Great News For Cheaters!

I don't really understand. So will we be able to play for example TF2 with only trusted people (high level, attached phone number)?

I do not want to calm your happiness but considering that many do not cheat with their Main Accounts but have like instead a bunch of seperate Accounts where they will cheat around with it won't matter at all if Valve will now link their Trust System at all in the background.

Those that cheat won't suddenly go away if they are being linked to cheating over a bunch of Games.

I'm fine with making cheaters miserable but I'm less fine with all the data collection.
That being said, if we could implement a similar system all across the web and general media, that would make the world a better place.
Imagine this: all the trolls on twitter being only able to tweet to other trolls. All the politicians caught in a lie, silenced forever. Happy place.

Sounds good! Please let it replace VAC

Trust Factor is nice in theory. When I play cs go alone it works well enough most of the time. But I have this friend that I always play cs go with, that basically has an account in the same conditions as mine - plenty of games, 2k+ hours in cs go, 500+ wins and all that jazz. About two weeks ago, when we went to play together, I started getting a message saying his trust factor was "much lower than mine". Obviously our matches since then have been awful. But it makes no sense. He doesn't troll, doesn't cheat, and didn't even have a great performance recently that could make people report him. And I know there are plenty of other people just like him out there, and many don't even know they have low trust because they don't have anyone to tell them that (you can't see your own trust factor). I'm sure some will just dismiss what I said and assume my friend deserved the low trust, but the trust factor system is far from perfect, and it can unjustly condemn people to its depths.

Edit: we sent an email to valve telling them to please take a closer look on his case. No response so far (and his trust is still bad).

That sounds like bad news for cheaters and great news for anyone who doesn't :)

How do you see Trust Factor?

I really hope amateur devs won't have write access to users trust factor... with Valve, I don't have any issues, but some noname indie developer might just ban people left and right for overlays or posts on forum, and it's his game so he has rights for it, right? But one thing is getting banned from some 10$ game you just played for 20 minutes to check out, and another is having it permanently affect your matchmaking in all games. I know chances are low, but I'd feel safer if it was split into two levels for developers: anyone can read trust factor, but only approved devs can affect it.

i think its a bad idea but i supose time will tell.

whatever happened to games with voting system?

It's a bad idea to be honest if it's not implemented correctly. I don't play MMO type games anymore, and I've never cheated or been accused of it, BUT... I do recall a time when a friend of mine was banned from a game simply for having a really high score. The guy is just good, really good at certain types of games. They couldn't even provide any proof of his alleged cheating. When something like that happens, I do call into question the accuracy of this type of system. They didn't unban him either despite many appeals.

People who do cheat to feel good about themselves on the internet deserve everything that happens to them, but the innocent people that get caught in the web don't deserve to have this carried across all games that they played. I just hope that they take many factors into account before accusing someone of cheating and bringing that record across multiple games. :)

Oh yeah, wait till Sergey and Ivan of your favourite asset flip start getting access to that data, modify it to mark your account as a cheater, and blow up the rest of the Steam just how they did with fake Steam items, gambling the market or distributing malware disguised as games.

Truly everybody will enjoy it, just how they enjoyed the death of greenlight. What could possibly go wrong?

Personally I'm already sick in regards to the amount of abuse that steamworks developers can do, with putting a huge game ban visible on your profile at their own discretion being enough as it is. I can only hope that Valve has learnt something from the amount of steamworks bans they handled and will not allow another crap to blow up.

show me a system and ill show you how to exploit it.