How do you report L4D2 modded servers that dox you

[deranged]

There are some particular L4D2 modded servers, upon joining, that dont hesitate to drop your ip adress x.x.x.x, or literally what country your from, region and adress. Doxing in any form (harmful intent or not) is ILLEGAL. I think it's even stated in the general TOS of steam community:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4045-USHJ-3810&l=english.

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I don't consent to have my information publicly shared in a lobby and noone should accept this behaviour. I searched through one of those modded servers steam groups and they have literally one of the most childlike homophobic, racist, admins.

Such unstable individuals shouldn't have ANYONE'S ip adresses or information, but it's kinda a gray area when you join their domain but the thing is, I auto connect to these cockroach servers. This game just had an uncensored update for Germany for ♥♥♥♥ sake, how hard is it to have a functional good server browsers like: CS:GO, Garry's Mod.

I've tried to look for ways to block these dumb servers but without success.

Do I really have to buy a VPN to safely play a game that came from 2009?

I know this game is old but it has still to this date a very active playerbase (me included, I play almost daily). And the moderators of steam are responsive to any racist names ingame (actively changing racist names into 79459540200309: something like that)

Like is there any moderation of these things or is it just ignored?

[Sharpie The Dragon]

There's nothing much you can really do, although I've had the same exact experience along with many others on a few particular servers. You could try complaining to Steam support with evidence, but don't expect much from Valve, they're pretty ignorant to user safety if you ask me.

Originally posted by nutsack:

Do I really have to buy a VPN to safely play a game that came from 2009?

Yes. Left 4 Dead 2 is mostly unsupported. There is some good news however, probably in a couple months, there's going to be an update where 'quick-play' puts it in offically only servers. Or that you can actually choose this time.

[deranged]

Originally posted by Sharpie The Dergun:

There's nothing much you can really do, although I've had the same exact experience along with many others on a few particular servers. You could try complaining to Steam support with evidence, but don't expect much from Valve, they're pretty ignorant to user safety if you ask me.

Originally posted by nutsack:

Do I really have to buy a VPN to safely play a game that came from 2009?

Yes. Left 4 Dead 2 is mostly unsupported. There is some good news however, probably in a couple months, there's going to be an update where 'quick-play' puts it in offically only servers. Or that you can actually choose this time.

Wow actual informative comment, didn't expect that, thanks, I will look into that

[**DeiRowtag]

Same experience here their owners even share the info right here in the forums

[Red™]

The cancerous leech will be salted and gone soon, don’t worry

[RainingMetal]

Just one of many reasons why Community Servers are a plague. Stick to Official Dedicated ones for the vanilla experience, or if you want to use mods go local.

[The Front Man]

If you are starting the game from lobby, always use Official Dedicated servers option, instead of third party. This will prevent joining those servers by you.

Now if you do a quick match, while the map is loading, quickly open the console and type status - this will tell you if you're being connected to offical or third party server.

If you see it's a third party server, again quickly type disconnect before the whole map is loaded and you will be out of the server before it does anything to you. Beware though: Some servers 'announce' who has connected and your Steam ID will be shown up once you load in, so try to disconnect right away.

I absolutely never join these modded servers for this same purpose - exposing IP addresses and installing malicious content without anyone's consent.

[Tsuey]

Originally posted by Sharpie The Dergun:

There is some good news however, probably in a couple months, there's going to be an update where 'quick-play' puts it in offically only servers. Or that you can actually choose this time.

True with the usual Valve Time disclaimer. Apparently it's easy to lock Quick Match behind lobby server type, which that can be easily circumvented, but harder to do it with ignoring the lobby setting... so eventually I'll ask about a progress update on this.

Originally posted by HOLD GME STOCK:

Now if you do a quick match, while the map is loading, quickly open the console and type status - this will tell you if you're being connected to offical or third party server.

If you see it's a third party server, again quickly type disconnect before the whole map is loaded and you will be out of the server before it does anything to you.

I do the exact same thing even though sometimes I miss it from load hiccups. I've heard from more wrinkly brain types that they bind it to F keys instead, which allows disconnect binds to work during load screens:

bind F6 disconnect

[NgCOCKFIGHT λ]

Originally posted by RainingMetal:

Just one of many reasons why Community Servers are a plague. Stick to Official Dedicated ones for the vanilla experience, or if you want to use mods go local.

That's incorrect. Community servers are the difference between 2 years of support Vs 12. It's community servers that keep this game going, not the official ones.

[RainingMetal]

Originally posted by NgCOCKFIGHT λ:

Originally posted by RainingMetal:

Just one of many reasons why Community Servers are a plague. Stick to Official Dedicated ones for the vanilla experience, or if you want to use mods go local.

That's incorrect. Community servers are the difference between 2 years of support Vs 12. It's community servers that keep this game going, not the official ones.

And yet the official ones are far more reliable, less laggy, and less prone to having mods that actually make the game worse instead of better, let alone the risk of malicious doxxing.

[Tsuey]

Originally posted by RainingMetal:

Originally posted by NgCOCKFIGHT λ:

That's incorrect. Community servers are the difference between 2 years of support Vs 12. It's community servers that keep this game going, not the official ones.

And yet the official ones are far more reliable, less laggy, and less prone to having mods that actually make the game worse instead of better, let alone the risk of malicious doxxing.

Both of you are right, or, at least I can say that I've never felt a Coop / custom campaign server to be "malicious", but Versus servers are overwhelmingly more likely to throw away semblance of quality.

[Red™]

Originally posted by Tsuey:

Originally posted by Sharpie The Dergun:

There is some good news however, probably in a couple months, there's going to be an update where 'quick-play' puts it in offically only servers. Or that you can actually choose this time.

True with the usual Valve Time disclaimer. Apparently it's easy to lock Quick Match behind lobby server type, which that can be easily circumvented, but harder to do it with ignoring the lobby setting... so eventually I'll ask about a progress update on this.

Originally posted by HOLD GME STOCK:

Now if you do a quick match, while the map is loading, quickly open the console and type status - this will tell you if you're being connected to offical or third party server.

If you see it's a third party server, again quickly type disconnect before the whole map is loaded and you will be out of the server before it does anything to you.

I do the exact same thing even though sometimes I miss it from load hiccups. I've heard from more wrinkly brain types that they bind it to F keys instead, which allows disconnect binds to work during load screens:

bind F6 disconnect

I just bind it to f10. It's easy to remember that way

[deranged]

Originally posted by HOLD GME STOCK:

If you are starting the game from lobby, always use Official Dedicated servers option, instead of third party. This will prevent joining those servers by you.

Now if you do a quick match, while the map is loading, quickly open the console and type status - this will tell you if you're being connected to offical or third party server.

If you see it's a third party server, again quickly type disconnect before the whole map is loaded and you will be out of the server before it does anything to you. Beware though: Some servers 'announce' who has connected and your Steam ID will be shown up once you load in, so try to disconnect right away.

I absolutely never join these modded servers for this same purpose - exposing IP addresses and installing malicious content without anyone's consent.

I didn't knew the status trick in console, and about Official Dedicated servers option only. I use quick match to join noob games to help out lol. Thanks!

[R󠀡F]

i hate those servers that force certain gamemode. trying to join campaign only to find out its VS or realism.

[deranged]

Originally posted by R󠀡F:

i hate those servers that force certain gamemode. trying to join campaign only to find out its VS or realism.

Yup i hate that too

[deranged]

It seems if I open console in loading screen my game crashes unfortunately.