Why I shut down my Team Fortress 2 Classified servers
I shut down my TF2C servers after server browser changes made them far less visible, changing the conditions they were built around.
I launched servers alongside TF2C's release, eventually running 50 across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America. In some of these regions, these were the only vanilla servers available. The goal was simple: provide vanilla TF2C with good ping for as many regions as possible.
At peak, my servers had more than 800 players online, regularly making up over 10% of all TF2C players.
In early February, the developers changed the server browser to pin verified and official servers to the top. My player counts dropped by roughly 60% and never recovered. One of the developers described this as intended, calling the goal to make the browser less beneficial to larger unverified hosters.
This caught me off guard. Three separate blog posts on the Steam page set different expectations:
Our plan is to work with server hosters to create a menu that is fair to all, clear to players, and boosts a wider variety of communities.
If you don't pass verification or don't want to apply, don't worry--your server will still appear in the browser just fine, viewable and playable by everyone.
If verification isn't something you're interested in, no worries, as unverified servers will continue to appear in the server browser as normal.
That last post was four days before the sorting change went live.
I built my servers based on what was communicated publicly. When that changed without notice, the conditions I was operating under no longer existed.
A recent update requiring GSLT tokens for SDR servers was the final push. Rather than invest more time into infrastructure for servers that weren't being seen, I decided to stop.
Thanks to everyone who played on my TF2C servers.