer user. Downside of Steam is you can’t do anything without Steam. If Steam is down, so are you, no online games, no new patches, nothing.
Another con is the lack of bandwidth around major releases like Half Life 2.

EA Link

EA Link is the Electronic Art’s version of Steam. It’s a bit beta, a bit buggy, but the basic features are present: you can buy, download and play games in one single interface. The worst part is installing a game. Instead of the way Steam handles installs, EA Link just downloads an installer and then it requires you to install a game manually, step by step. In these installers bugs (or features) are present disallowing you to install or upgrade the game because you need at least 2 GB free space on your main Windows partition. Funny, if your game should install on another hard disk.

Also most patches EA releases are large in size: 10 MB to 600 MB.

The solution: p2p

The best solution would be Valve’s Steam combined with peer to peer capabilities. The Steam network has a capacity of 30 gigabit (source) and uses around 60% of the available bandwidth at any given time. When a large patch or new game is released the network slows down. One weakness is the geographical servers. If one time zone hits primetime, it uses all servers in that area while the Steam servers on the other sides of the world are doing almost nothing. Second is the availability of these Steam servers: some countries have a dozen, other countries don’t have a single server.

To fix this weakness, the ideal distribution model should use peer to peer technology with the use of special authorized seeders to guarantee a minimum of bandwidth available. These seeders should be comparable with the Steam master servers.
The more players join the network, the more capacity you will generate. For the online publishers, peer to peer technology equals a major cutback on their bandwidth bills.

Note to all publishers: the peer to peer functionality should be automatically disabled as soon as the player starts a game so it won’t be the source of any lag.

Licensing: new developments

EA (Electronic Arts) started in the summer of 2005 with ‘ranking’-software. EA handpicked a few companies to host their special ‘ranked’-servers. These servers run a special non-public software release of the game. This way, EA could ensure a basic level of quality of the gameserver, quality of support and made sure the ranked servers are considered a premium service.
The same goes for the game America’s Army, the special Honor servers are very pricy, but in return the gamer has several ingame improvements like their own soldier to earn new ranks, even while playing on other Honor servers.
This improves the lifespan of a game dramatically. Instead of playing every single round again and again as a separate play, the game becomes a tour of duty where you will be rewarded for your actions in previous games. Every round on every server is tracked by a special masterserver who keeps score for all players. This masterserver also authorizes every single server.

The future will bring a lot more online licensed games like Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. Not only for gameplay improvements, but the license fees are becoming a stable source of income. Thousands of servers online times ten to thirty dollars per game. It’s not big money like the sales of DVD games, but enough to ensure the future of the online game.

The bright side of licensing

Licensing has a few advantages:

• Enforce a basic level of quality by contract or agreement
• Possibility to deny a license to illegal ‘companies’ or amateur companies
• Cut down the player to server ratio to make sure more gamers play on each server
• Monthly license fee income ensures the future of the game
• Marketing: official servers sell better
• Corrupt or hacked servers can easily be shutdown

The downside

Licensing also has downsides. The publisher has control over every single gameserver. This means they can destroy competition in a country by creating a monopoly on the gameserver market. We’ve seen this happen in Germany, the UK and France where EA only gave one gamehoster the right to host Battlefield 2. Prices in these countries were triple the price elsewhere. No wonder most consumers rented their server in other countries. This can be prevented by regulating the pricing in the agreement or by creating an European market, a market comparable in size to the USA, instead of running a different programm for each country in Europe.
The customers in Europe do not care for borders, it’s the internet, it’s borderless. When will the major publishers find out?

Second, licensed gameservers tend to have a higher pricing because next to hardware, software, traffic, datacenter, support and overhead costs, the hoster has to pay the license fee.

Third, when licensing partners are picked, publishers tend to favour the commercially best candidate. This can be prevented by completing a technical background check on the licensing partners. The publisher should have the technical knowledge inhouse (“Linux, what’s that?”).

Doom scenario: Licensing per gamer

PC gaming always has been unique, but this could change pretty quickly. As games become more online based (some games don’t even have a single player mode anymore!) a new licensing scheme could be introduced in the traditional FPS games. Just like Microsoft Live or Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, pc gaming could change into a model where the gamer has to be buy the game (1) and buy an online subscription service (2). In this case the developer or publisher hosts their own gameservers which means less control over the online gameplay for the player. Gamers can’t administrate their servers, can’t create a custom mapcycle and can’t kick/ban vulgar or cheating people.
Also, we will see a lesser quality of service as we’ve seen with Live or WoW where overloaded servers and only a small number of geographically locations is common. If the nearest server location is in a different country, don’t those people have an unfair advantage?
Last but not least, it will be the destruction of the modding community, the scene of fanatic gamers developing new maps and new gameplay modifications.

This doom-scenario is still years away from reality, but this will become practice over time. However, the serverside license enforcement is already becoming much more common these days, which is a good thing.