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A decade-old Steam bug

blog.freudenjmp.com

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Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#41

Post by freudenjmp »

iancarroll wrote: post #19

I believe the flow in the diagram is what Steam calls Session Tickets and is a bit more nuanced. The game client requests session tickets from Steam's server, then it provides the game server with a ticket proving they are a given Steam ID. The game server then has to go online to Steam's web API and verify it to ensure it has not been used multiple times or tampered with. It sounds like the CS2 client is not handlin…

Thank you very much. Indeed this is the technically correct flow, which was not so important for the explanation of the issue. I understand I should have mentioned it though to make it more clear. Much appreciated!

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#42

Post by freudenjmp »

wokwokwok wrote: post #21

Great write up! My only comment here is that the trail in the article and the conclusion don't quite make sense (well, they do, but you've kind of glossed over it slightly): > The way Counter-Strike is started: the blame factor is 90% But also: > We could confirm that players world wide are facing the issue outside of Esportal and thought it indeed is caused by some maintenance in the middle of the night in Washingto…

Thank you for your comment. I agree there is some hole in the details of my explanation/conclusion attempt, but I am not sure if your attempt to explain it is correct either. I am not saying yours wrong or something, but players have had this issue in CS:GO unrelated to the maintenance window. In CS2 however we only observed it in the maintenance windows.

So maybe in the end the bugs in CS:GO and CS2 are of different nature, but I will not be able to ever proof this as CS:GO has been replaced by CS2.

Sad, but thanks! :-)

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#43

Post by freudenjmp »

jvanderbot wrote: post #39

Good post. I have a particular style from having Strunk and White shoved into my brain, that I prefer, so you can throw this comment away if you want. But if you'd like feedback, I'd suggest brutally editing down the text to be more direct and concise. You can certainly write long form, but after a few minutes it started to pile on ancillary and anecdotal paragraphs and I lost the main thread pretty quick. Add to tha…

Thank you, valuable advice.

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#44

Post by freudenjmp »

gortok wrote: post #31

In some paragraphs you put “a hat on a hat”. That is, you pile on the snark on top of an already meme-y paragraph and it feels like “too much” of something that works better subtly. As others have stated, get to the point sooner.

Thanks!

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#45

Post by freudenjmp »

korhojoa wrote: post #22

This was a great read. I wonder if the reason for the game client surprise crashing could be investigated the same way? Do the executable integrity checks run during runtime? What if one of those fails while it’s running, do you get a different disconnection message? I feel like this should be rewarded in the same way as the GTA V takes forever to load-writeup. https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-t…

What surprise crashing are you referencing to? Crashes can be investigated in theory but Valve sends crash reports to their servers instead of storing them on disk. It's harder to analysis if you didn't catch a crash live with a debugger attached. And that is hard because of their Anti-Cheat (VAC) though not impossible (disable VAC).

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#46

Post by freudenjmp »

yreg wrote: post #14

> I'd love to get feedback You start the article with a tl;dr for people who came from google searching for a solution for the issue. How considerate! But then you proceed to tell them what not to do and hide the actionable advice in a single sentence within a kilometer long article :) My suggestion would be to add the workaround to the tl;dr.

Thank you, very true. I edited a better tl;dr.

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#47

Post by freudenjmp »

idbehold wrote: post #29
yreg wrote: post #14

> I'd love to get feedback You start the article with a tl;dr for people who came from google searching for a solution for the issue. How considerate! But then you proceed to tell them what not to do and hide the actionable advice in a single sentence within a kilometer long article :) My suggestion would be to add the workaround to the tl;dr.

Seriously, it's like a cruel joke. TL;DR - don't do this, instead read the entire article!

I think this was the result of me putting so much effort into my first article and at the moment of release I didn't want to "throw it away" with a single sentence solution. In hindsight this way of thinking was wrong and that I could have done better and I agree it's like a bad joke. Fixed!

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#48

Post by freudenjmp »

rkunde wrote: post #16

Great write up, but it left me with a few questions: * Is levelloadloop only executed when the game launches, not when joining a server and loading the map? * If the issues is that the loop is shut down before the steam auth process is started, why would the maintenance-related slowness matter?

Thanks for your feedback!

1. Yes, only when the game launches. I think the naming of the loop is related to single player games like Portal, where this way of naming makes much more sense because you have frictionless changing of levels there.

2. You are right that is a hole in the explanation and I do not know the answer, but it is definitely a fix for the problem. Likely the details of my conclusion are incomplete but at this point I don't feel like digging deeper because it's not necessary at the moment.

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#49

Post by freudenjmp »

pityJuke wrote: post #27

> This program covers the Steam platform and current games developed and published by Valve. Please review the reward tables and scope descriptions below. [...] > Effective 6/14/2023 10 AM PDT, CS:GO is out-of-scope for new reports. Reports for CS2 Limited Test are currently out-of-scope. Valve suck at security, sure, but with the reading of the wider HOne description, I'd peronally read it as in scope. They haven't…

Given that Valve doesn't reply to simple requests like this to ask if it is in-scope, I can't know that. Though I agree with your conclusion. Makes sense!

Re: A decade-old Steam bug

#50

Post by freudenjmp »

j5155 wrote: post #11
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #5

I feel that drawing weapons has gotten slower in CS2. I wish they dropped the 'pull back on the charging handle' every time you draw the gun. (and I miss my custom sprays from CS: Source). But apart from that, even though I've played CS since 1.4 I have never ever had the bug mentioned above.

If I understand the blog post correctly, this bug only happens when you play CS2 during Washington nighttime.

Yes, correct for CS2 as of time of writing. Not true for CS:GO or CS:S where it could happen any time of the day.
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