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New TWI official discord extra verification procedure to further insulate themselves from the gamers

Another interesting thing that IceBeam brought up in his reddit post is the discord "Double Counter" bot. This is something anyone who joins the official KF discord has to pass in order to either view what's posted or post themselves.

https://imgur.com/a/BkFHrQv

An excerpt from IceBeam on it:

A few more words on the "gatekeeping" argument that TWI moderators love

Approximately when that new rule about "misinformation" was officially introduced, new gatekeeping measures were added to the official KF Discord. New users have to undergo an extra verification procedure through the "Double Counter" bot. Without verification, only a few basic channels are available. Even just reading off-topic channels is not possible.

You can read more about this bot on its website, but its main purpose is detecting alt accounts and preventing verification through VPN connections, Tor relays, proxies, and virtual machines. Here's a complaint on that matter from the visitor of this subreddit. Additionally, it can be configured to automatically ban any account that fails verification if the need arises. I am sure that players from countries where Discord is fully or partially blocked by the government will appreciate these efforts to build even more technical barriers and amplify the censorship /S.

https://www.reddit.com/r/killingfloor/comments/1jnj40o/now_its_official_twi_can_censor_your_comments_and/

Basically, they further humiliate their customers by forcing them to jump through multiple extra privacy infringing hoops in order to get access to a mere KF discord.

According to Molly's message, who is Tripwire's community alienator, this is done to specifically prevent alt accounts and bots.

Obviously, they don't care about bots whatsoever. For one, their main cash cow game, KF2, has been infested by bots for years, artificially inflating its popularity metrics, among other things. It could be that TWI has nothing to do with it, outside of just ignoring the bot problem, of course. But it could be that Tripwire did it themselves in order to artificially blow over their numbers before their sale to the Embracer Group. It's known that such bot masters approach gamedev studios and collaborate with them for mutual benefit. The bot masters get discounts for game copies and mine for trading cards and in-game drops, while the game studio gets popularity numbers inflated artificially.

But yes, they do care about alts. Typical Tripwire deceptive behavior, mix up their war against players issue with something that nobody would object to, such as bots. And to expand in their war against the gamers they frame it as a measure against bots, LMAO. But I see through their lies, obviously.

Why would they even care about alts? See, if they didn't have a war with the gamers, and weren't banning them on industrial scale, and ban them unjustly, which is arguably a #1 factor contributing to the wish people even wanted to make alts in the first place, they wouldn't have this alt problem at all.

Like, I manage a couple of communities and did some in the past. Yes, they are less numerous than the official TWI one. Still, I have 0 problems with alts. Why? Because I don't have a war with gamers or my server players. I take a measured approach and argue for what is best both for gamers and gamedev studios. I argue that if they don't go woke they won't have to go broke, which is something that should be in the best interests of their shareholders.

Note that with cheaters you super rarely have the alts problem. If you ban their primary account, they rarely come back with their alternative account. This is mainly because cheaters recognize that they cheat and amazingly consider the bans to be just and they expect them. They don't feel the urge to argue against their bans relying on their alts, LMAO. But TWI customers do.

But Tripwire do have problems with alts to the point they have to rely on some verification procedures to completely exclude the banned players from participation. Obviously, only a relatively small share of banned players decide to make alts to get through bans, most just move on with life and move on to better games, leaving this steaming pile of junk behind them. Good for them!

Another issue with this "bots and alts" justification is this measure doesn't allow unverified accounts to even read the discord. If you cared about bots and troll posts, you would be looking into limiting the posting privileges. Would you care about some bots reading your brainfarts? Obviously not, LMAO. But they do limit unverified accounts to a point they can't even read any discord channels at all!

Not that there's anything worth reading there. Because almost every KF discord member is a flaming ♥♥♥ or a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ or a bleeding heart libtard ally supporting their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they produce zero content of value. You lose literally nothing by abstaining from joining this hugbox of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can go on a limb and suggest that the announcement of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quality in this steam group has higher factual and informational load than their whole discord, LMAO. Why then they do it?

This is because the gradual bans of capable and self respecting gamers over the years necessarily reduced the average IQ of their discord members to room temp ranges. So all they do is produce brainfarts unchallenged. They, however, have non-zero value from mocking and ridiculing perspective. In the past we've been mocking various screencaps, like this Molly's announcement about the n-word (the word is "♥♥♥♥♥♥", BTW)

https://www.zsdr.org/aux/molly-on-♥♥♥♥♥♥-word.png

They aren't happy about it. They want this retarded hugbox remain what it is, unchallenged. So, naturally, they deny us from even reading it. In order to prevent us from mocking their retarded takes. This is what it boils down to. All this nonsense about "bots" is just that -- retarded nonsense. They don't care about bots.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468388993

Amazingly, one of the KF janitors took an issue with this IceBeam announcement, LMAO, and came there to argue. Here's xir argument in full:

As a moderator for the official Killing Floor Discord (but I do not work for Tripwire) I feel the need to clear up misinformation about the reasoning to use Double Counter and how it is actually used on the Discord.

Double Counter was added to the Killing Floor Discord nearly two years ago. It was dormant for a long period of time, with verification being something that was wholly optional. What changed was a massive influx of spam bots, specifically the Steam gift card ones. We put the server behind verification to help prevent that and it has dramatically reduced the frequency. This change happened in the middle of Feburary, and had zero to do with any change in rules. We're more than happy to take the rap for having a more secure server for that.

As for those who cannot access Discord because their country blocks Discord and they must use a VPN to access it, there are no fewer than four different contact points to get a mod's attention to ask for assistance with Double Counter, but even if there wasn't, this would not be something the volunteer moderators nor Tripwire would be responsible for. Alt and bot detection on official Discords is hardly unique to the Killing Floor Discord, and if someone takes issue with their country blocking Discord, that is something they should take up with their government.

Further, you mentioned the Double Counter option to kick/ban people if they fail verification, and I'd like to remind you that this is only an option. We have elected to leave that option off. The News channel and official help channels are something we want everyone to have access to, so that option will remain off.

To finish up, I'm not sure if the OP is interested in the facts I've stated here, but at least in terms of the official Discord (which I absolutely can speak to) this post is nonsense. I'm glad I could clear it up for anyone who chooses to listen.

LMAO! Can't keep myself from laughing my ass off imagining this smug ♥♥♥♥♥♥ typing this BS: "I'm glad I could clear it up for anyone who chooses to listen", LMAO! Imagine the self righteousness and the sheer lack of self awareness!

This, BTW, is a result of this hugbox safe space culture with zero bullying and zero opposition. Only hugging and approvals are tolerated. This produces this type of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who for the life of them couldn't fathom how abysmally bad and retarded their arguments look like. This is because in their hugboxes they get accustomed to never being challenged with their statements and through that their message is never refined under the fire of criticism. Through that they don't develop an internal "witness", which would argue with them inside their own brain in order to assess even the most basic implications of their message and provide some basic internal consistency. No internal monologue, basically.

This results in this smugness and self complacency and the complete rift between the self-perceived value of their message and its actual value (it's zero, LMAO). It is both extremely sad and hilarious at the same time.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468206620

Please read and think thoroughly about the IceBeam's response as well which I'm going to quote in full:

I am surprised that you of all people affiliated with TWI decided to respond here, but props for doing that in a place where people can challenge the points you make without the risk of getting banned. However, this attempt at damage control is not really working in the favor of TWI, because I have some facts to share, too.

> Alt and bot detection on official Discords is hardly unique to the Killing Floor Discord

I know for a fact that many servers do not have the mandatory verification through the "Double Counter" bot: Turtle Rock Studios (Back 4 Blood), GTFO, WWZ, Ready Or Not, Deep Rock Galactic, Blacklight Interactive (Golf with your friends), Terraria, Apex Legends, Quake, Diabotical, AVA Global, KovaaK's FPS Aim Trainer, AimBeast, Aimlabs, and others. They have very basic requirements: read the rules and agree, then wait some minutes or hours before you get the posting permission. They all are official, and some of them have a much higher member count (e.g., Deep Rock Galactic or Apex Legends), which could imply that they would be in the sights of spammers and trolls more often than the official KF Discord. There are official servers that introduce additional measures against spammers and throwaway accounts, such as requiring the account to have a verified phone number to get the posting permissions. Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Valorant, and IL-2 Series Community are examples of such servers. I do not approve of this practice, but I will point out one important fact: it's possible to use the server in read-only mode and see what others post even if your account does not have a verified phone number. They do not lock most or all channels to just verified users. Saber Interactive's official server for WWZ introduced that, too, when spam went out of control and one dedicated troll decided to spam the Discord. That requirement was abolished when the spam activity decreased and the Discord server was rebooted. It has a couple of volunteer moderators and a few official community representatives. That's it.

In the official Deep Rock Galactic Discord server, you need to pick a role to unlock some channels. This is a manual action against bots and spammers. There is a private channel for translators, and the reason for keeping the general public away from it is that translators get the insight into update details that shouldn't be revealed prematurely. That's the reason stated by moderators there. It makes sense.

In essence, yes, the official KF Discord does stand out like a sore thumb with its DC verification.

> What changed was a massive influx of spam bots, specifically the Steam gift card ones. We put the server behind verification to help prevent that and it has dramatically reduced the frequency.

I don't think that this claim is entirely false. It's hard to know how bad that situation was without seeing the data, which TWI is seldom transparent about. It sounds reasonable, which makes it a good excuse. There is some degree of truth to it. It might be 20% or less. 80%, however is something else.

> We're more than happy to take the rap for having a more secure server for that.

There are other ways to achieve it, without gatekeeping legitimate users and making the channels unavailable to them even in read-only mode. Those ways work for other servers.

> if someone takes issue with their country blocking Discord, that is something they should take up with their government.

Right, because having a conversation with an autocratic government works out so well. No one has ever thought of that before. Just talk to them, bro, and they will unblock Discord very soon, all their agenda and resources they've invested into the proclaimed "safety of the citizens" be damned. Oh, and it's not like they have tailor-made laws and a bunch of salaried armed goons ready to suppress dissent. This is one of the silliest things I've read from someone who speaks on behalf of TWI.

You seem to have started moderating the KF Discord recently and come from Deceive Inc., which is a game published by TWI. IDK, you might not be aware of it yet, but TWI has been acting like an authoritarian entity on the territories under the company's control for a while. One of its representatives, Molly, seems to like being an oppressor. I objected to Molly's statements and got permanently banned from the KF 1 community hub on Steam despite not breaking any Steam's rules and guidelines. My main "fault" is arguing with a power-tripping moderator. I appealed the ban, but it was fruitless, because there is a rule ("law") designed specifically to suppress criticism of unfair moderation. Just take it up with the community management, right? Oh wait.

> but even if there wasn't, this would not be something the volunteer moderators nor Tripwire would be responsible for

Don't shift the blame here, it's on people who have made that decision, too. They could have chosen other methods against spam and bots, but they've chosen this. Players from the Chinese mainland usually interact with each other in the QQ messenger, but they still visit Discord servers to participate in the global community, learn something new, and stay in the loop. They can do that in the official servers for B4B, DRG, and WWZ. Now it will be harder for them to do it in the KF Discord, because this platform doesn't work for them directly like it would for a player from the Netherlands with mostly unrestricted Internet. The same goes for players from Russia, Turkey, and other countries where Discord's functionality is restricted (the UAE, for instance: not blocked fully, but the functionality is limited).

Yes, whoever's responsible for that decision is putting another brick in the (fire)wall.

> there are no fewer than four different contact points to get a mod's attention to ask for assistance with Double Counter

Your point here is that manual verification is also possible. Alright, but why do players have to put themselves in that position in the first place? Why do moderators who have a history of power-tripping get to decide whether those users should be allowed to speak or not?

> Further, you mentioned the Double Counter option to kick/ban people if they fail verification, and I'd like to remind you that this is only an option. We have elected to leave that option off.

This is a fair point, but it's one click away, and you are not even an official TWI representative. Back in the day, Alan Wilson tried to convince players that TWI wouldn't be policing players for what they do on their own servers. He said that the company wouldn't be hunting people down because one person somewhere had a bad day or disagreed with someone else. Nope, it turns out that his words don't have much weight. He was a Vice President of TWI when he made those claims, and he was the interim СЕО when a KF player got hunted down for what he said and did in places not controlled by TWI. That player was "rewarded" with a game ban.

If you can't trust the words of someone in a position that high, do you think people will be inclined to trust the claims of a simple volunteer?

> I'm glad I could clear it up for anyone who chooses to listen.

I hope you are not doing it for free, because if you are, I don't think this sort of damage control is worth it.

It's a master class in dismantling arguments. If you wanted to learn how to argue well online or offline, pay attention to every pair of argument and counterargument here, there's a lot to learn from.

I'll go over some of them for your benefit.

In general, truth wins over lies, everything else being equal. Not the case in real world, because there are typically powerful groups that benefit from some lies, so they pedal them and use their power to maintain them.

Like, in the example of TWI, they find a certain narrative to be beneficial. As an example, their narrative is they are a successful gamedev studio (no, LMAO) who honestly produce a good quality product to sell to their customers. Other alternative narratives they find unacceptable. Such as that they are a woke gamedev studio full of mediocrities whose main success was exploiting the idea they brought in from the outside (Alex Quick's KF game) and relying on some of the internal talent (John Gibson, Andrew Ladenberger, Munks etc) to produce a higher quality product. Out of their wokeness they kicked out their own CEO and President for merely tweeting his agreement with the Texas heartbeat act and parted ways on bad terms with almost any talented person and now are completely washed up. Their next title was up for mostly negative reviews so they had to delay it as by their planned release date it was of garbage quality.

The way you maintain lies competing with truth is through:

1) mass removals of any alternative explanations and mass bans of such authors, any alternative explanation has to be denied;
2) repeating the acceptable narrative many times over and in official capacity, basically, flooding all available media with their narrative message;
3) smearing any alternative explanations and communicating non-factual innuendoes hinting at supposed flaws of alternative authors, e.g. smearing them as "white supremacists" LMAO and so on.

So, in online arguing, everything else being equal, a true statement trumps a false statement.

TWI bootlicker: "Our discord uses this feature as it's common on discord".

IceBeam: "False, a number of games, including games in the similar genre to KF, don't, here are 14 examples".

This closes the case. You can't argue with that in good faith. I can attest to the fact that the games brought up by IceBeam are in the same genre. Some of these studios behind these games have some woke elements to them. TWI's moderation practices, amazingly, outwoke all of them, LMAO.

TWI bootlicker: "Steam gift card bots are a problem".
IceBeam: "Dude, bots post! They don't read, but you prevent unverified accounts even from reading it. Then, bots campaigns are typically temporary, your measure is persistent. Moreover, no other studio from the list above implemented such intrusive verification measures, which hints they somehow tackle the bot problem without it".

Case closed, again. Really, why would you prevent unverified accounts from reading? If it was a bot problem? Who cares if the bots read your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ discord? Nobody does, therefore, there's necessarily some other factor previously unaccounted for that contributed to making the decision to install this verification bot. Not only that, it also highlights TWI's and their bootlickers disingenuousness, as if they were honest, they would speak about their motives clearly and honestly. Because we've identified a hidden factor here which caused them to prevent unverified accounts from reading their discord, we know they aren't honest.

And so on.

A great case study, highly recommend.

But, getting back to how TWI insulates themselves from their customers. It's a case in a long series. Let me remind a few:

1) They hold so-called "community game nights", however, they are anything but. Being a regular member of the community you have to be vetted first before being admitted to it. Due to the lack of such players, their community game nights are populated by roughly the same group of bootlickers, who are also typically moderators on their various platforms. This started happening quite a few years back, after TWI discovered that players would join their streams to remind them of the things they aren't comfortable streaming, such as various lies, BS bans, broken promises and so on.

2) On their discord, every announcement can be reacted to by emojis only from a preselected list that are either positive or neutral. Meanwhile on unofficial KF2 discords their announcements are trashed with vomiting, clown world, sleepy and other various critical emojis. Can't have that on their discord. Needless to say, that being critical of them on their discord results in very swift bans and messages deleted.

3) After adopting a draconian EULA which they think reserves their right to ban people for any reason, they've also kept amending their various discussions boards rules to reserve them the right to ban anyone for anything. I quote from their KF3 Steam content hub rules: "The owners of Tripwire Interactive Forums reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason, as well as to remove access to the forums for any individuals with or without warning for breaches of the rules." Also note, that according to their rules, no appeals are possible. Just discussing the unfair moderation can result in a ban.

4) By now they've banned one way or another a good share of prominent community members, some of which are naturally former members. Examples are: Tiger, fanta, Carl, noodle, Brawler in the KF2 scene and a number of players in KF1 scene, one of whom had 10K hours in-game, and so on.

5) They have a mods theft situation in their content hub, exacerbated by the fact that the mod thieves collect donations for squatting on other modders property. When I complained about it TWI have found nothing better, but to ban me for "witch hunting" and promoted the stolen mods profiteers on their official platforms. They've since then included "witch hunting" as another no-no into their discussion boards rules.

6) On occasion, they enable the premoderation queue on their official forums:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3284953319

7) They rely on their official forum "discouragement" feature, which is a sneaky way to make the forum reading and interacting experience for their customers annoying enough to cause them to leave:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468218407

8) They rely on their official forum "censoring" feature which replaces the referrals to www.zsdr.org, the only web site in the world one cannot link to on any TWI official platforms, with asterisks, as if it were some slur:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468219212

9) They rely on their official forum feature that hides the "banned" status of forum accounts to make it harder for observers to assess the number of banned customers. They can't do anything about it on Steam, so typically, especially older steam discussions topics, have an enormous amounts of steam users with "banned" mark on them.

All that are cases of them waging the war against their customers. Obviously, you typically don't want to support them, so vote with your dollar. Unless you are a masochist ♥♥♥, obviously, who loves humiliation and outright disrespect, then totally go and hang with them and spend all your parents money on RNG lootboxes, LMAO.