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Update regarding Fistful of Frags (FoF)

• If you do not play or care about Fistful of Frags (FoF), feel free to not read this.
  
• If you do not want the historical recap, feel free to skip down to the "My thoughts" section near the end.

As some of you may be aware, there has been a lot of drama around the Fistful of Frags (FoF) community for some time. I will sum-up my thoughts about this, how we got here, most recent events, and maybe where we go from here.

I am writing this both to work-out my own thoughts, and because several FoF players from multiple "factions" (see below) have asked me what I think, and in some cases have explicitly asked me to post about the "drama".

Those who know me, know that I do not like to post in an urgent manner, where the tendency might be to have a "knee-jerk" reaction. I prefer to take my time and think a bit before I speak on such things.

I do not think I have any special standing in the FoF community, other than:

• Just having both been around a long time, and
  
• Being a well-known server operator. Dedicated game-server operators inevitably have (perhaps unfairly) an over-sized role in the community for older multi-player games. Mostly, this is because often there are no longer any "official" servers for players to use for older games.

With great power, comes great responsibility.
- some famous guy

NOTE: I will deliberately not mention the names of any individuals, Steam communities or Discord servers - to avoid any more escalation, and avoid this trying to be seen as insulting or provoking anyone. Instead, I will mostly substitute the names of various FoF in-game player models/teams for various community names. Nor am I here to debate any of this. It is just my recollections and thought process regarding FoF.


A bit of FoF history is good to understand how we got here. Do not worry, I will not try to go-over the entire history of the game - just some of the drama. This will by no means be "complete". Hopefully, this will be Just enough information to understand where I am at, and were we go from here further below.

NOTE: While I will use the term "faction" below, that is not meant as derogatory. It is purely an indication of different groups, communities or alignments of players over some period of time.


The first faction (community), let's call them the "Rangers". The Rangers are probably the oldest established community focusing on FoF, with both it's own Steam community and related Discord server.

I have been a member of this faction for some time myself, and so have/had many friends there that I have played FoF with over the years. At times, I have also delegated in-game moderation access for all my FoF game-servers - to prominent members of that faction.

A particular friend of mine in this community was also probably the most prolific supporter and booster of the game, and most active organizer of FoF-related events.

Similarly, most significant FoF dedicated server operators have also been members of this faction - at one time or another. Rangers was the center of the FoF community for a long time.


The next faction, let's call them the "Desperados", had a falling-out with Rangers a few years ago. Lots of "words" were said, each faction banning prominent members of the other faction from their affiliated game-servers, etc. Honestly, I do not even remember exactly how that feud started (or care really at this point).

The Rangers versus Desperados feud was the status-quo for years. It was a sort-of "cold war". However, it was workable. Basically ...

"We do not all have to get along, to play the same game, on different servers."
- Weasel (STEAM_0:1:155)

Somewhere in there, a handful of FoF game-server operators were doing some rather unscrupulous things, like bait-and-switch server naming/re-directs, fake-players (bot essentially that appear as real players) and other such things. Again, I will not mention their name, but they host servers for several different games and are infamous for this behavior.

Perhaps partly in response to such problematic servers, the developer added the "Highlighted Server Browser" (HSB) feature to the game. The HSB is effectively a highly-curated list of game-servers that are offered to the player in-game visually - instead of the player having to open the full game-server list and then pick what server they wanted to play on. The HSB did not include the problematic game-servers, and emphasized game-servers with a stable connection and less-modded configurations - to keep the player experience a bit more consistent. This was at the time seen as important, because there were no more "official" servers (long gone years ago). Most (but not all) of the servers included in this HSB server list were hosted by members of the Rangers faction - being the most experienced and compliant servers for the game.


At some point after this time (maybe a couple of years), I actually walked-away from FoF, took down my FoF game-servers and focused on other things. Looking back now, I do not even really remember why I burnt-out on FoF, but that was probably the goal (forget about that). So, mission accomplished.


At some point after I walked away from FoF, apparently so did the developer. He (effectively) did a few updates to the HSB, and issued some game-wide player bans, then "went dark".

There was no warning in advance, he was effectively there one day and then gone the next - leaving the community confused and worried if the game had any future - even it never gets any new features.

I do not know the developers reasons for this, and to be fair - it is probably none of my business.


The next big schism was when a prominent FoF server-operator (who previously had been hosting several Rangers-branded servers) had a falling-out with others in the community - in particular my friend mentioned earlier.

This resulted in yet another faction, let's call them the "Banditos". Again, I do not recall all the details, nor does that matter for the sake of this post. Suffice to say, lots of "words", etc. I am sure those on the giving and receiving of those "words" of course felt seriously offended and such. I am not trying to minimize that experience for anyone. But, in the end not important to this post.

Of course, as you might expect, the Banditos rebranded their servers to no longer be affiliated with Rangers. This left Rangers, the historically most active FoF community, with no game-servers of their own. A bit later, Banditos began banning various Rangers members from their servers, including (in particular) my aforementioned friend. This left Rangers not only with no servers of their own, but also finding themselves banned from even playing on any formerly-Rangers/now-Banditos servers.

Further, Banditos went so far as to block the entire country of Greece from the Bandito servers to prevent my friend from playing. I do not know how many FoF players there actually are/were from Greece, but it seemed a bit heavy-handed.


Somewhere about this time (maybe before the all-Greece blocking) I was checking-in and got caught-up on what was going-on. In an effort to help-out my friends in Rangers, I brought my old FoF game-servers back-online. I tried not to get involved in any "drama" and just support my friends as best I could.

Unfortunately, this did not help very much, since my servers are all located in the USA, but the largest segment of Rangers players are based in Europe.


Another issue that cropped-up about that time was that (in the developer's absence), the curated list of servers that is the "HSB" had grown more and more out-of-date. Many servers included in it were either just gone, or had underwent IP address changes - effectively dropping them from the HSB. The source for the HSB is a list of servers that the developer was manually updating himself, and then publishing to a behind-the-scenes URL.

Not knowing if/when the developer might return, I started digging-into what it would take for the community to have their own HSB server list. The thought being, perhaps the developer might never return, and eventually that list of servers in the HSB would grow smaller and smaller, until one day there are none.

After digging though the FoF client-side files, I discovered that the official HSB was essentially driven by a text-file stored on the Internet - accessed through a Google Drive URL.

After some experimentation, I found that I could modify a client-side file, with a version that substituted a different URL that would be used to download the HSB server-list data.

I had initially intended to just share that modified client-side file with the community, and publish it in some public GitHub. That GitHub would serve two purposes:

1. A place that to host the modified client-side file for players to find it.
   
2. A place to host the new "community" version of the HSB server-list data - basically a specially-formatted text-file.

I continued to work on testing and refining this idea behind the scenes - with my aforementioned Friend, another server operator and several testers. This included auditing the official HSB server-list to remove any servers that have long-since gone off-line (about ~66% of them!), and adding some new prominent servers that were not previously listed, or had undergone IP address changes since the last official HSB update.

This project was later expanded to include creating a Windows "installation program" for the modified client-side file. This would make it easier for less technical players to successfully download and install the modification. Unfortunately, Windows will typically warn about launching such programs - because they both:

• Have not been digitally "signed" (beyond my financial horizon at this time), and
  
• Have not had 10,000+ Windows users already tell Windows to run this program anyway - giving it was Microsoft calls euphemistically a "positive reputation".

I later introduced another separate Windows "installation program" for downloading and installing HSB "thumbnail preview" graphics for most known custom FoF maps. This allows an image to be shown when a server running a custom maps is listed in the HSB, instead of just a generic icon - making it easier for players to recognize maps before selecting a server from the HSB.

In the early experimental community HSB trials, even though there had been a falling-out between the Rangers and the Banditos, the Banditos-branded servers were still listed in the "community" HSB - as they had still been present in the last "official" HSB update from the developer.

My friend reached-out to the Banditos to see about getting them to cut-down the number of (mostly empty at this point) servers they were hosting - effectively flooding the HSB server-list. This did not go well. I do not know/care about the details of that conversation. Apparently, more "words" were exchanged, etc. Again, not really relevant to this point - beyond "it did not go well".

In response, the Banditos, rather than decreasing the number of servers they were hosting (mostly just remove empty duplicates, etc.), they increased the number of duplicate servers - flooding the HSB with more of the same "junk".

As a result of that decision, I removed the Banditos servers from the "community" version of the HSB. Of course, doing so did not stop players from finding and joining their servers, by any one of several other means, primarily:

• Unpatched/unmodified FoF clients (without the community HSB update installed) would still see them listed in the official HSB.
  
• On the full "Find Servers" list.

I believe about this time there also was a escalation of Banditos -vs- Rangers hostility - but the details are vague to me now.


Around this time, my friend became disillusioned with Rangers, felling as if they were not supporting him in his efforts, "war" footing, etc.

Consequently, my friend started yet-another faction. Let's call them the "Vigilantes" - which ostensibly would be focused on:

• Active efforts keep the game alive (i.e. active players only, lots of server meet-ups, promoting new mods, etc.).
  
• Putting effort into "punishing" the Banditos. Mostly by having events organized so often that players would tend to gravitate to aligned servers - instead of Banditos long-established EU servers.
  
• Generating enough "buzz" about the game, so that perhaps it will get the attention of the developer. At which point, hopefully he would re-engage, maybe update the USB or delegate access to it to somebody, and hopefully (in my friend's eyes) "punish" Banditos in some way - delist their servers, ban from forums, maybe issue a game-wide ban.

Personally, I continued to keep a foot in both the Rangers and Vigilantes communities - trying to both:

• Support my friend in his efforts to keep the game going and promote "less problematic" servers, while also
  
• Continue in the Rangers community to help out with any questions about servers, custom maps, server-side modifications, etc.

Unfortunately, over time these two factions became more verbally hostile to each other. Lots more "words", people feeling truly "betrayed", etc.

Neither Banditos nor Vigilantes ever asked me to ban the other from my FoF game-servers - probably knowing I would not have if asked. I tried to keep my bans to for just bad behavior in-game (cheating and/or exploiting in particular). Although I probably did "gag/mute" several players for trying to troll with drama around the schism. They would still play on my servers, just could not troll with drama any more.


About this time, Banditos began moving beyond "words" and started impersonating servers of Vigilantes-aligned server operators (including of course mine). This obviously being to trick FoF players into accidentally joining Banditos game-servers instead of the servers they thought they were joining (mine and others).

As consequence of this, I published an on-line guide in the FoF Steam community hub, instructing FoF players on how to "blacklist" servers in their FoF clients - so that they do not show up in the full "Find Servers" list.

Of course, players that had already installed the "community" HSB update, would not see those servers in the HSB. But, they still would if they used the broader "Find Servers" option - unless "blacklisted" by the player.

I used the IP address of the Banditos servers as an example, with screenshots showing why I also recommended blacklisting those particular servers.

At some point, leadership of Banditos went the extra step to harass Vigilantes members with comments on their Steam profiles, and profiles of their friends. In at least one confirmed case, this included "doxxing" threats - a crime in some jurisdictions.


I do not remember the exact timing. However, at some point, my friend was granted admin access to the FoF Steam Community Hub. In there he started purging posts related to Banditos (another form a perceived "punishment").

Around this time leadership of the Rangers reached out the leadership of the Banditos, and started talking about de-escalating the situation between the two factions.

My friend (perhaps wrongfully) did not agree with this approach and stayed fixed on wanting to "punish" Banditos for prior words and actions.

Perhaps now feeling betrayed by Rangers (with which there had already been lots of "words" being exchanged). he then went so far as to then start purging posts about Rangers promoting/organizing their events, in addition to a bunch of other "words", etc.

At that point in time, I am feeling there is actually plenty of blame to go around. I actually let him know I felt this particular step was going a bit too far. My feeling that basically (again):

"We do not all have to get along, to play the same game, on different servers."
- Weasel (STEAM_0:1:155)

Around the beginning of this month (as of this writing, July 2025), the developer returned - albeit quietly, behind the scenes.

I do not know the reason for his absence, or why he chooses to stay more behind-the scenes. But, again, probably non of my business.

The romantic in me likes to think he is busy fighting the real war in Ukraine or something like that - à la Hemmingway.


As a result of the developer's behind-the-scenes return, several things occurred:

• The "official" HSB server-list finally got updated! Several servers formerly only present in the "community" HSB got added into the "official" HSB.
  
• The Banditos were required to cut-down their server count - getting rid of the "junk" servers flooding the list. Presumably, they would probably have been dropped from the "official" HSB if they did not comply.
  
• My friend (founder of Vigilantes) had his admin access to the FoF Steam community hub revoked. I think he may have been banned out-right at one point from posting to the hub discussions, etc. - but I am unclear on his exact non-admin status at this time.
  
• Leadership of the Rangers community was granted admin access to the FoF Steam community hub.
  
• Leadership of the Rangers community was later delegated access to maintain the HSB! - making it possible to keep the HSB updated, even if the developer remains largely inactive.

At a high level (too late), my thoughts are basically;

• Obviously, having the developer back is a good thing.
  
• I was worried that the developer might not stay engaged, leaving the HSB data to get "stale" (again). But, this concern is largely remediated by his having delegated access to update/maintain the HSB data to somebody else - who is active in the broader FoF community.
  
• I am concerned about at least one of the conditions/rules being discussed for servers being included in the official HSB server-list. Specifically, the one about "idling" on servers. Server operators and their in-game admins/moderators "idle" on the servers (joining, but staying spectator mode, rather than actually playing) all the time. It is kind-of their entire function. I can not really come-up with a good "number" on how many people might be reasonably idling on server at any given time. It is definitely not unusual for a bunch of in-game admins to gather-up on a server, while chatting either in-game or in Discord. Of course, players tend not to join empty servers, preferring instead of to join those with players already connected. That is just how human behavior works with multi-player FPS games. It is not really any sort of "trick" and definitely not a "hack" or "cyberattack". Besides, over time player learn to use the "Favorites" feature and join via that instead of using just the HSB.
  
• I guess you could say that, the goal of "getting the developers attention" (and prompting some action) has been accomplished. Although, it did not work-out for everyone as they might have hoped.
  
• I am concerned over my friend being very upset that things did not go as he might have hoped upon the developers return. However, I do believe some of his expectations were perhaps unrealistic ("punishment" for offenders, etc.).
  
• He has said he was walking away from FoF after this. But, I hope it is just a break to "detox" and come back later.
  
• I have also seen several others state that they are frustrated and leaving FoF. Many have done so before - including myself. Again, I hope they just take a (much needed) break, and come back later.
  
• Honestly, getting so involved in a game-community is probably never a good thing. It will only lead to frustration. Always keep in the back of your mind:
  
  

  "It is only a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game."
  - Weasel (STEAM_0:1:155)

This is where we (or at least I) go from here:

• I am inclined to allow the newly delegated "admins" of the FoF Steam community hub, and (more importantly) official HSB server-list, the opportunity to succeed in moderating the drama and fairly administering the HSB.
  
• To this end, Is may participate in working with them on various efforts where my input might be sought.
  
• I am certainly not going to do anything to sabotage any legitimate efforts to keep the game going, etc.
  
• This situation largely negates the need for my FoF "community" HSB server-list update.
  
• Over the coming days/weeks, I will be updating the related guide on the FoF Steam community hub, indicating that the update is currently no longer required, and it might be best (for now) to uninstall it - to ensure players get the updated "official" HSB server-list.
  
• However, I will not remove the guide or the contents from the GitHub. If for some/any reason the situation where the HSB server-list not being updated again, the update will still be available.
  
• I will also update the "community" HSB server-list to be synchronized (one-time) to the updated "official" HSB server-list. This will allow players who have the "community" update installed, time to get-around to uninstalling it - removing any urgency in uninstalling it.
  
• I feel that there is still a need for my FoF HSB map preview thumbnail update. Consequently, I will keep that in-place, and continue to recommend that FoF players install it. I will continue to maintain the thumbnail archive it uses, as I discover more custom FoF maps.
  
• The Banditos shenanigans seem to have stopped (for now?). I am not 100% confident it will stay that way. But, with being dropped from the "official" HSB (now that it is being maintained again) a possibility, perhaps that era is over? Only time will tell.
  
• Over the coming days/weeks, I will create a new FoF Steam community guide related to blacklisting problematic servers, that will no longer use the Banditos server's IP address as the example. However, should they go rouge again, that might change again.
  
• I will also update the existing blacklisting guide, to refer readers to the new guide, and stating that the problematic behavior has stopped.
  
  

  "I am willing to forgive. But, do not ask me to forget."
  - Weasel (STEAM_0:1:155)

I will use this thread to track updating various documentation that needs changes to reflect the new situation.