incoming teamfortress.tv league

I knew lpkane was stupid, but I didn't think he was this much of an idiot. Hilarious 'joke'.

thx guys

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if they can mine this much, maybe they should allow users to opt into something that puts the $$ mined back into the prize pool lol

Why is this 'off-topic'? It should be stickied in General.

The only relevant piece of information in this story is this:

ESEA ran a bitcoin miner on their users' computers for 17 days without their consent.

This is completely fucked. There is no excuse.

Europe has the i-series LANs though, which have their own cash prize pots so ETF2L doesn't actually need to have its own LAN. We don't have any big LANs like that over here that run TF2, so ESEA is all we got.

There goes my 100 team season...

Has anyone gone through past versions of the client to see when the code was implemented? I have an old version installed on my machine at home, haven't updated in quite a while, I'd be happy to upload it somewhere for someone to look into it.

This is a violation of FEDERAL law, btw. EULA's do not supersede Federal laws - software must function solely for the express purpose the developer states. At no time was the ESEA client listed as a bitcoin miner. If charges haven't been filed against ESEA et al, they will be soon. They're an LLC so there probably won't be huge damages, but if you're on the fence about putting money into ESEA this season I would seriously consider holding off.

Chances are there will be a class action suit filed against ESEA with anyone who installed the client as plantiffs - it'd be pretty open and shut, given the preponderance of evidence already out there. The real question is how long this has been going on and how much they really made off of it.

This raises another question, as well - what were they doing with the client prior to bitcoin mining? Was it keylogging while it was running? Maybe it was relaying torrents or acting as an HTTP or TOR proxy... after I rar that shit up it's coming off my machine for good.

implemented April 14th according to them; thats nowhere near enough time to tax someones GPU to breaking point during the off-season. Why would you even keep the ESEA client running during the off-season fuck me.

But yeah its kind of illegal

ESEA will keep doing this because you never stop kissing their ass, I remember when the extv/tf.tv drama started, you all got on esea's side, because "you couldn't let tf2 die"

Now look what happens... They have taken that trust and fistfucked it for buttcoins.

wake up NA, Esea is no good, Europe has been thriving with etf2l, sure, there are no 10K prizepools and 3 lans/season, but will you actually allow your trust in them to be breached like this without any consequences?

If you're a victim, you can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov
The business information is as follows:
E-Sports Entertainment, LLC 62 Rensselaer Drive, Commack, New York, 11725, 631-804-5253

Taken from Reddit. This shit is disgusting and they need to be sued.

According to them, it was a joke and then it was meant to increase the prize pot... If this goes south, which I can only imagine it will once charges are filed (probably criminal first, if a DA gets their hands on this it'd be an easy win in new media which they love) I'm guessing ESEA admins run, most likely out of the country. Keep in mind if there is an injunction a cease and desist will be filed, which means the the business, the servers, and the client will stop working.

Steps need to be taken asap to protect NA TF2 if you guys want to keep playing. CEVO or UGC needs to step up and create contingency plans to host S14 if ESEA et al is shut down or the admins run.

lol

It's not really the idea that mining for bitcoins to add to the prizepool is bad, it's that they did it without people's consent or knowledge and potentially putting their hardware at risk.

To everyone that is freaking out about legal trouble the only law that I see them breaking is http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2701, correct me if I am wrong.

i like how people are suggesting ugc and cevo as an alternative, good joke. esea is the only tf2 league right now that provides a real cash prize and not keys.

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too bad I'm only a silver demoman and i dont have the cient installed.

http://i.imgur.com/wzBZRFU.jpg

Even if that was true, "for the greater good" is not an acceptable excuse to illicitly use software for means other than those stated in the license agreement. Think of it this way, if you and I were friends and we enter into an agreement to work together that's overtly mutually beneficial to both of us, but the whole time I was just using your services WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE to steal money - would you be ok with that? I never said I'd do it, our contract may have suggested I *could* do it, but the whole time we were working together I was behind your back using all your tools without your permission or knowledge.

It's a blatant violation of i-spy - http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr1525/text

"Whoever intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access to a protected computer, by causing a computer program or code to be copied onto the protected computer, and intentionally uses that program or code in furtherance of another Federal criminal offense shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."

offtopic:First thing I noticed, nice frusciante playlist bro, shadows is an awesome album

From
http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492152&find_comment_number=608#n608

I hope this doesn't kill off high-level TF2. As much as ESEA gives us at the higher levels (and that sort of gives the community a focal point to build from), I think that we as a community are a bit more than just ESEA.

Think about everything that people in this community have done to help things move forward: TF.TV, Tip of the Hats, numerous PUG groups of friends, long-term team captaincies (there are a few like Shwan that have really meant something during their time with us), articles and their writers, Newbie Mixes, mentorships, Fully Charged, casts...

Feel free to call me out as delusional, but I think that there is something more to this community than just ESEA. If we were to lose ESEA, I think that people would get crafty and arrange for something else to act as a proper replacement.

I hope ESEA cleans their act up after this - but I'm not going to consider the death of ESEA to mean the death of TF2.

wtf, does anybody from tf2 actually run the esea client outside of matches? i know this would affect CS players because they actually pug/scrim using the esea client but i doubt more than 5% of the tf2 community was affected by this, if that. seriously the people suggesting UGC as an alternative are clueless. if you think lpkane is a bad admin/owner then obviously you haven't been involved with UGC. infinite makes lpkane look like the most intelligent man in the world. CEVO wouldn't be able to sustain tf2's growth. tf2 needs lans to survive and right now ESEA is the only league that can offer a lan with enough cash prizes to let top teams be able to attend. sorry but there is no better alternative. if esea were to drop tf2 it would die. maybe not a fast death but a slow and painful one. top players would leave one after another until there was no skill pool left. this upcoming season of esea looks to be one of the biggest ones yet, if people care about the growth of the game then playing in esea is the one way to contribute to it.

Only the absolute top of TF2 teams make any money from esea and even the next best teams just break even going to lan. If you try to win open or IM (majority of tf2 players) then you get your money you paid to be playing in the first place back plus a little sugar on top. What exactly are you paying for you ask? you are paying to play on the shittiest tf2 servers in existence and to support the living of slimy admins who barley do their job; and in this case are fine with exploiting their users. ESEA is not a happy place perfect for TF2, anyone thinking this hasn't played in the league for a long enough time. Don't think for a second that ESEA dying wont be followed up by innovative attempts to fill the hole it left (I wont be a very big hole to fill).

I'm not trying to pressure anyone into doing anything.

But if Enigma and TwitchJohn decided to make a league, I'd trust it.

The prize-pool might not be great, and their might not be lans, but I think it'd still be decent.

And hell, if we're willing to donate like crazy to fly 6 folks over to Europe for i49, who knows, we might be willing to donate to give them a bit of a prize pool.

Edit: let me clarify about that first line: Enigma, TwitchJohn, and pretty much anyone who is involved with TFTV probably has way too much on their hands to make a league. This is more just to say that I trust Enigma and TwitchJohn such that if they decided too, I'd support it. That's it; I'm not trying to encourage them make a league; they've got enough shit to deal with.

xsplit also mines bitcoins

The only explanation of how it could be so much worse than OBS