There is no casual tone in the previous post. We are well aware of the seriousness of the situation. Despite team leader passwords being auto-generated by default, we strongly recommend that users that changed the auto-generated password to a custom one, if used by other services, change it immediately.

UGC's login process was going to be changed during this off-season. However, our developers have been actively working on its new implementation since yesterday afternoon.

There is no point for us in minimizing the consequences this might lead to or mentioning other companies with similar practices. This is a serious situation and as for any breach, affected users should take precautionary measures immediately.

Earlier today, at 15:54 EST, an unauthorized party gained access to a UGC admin account and sent an email to approximately 400-500 team leaders. Ten minutes after the email was sent, our Admin Panel was taken down as a precautionary measure. The whole ugcleague.com domain, as well as the ugcleague.net domain, on which our Forums are hosted, were taken down shortly afterwards. Early investigations indicate that the unauthorized party had access to our Admin Panel for a period between 30 and 60 minutes. Only the UGC Admin Panel was breached. We have no indication of the attacker gaining access to our database.

During that time-frame, the attacker might have had access to leader passwords. There is no available data dumps or massive download features embedded in the Admin Panel. Any access to leader passwords, if any, was done one at a time. Team Leader passwords are a series of alpha-numerical & special characters auto-generated by the UGC website. However, if you changed the auto-generated password to a custom one or if you use the auto-generated password on other services, we recommend that you take precautionary measures by changing them.

Our developers have been hard at work since the breach this afternoon and are currently implementing additional security measures to the Website. Among other things, passwords have been invalidated and leaders will be required to input a new password upon their next login. Additionally, the new login system will use hashed passwords, in addition to salting.

The past few weeks have not been easy for UGC, however, we wanted to thank you for your continuous support and understanding.

Have a good evening,
UGC Admins

It's been tried in the past with mitigated success

http://scrim.me/
http://scrim.tf/

Have you not seen Inception...

Do you have a camera mounted to your head?

Cold World was asked to provide STV demos and moon to provide his POVs in the hour following their match on Monday. Both parties cooperated with UGC immediately. The demos are currently being reviewed by our AC team.

Additionally, Cold World has decided that they would be dropping moon from their roster. Cold World's decision is independent and has no impact on this on-going investigation.

Poster with roster:

http://i.imgur.com/2rHgICu.png

Fixed, thanks springrolls!

I'd like to bump this thread to remind you that the Polls will close on January 12th @ 23:59 EST. There's a poll open to all TF2 players, feel free to vote!

Quote from here.

These are the results from the community poll so far, if anyone is interested.

http://i.imgur.com/N2108DV.png

PlayComp.TF is a personal project that I started before joining UGC. The website was released around UGC Summer Season so I put it in emphasis. The website started with the idea that TF2 resources for new players are sometimes scattered in multiple places and that a visually appealing website always makes a better first impression.

The new discussions regarding Valve resparked interest and passion from the community in general and when I linked the website, it kind of exploded. I was pleasantly surprised and am always open to suggestions. A few have already been given and I try to implement them as fast as possible when I can find a few minutes here and there. The latest request was to add the Newbie Mixes, I will definitely do that before their event on Friday. Some are simply too much in my opinion, obviously people want to list everything possible, but the aim of the website is also to be simple and to not have too much clutter.

Feel free to add me!

I believe you confused what I said. I said that UGC will always welcome players across all divisions to express their opinions. There is usually a lower participation rate from them however (and it is true in most of divisions in general) and with that in mind, the idea of this Poll was to reach out to everyone in an easier way for us and for them.

As mentioned in the earlier post, UGC has always listened to players across all divisions. It was such an important focus for UGC that at one point, vocal players in the upper divisions voiced their concerns/interest into having a bigger say in Highlander matters. We agreed that everyone's opinion mattered, but also that Highlander Platinum players would allow us to understand some topics under a different angle. Thus, we found a middle-ground by 1) Listening to players across all divisions like we've always done and 2) Allow Highlander Platinum players to discuss (they don't have the final say) league matters with the Platinum Council. We have the possibility to target a specific division with this poll, why would we open and promote it to all divisions if it didn't matter to us?

@reilly Thanks for your feedback

Regarding the Community Poll answers: We didn't want the Poll to be too big, which could have discouraged players to complete the Poll. What kind of questions would you like to see in a future poll?

Commands listed on the Website: Good idea, I will add those when I have some time

Add a !twitch whatever-streamer-name feature: That would definitely be the most intuitive feature. When it was implemented, I was afraid of the logistics. The way streams are listed on websites like reddit.com/r/tf2 or TF2 Outpost (I'm guessing TF.TV works in a similar way) is they query the Twitch API for a specific game and simply list it. In this case, it would have to query a list of all streamers people have added, sometimes for nothing.

There's also the fact that the feature is currently only used by 30 players. If it becomes popular, I can definitely look into implementing the feature.

Have the Bot automatically grab Steam IDs from a server: I've actually tested it out before and it wouldn't be too hard to implement. However, with a public IP, you can only query player names and their points. In order to grab the Steam IDs, you would need RCON password. I don't know if people will be willing to provide that.

@tetromino There are no algorithms to weight in based on player experience. The data associated with a player (his divisions in UGC) are simply saved in order to give us a better understanding of where each division stands regarding specific matters.

Like for anything, the more experience you have, the more representative and thoughtful your understanding of a subject. UGC has always taken players' opinions across all divisions into consideration. It was actually one of the things we were "criticized" for; that higher-level players should be the ones taking decisions as they have a better understanding of the game. That definitely holds some truth and with that in mind, we found a middle-ground 2 seasons ago by implementing the Platinum Council. Leaders from Platinum teams are invited to regular meetings to discuss league matters in a more private setting.

As mentioned, players across all divisions are welcome to post on our Forums. However, there is definitely a lower participation rate from them. It might be because of various reasons, perhaps as simple as them not knowing about the UGC Forums. Either way, polling is a great & simple way to reach out to players and to quantify data that would usually be scattered in multiple places.

http://i.imgur.com/AKWCC3a.png

Hello everyone,

UGC has just launched a website called UGC Polls that will allow to survey not only players of the league, but also community members in general. There's currently a Community Poll open and everyone is invited to participate. The results will be disclosed and could lead to even greater projects in the community!

http://i.imgur.com/g2maQXC.png

I'd also like to present you another project that has been in development for the past few months. There was a BETA mainly targeted for UGC Players, but since there are also a few features that might come in handy for anyone, the last 100 friend spots of the UGC Help Bot are now open to any community member. The final release of the Bot, which will be able to handle virtually an unlimited number of friends, is scheduled in January if all goes well.

There are 2 features in particular that you might find interesting

• Game Updates Notifications: Be notified when a TF2 Update is released
  
• Twitch Notifications: Be notified when your favorite Twitch streamers go LIVE! Feel free to suggest any other streamers to add to the list.

-----------------

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, don't hesitate!

So many UGC events in Upcoming Events oh my gawd!

Good luck to everyone, looking forward to this amazing final.

Hi everyone,

UGC is always open to criticism. Us being a free league does not mean you should expect or accept lower standards from us. We should should always strive and aspire for the best. That will hold truth whatever situation the TF2 competitive community faces and whatever challenges we face.

I used to be in your shoes and I can still see myself in them. I joined the UGC admin team because its community motivated me. That holds truth for all TF2 admins. We do our job because of our passion for the game. We do it because we realize how amazing this community can be.

I have always considered myself fairly active in the community. Like many of you, I have never been shy about expressing my opinion about UGC. Like you, I would be disappointed to see that I spent my time posting paragraphs and paragraphs of suggestions or constructive criticism which in the end, to me, seemed like it ended up falling on deaf ears. Some of those topics were actually brought up in an interview that I conducted with them here, months prior I officialy joined the admin team.

Quite frankly, when I joined UGC, I expected the worst. I understood that they put hours and hours of their free time, sacrificing personal hobbies, to give to the community. That is a fact that no one can contest. Like many of you however, what I had trouble understanding is why they didn't post and, quite bluntly, didn't seem to care.

It would have been a pain for me to see that they didn't care; that I had decided to commit my time to an organization who did what they did for the wrong reasons. That they might have started it out of sheer passion but that by now, they simply did it because they felt like it was an obligation. But it was the opposite and, unfortunately, that was an even painful truth for me to see.

I'm posting this on a personal level, I have not been asked by the Head Admins to do so. Trust me when I tell you that I'm not looking for anyone's pity. But it truly breaks my heart and I do become a little emotional when I see that behind each decision and criticism UGC faces, there is an explanation. It pains me to see that if we could clone our Head Admins and send them to answer all of these criticisms, then maybe it would help the community understand our position better. I'm not saying UGC has never made any mistakes. We all do. What I'm saying is those mistakes were all made due to a valid reasoning and with all parties' interest in mind.

I will end this post by saying that UGC has heard your concerns. And that we do care. snowblindfrog has posted here to say so, after we were able to confirm some initial details. I know that it seems like a short message, but the amount of words is not representative of its value.

Thanks to everyone and cheers to the TF2 community,
Mamboulay