Wow, what a shitstorm Valve have brewed up this time, and over something so stupid as virtual hats.
Fortunately it has more or less blown over now (and I missed it due to a poor internet connection making me unable to play TF2) but it just goes to show that a huge number of TF2 players are arseholes. The hats were supposed to be rare, if you want to play dressing up dolls go and play Battlefield Heroes. I’m not saying Valve were right to give out the rare hats randomly, that was a bit stupid. I would have had strictly limited numbers given out as awards, are you in the first 10,000 players to get 1 million lifetime kills as a Pyro? Have the fireman’s hat. With an achievements like this for each of them the hats would be rare and actually mean something.
To be honest that isn’t the point, the point is people who cheated the system have been punished and are now saying that the were not told it was wrong to cheat in that way. Well they were, the subscriber agreement states that you must not use any third party program to gain an unfair advantage. You might say that as the hats are purely cosmetic there is no advantage. Wrong. The people using the idler program did have an advantage, an advantage in getting hats, they had extra tickets for the lottery if you will.
Valve could have simply banned everyone using the idler as they had broken the agreement, Blizzard do that to people using a bot in Word of Warcraft. Instead they were quite nice about it, simply removing only the items that had been earned using the idler. Their next decision was possibly dubious, giving everyone who didn’t use the idler a halo hat. They did this as a bit of a joke I think, to show that they saw the funny side of the whole thing. It backfired because they didn’t anticipate how many total idiots there are who think that having a hat in TF2 is the most important thing in the world, it is these idiots who decided to play medic and refuse to heal anyone with a halo, it was these idiots who started screaming bloody murder on the official TF2 forums, it was these idiots who, by putting a virtual hat above having fun, are ruining the game for the rest of us.
Be patient, you may get the hat you want, you may not, but there are a lot more important things in life than a virtual hat. If you still find you can’t have fun in TF2 without the hat then I suggest you go outside and get some fresh air and possibly visit your doctor.
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