Suggestion: Matchmaking and lobby servers should not display an IP, and probably not be searchable either

Basically everything in the title - tf2 matchmaking servers are unjoinable via IP anyway, so showing the IP and player list makes it a lot easier for bad people to find players and ddos their servers, and does nothing for everyone else as you're simply unable to join them or do anything with it

A pretty easy way to skip any valve mm server would be to just skip any server name matching
smt923 wrote:
/Valve Matchmaking Server \(.+\)/

I realise the goal of having server single server is a relatively harmless one, but people are using this site to hunt down streamers and attack their servers, and there really is no benefit for anyone else in showing MM/lobby servers, so I hope you'll consider it

Moved: Not a bug

chimaera500 wrote:
Moved: Not a bug


The bug reports section says "Open GameTracker.com bugs and feature requests.", if that isn't the place for this (it should probably have it's description edited then) then I guess this should go in Ideas & Requests rather than General (that one specifically says not for GT discussion) - but I put this in bug reports because of the description

If one has serious intensions for a DDOS, they will find a way to do it. Hiding "matchmaking", "lobby" servers or whatever IPs will not help getting rid of the threat. At least that's how the protocols work, game client connects to a remote server, what might be the remote server IP? Hmm, and all it takes is a google search to find a way to do it. So Valve's "matchmaking" or whatever it is has no difference than any other server, they follow the same rules that the connection protocols allow them to do.

Also why you suggesting this just for the Valve's servers? Doesn't this apply for 3rd party servers too? Or these 3rd parties somehow like to get DDOSed? Or would this be the end of GameTracker? It's a mystery one might say, but the answers for getting rid of DDOSes lies within the servers itself.

hazh wrote:
If one has serious intensions for a DDOS, they will find a way to do it. Hiding "matchmaking", "lobby" servers or whatever IPs will not help getting rid of the threat. At least that's how the protocols work, game client connects to a remote server, what might be the remote server IP? Hmm, and all it takes is a google search to find a way to do it. So Valve's "matchmaking" or whatever it is has no difference than any other server, they follow the same rules that the connection protocols allow them to do.

Also why you suggesting this just for the Valve's servers? Doesn't this apply for 3rd party servers too? Or these 3rd parties somehow like to get DDOSed? Or would this be the end of GameTracker? It's a mystery one might say, but the answers for getting rid of DDOSes lies within the servers itself.

Obviously I'm not claiming this will stop ddos attacks on servers, but for a person who is not on the server, when valve eventually implements ip/server information hiding from their matchmaking servers in tf2 like they do in all their others game there won't be a way to get a server address apart from sites like gametracker - the reason this is important is because gametracker allows people to search for a streamer and find their server and take it offline, where as anybody else using gametracker gains no benefit from seeing the servers IP as they're unable to join it anyway

I'm suggesting just doing it from valve servers because it is obviously a lot harder to find out which servers are lobby servers, but I don't see a reason why they couldn't have a private method of sending ip ranges or something to GT for their servers to not show up

Yes it's still possible, but this will make it much harder, if an attacker has no way to find the server a streamer is on in the first place, then they simply have no way they could find the server's information to attack it, and seeing as players can't join these servers anyway there is no reason for these servers to be displayed at all, as is already the case with dota and csgo (aka, this is already done for valve games where valve has implemented server information hiding which will be coming to tf2 eventually anyway, but there's still no reason to show them even now)

hazh wrote:
game client connects to a remote server, what might be the remote server IP? Hmm, and all it takes is a google search to find a way to do it.

I never once claimed this will stop attacks when the attacker is joining the server themselves, but when an attacker's only methods are finding the servers through a site like gametracker then yes this will infact stop them from being able to find the servers IP, seeing as valve will soon be hiding these server's information from server browser/steam friends as they already do in dota2 and csgo (and this is why those are already hidden from gametracker) it makes sense to get the ball rolling and hide all valve matchmaking servers as there is no benefit from displaying them - the ONLY benefit serving those servers information right now is for malicious intentions

Hello,
is it possible to remove or hide valve matchmaking servers? Because while we sorted by country we can see something like this: https://www.gametracker.com/search/tf2/PL/? - it is really annoying while searching servers.

Greetings

Suggested and discussed in the past.

https://www.gametracker.com/forums/forum.php?site=1&thread=147752

I can add that these servers are sometimes added by users and it's at the discretion of the rightful owner to claim and delete them.

Servers are not deleted upon request.

Though this is a suggestion to remove all TF2 Valve MM servers - users / players still search for them.

Edit - Thread has been merged with the one mentioned.