Kill Valve in 360 TF2 News • News • Eurogamer.net

News Xbox 360

Also, lag patch due soon.

You might imagine they fancy a night off after ten years making it, but the boys and girls at Valve are actually quite happy playing Team Fortress 2 - and now they want to take you on.

With this in mind, they will be celebrating the launch of The Orange Box on Xbox 360 this Friday by going online to make you cry some more. So if you're a Gold subscriber, make a note of the 12 gamertags below. Between 3 and 7pm PDT (11pm to 2am in the UK unless my maths sucks) you should be able to invite or be invited by any one of them.

Beware though that some people are experiencing a fair bit of lag playing TF2 on Xbox Live ahead of launch (EGTV's own Johnny Minkley reckons it's diabolical), and that a patch (sorry, Title Update) is racing its way through certification to sort out the problems.

They reportedly arise when attempting to join six-versus-six or eight-versus-eight matches where "connection to host lost" messages pop up often and games become impossible to play due to lag. 1UP reports that Valve expects that the patch designed to sort this out will be released as soon as the weekend or early next week, so if you do suffer, hang in there. You can always use the time to play Half-Life 2: Episode Two or Portal, after all.

If you fancy braving it anyway, the 12 Valve gamertags you need to note down can be found by reading beyond the end of this sentence.

gamewithdev1 (Matt W.- Level Designer)
ValveArtist1 (Matthew S. - Artist)
ValveAnim (Matthew R. - Animator)
ValveProg1 (Vitaliy - Programmer)
ValveProg2 (Adrian - Programmer)
ValveProg3 (Kerry - Programmer)
ValveProg4 (Robin - Programmer)
ValveProg5 (Jim - Programmer)
ValveLevelDes2 (Dave - Level Designer)
ValveArtist2 (Nick - Artist)
ValveLevelDes3 (Scott - Level Designer)
ValveProg6 (David - Programmer)
ValveWriter (Chet - Writer)

Related games
- Team Fortress 2
  
  Xbox 360
  
  Follow
- The Orange Box
  
  Xbox 360
  
  Follow

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

Comments (42) Latest comment 4 years ago

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GamesConnoisseur #1 4 years ago

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Lag?!! Should have sorted it before release. I think Steam platform have spoilt it for Value as they can just update (patch) willynilly but need to be more careful for console versions.
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Darren #2 4 years ago

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I've been hearing a lot about lag in Team Fortress 2. Why is it that so many Xbox 360 games suffer from lag? I don't play 360 games online much but I remember Call of Duty 2, Saints Row, DOA4, Prey and The Darkness being absolute lag-fests to the point of being near unplayable yet I've never encountered any lag in any PS3 games I've played online (Warhawk, Ridge Racer 7, Resistance, MotorStorm, etc.).
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mkreku #3 4 years ago

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Because Xbox Live is so much better and costs so much more? No wait, that's not right..
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Dezm0nd #4 4 years ago

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I'm also experiencing a crash when Portal loads!!!

Valve sort it out, it's an amazing box

*plays TF2*
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Runtime #5 4 years ago

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@Darren

Most (actually all) Xbox games depend on one of the players being host. If thier connection is not up to the job you'll get lag. Most PS3 games have dedicated servers running from massive internet pipes.
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Runtime #6 4 years ago

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@mkreku

Lag is not Xbox Live's fault. It is more down to the net code of the games.
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Restart #7 4 years ago

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I get a latency of around 12 whenever I play TF:2 on my PC, it's unplayable I tell ya!!
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Darren #8 4 years ago

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It's not a very good advert for Xbox Live, a paid subscription service, if a free one on another console does the job better, is it? Xbox Live might have Friends Lists and ease of use but it means zilch if the online experience is laggy as it just spoils the whole thing. Microsoft really need to address this as every other game on the 360 seems prone to some online issue or other, usually lag, and it's not good enough that a game has to be patched on or shortly after its release to address it. I think they should have open betas for all major online releases so they can fix it prior to release. Halo 3 didn't seem too bad for lag when I tried it briefly and I doubt (or rather hope) that Call of Duty 4 will either.
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rashes #9 4 years ago

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At least they are patching it and not ignoring the problem like Halo 3. Several of us are having horrendous problems and can;t party up with each other.
And we've never had probs before.
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lambtron #10 4 years ago

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Lag happens sometimes in any online game - its inevitable given the nature of the internet. A well-coded game will insulate you from this as much as possible (Halo2 and 3 being very good examples of this). I once played Halo2 over a mobile phone connection with a rubbish bitrate and it was still playable. The PS3 being so much better in this respect smells like hearsay and coincidence - since they can't remove the underlying problem - the internet!

Let's see how well it performs when there are actually a lot of online games (and gamers for that matter since there aren't exactly tens of millions of PS3s out there).
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lambtron #11 4 years ago

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"At least they are patching it and not ignoring the problem like Halo 3. Several of us are having horrendous problems and can;t party up with each other.
And we've never had probs before. "

Sounds like a port-forwarding problem. I had this problem too but once I configured my router correctly I have not had any problems since.

And just so you know - that is not something they can patch, since its a hardware and not a software problem.

Edited by 1 at 17/10/07 @ 10:58
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Runtime #12 4 years ago

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@Darren

I couldn't agree more. As we are paying for Live we should have dedicated servers. The only game i can recall having these on X360 is Battlefield 2.

The problem is many players in the UK do not have adequate enough ADSL connections to host anymore than 8 player matches.
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rashes #13 4 years ago

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@lambtron

We can party up but the lag is generally so bad when we do it's pointless. And these are mates that I've played COD4 and other games with no problems.
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cyacomini #14 4 years ago

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aDSL technology is killing online games - especially on the 360 with it's peer-to-peer hosting method. Sure, I've got an 8mb connection like most others - but thats down speed. Up speed (important in Multiplayer games) is usually capped at 150-250kbs.
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rashes #15 4 years ago

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"Sure, I've got an 8mb connection like most others"

They do?
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cyacomini #16 4 years ago

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Yes.
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Putty-Man #17 4 years ago

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I've been playin on Live for years and with the exception of early Pro Evo games everything else has been fine.

Actually I do remember some lag popping up in Return to Castle Woflenstein....oh no hold on that was me running Napster on my PC at the time.

Edited by 1 at 17/10/07 @ 11:17
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lennon #18 4 years ago

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I have played over 150 xbox live games in halo 3and there has been 2 instances of games playing badly due to lag in that time.

I dont think you can blame live especially and its certainly not something that other networks dont suffer from. Ive had one or two laggy games in Warhawk as well.

Edited by 1 at 17/10/07 @ 11:22
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GamesConnoisseur #19 4 years ago

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8mb, 4mb or even bog standard 1 mb do no good if upload speed is paltry 150 kb or worse during peak time!

UK is terrible, terrible place for uploading compared to other countries. The country is conned into believe bigger downloading is the just thing. Sure for films, music etc but gaming need damn good upload as well.

So the problem would affect PS3 as well but dedicated servers would help to minimise the internet upload bottle factor.

I do see Darren point about paying up but yet in practice our own X360 is providing the server workload! Most of time online on X360 is reasonably good, yet to encounter any prob with Halo 3 which is to be expected.

All online gaming (any platform) will benefit from upload being upped to 0.5 mb as a standard.

Call your ISP/broadband provider and give them hell!
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nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #20 4 years ago

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Haha. If you knew how much those dedicated BF2 servers cost EA (not MS) you might realise why so few publishers use them.
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bonker #21 4 years ago

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Portal far and away the highlight of TOB for me but there are bugs relating to achievements - hope they sort those out soon too ...
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Putty-Man #22 4 years ago

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To be fair most 360 releases run their online games off central servers these days. The host simply picks the settings. For eg. if the host in a Halo match drops out the game continues.

Also on the ADSL front, yes upload speed is important, but there are other factors. Latency is the single most important thing for a good gaming connection. This varies with ISP as well as with a million other factors. I know BT use interleaving on their DSL lines and this doesnt help latency one bit (tho it does help overall thoughput).
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nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #23 4 years ago

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That's incorrect, Putty Man - Halo 3 is peer-to-peer like everything else.

It just has some nifty code to make another player the host in the event the host drops out.
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rashes #24 4 years ago

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@nick_f

Yeah.. I think COD does the same.
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Putty-Man #25 4 years ago

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Oh really, that is nifty, I stand corrected.

I'd read about the central server thing somewhere and assumed it to be true as it sounded feasible.

Out of interest how do other networks, Playstation for example, handle packet transfer for games?
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nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #26 4 years ago

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There is no real difference. Real world internet conditions are a great leveller.
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Rirekon #27 4 years ago

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It just ain't TF2 without at least 10 players per side *loves the PC version*
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L42yB #28 4 years ago

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People need to stop blaming Xbox Live. The servers are only responsible for matchmaking. Once you in a game, all Xbox Live games are all Peer-Peer with a Host/Clients setup. This is exactly the same way steam works (unless u use a dedicated server) so any difference in lag between the PC and the Xbox 360 versions is down to their own network code, not the live servers.
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L42yB #29 4 years ago

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@nick_f - The code for Host Migration is built into the Xbox 360 SDK. Devs only need to take advantage of it. They are just lazy...
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Yossarian #30 4 years ago

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I have DSL 4/4 back home but nobody ever lets me host games
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mkreku #31 4 years ago

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So why do people PAY for Xbox Live if all it does is matchmaking..?
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lambtron #32 4 years ago

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"So why do people PAY for Xbox Live if all it does is matchmaking..?"

I assume that was a rhetorical question as its widely known what else it does...
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krokomkiller #33 4 years ago

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"With this in mind, they will be celebrating the launch of The Orange Box on Xbox 360 this Friday"
I got my copy yesterday

Edited by 1 at 17/10/07 @ 16:01
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Laserbream #34 4 years ago

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If you've got a spare couple of grand, sort yourself out with an SDSL line. Also, lend me a tenner.
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Hangman #35 4 years ago

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LAG on live is mainly due to people's NAT settings being STRICT or MODERATE, they need to change them to OPEN but most people can't be arsed to do a 5 minute setup, so they suffer from lag.
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drumm23 #36 4 years ago

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The fact that Valve are PATCHING the problem indicates that the problem is theirs and not inherent to the XBox Live service. How difficult is that for people to understand?
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GamesConnoisseur #37 4 years ago

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The worse crime for lagging is not internet as there are people with good ISP and set up who still get lags, this is due to NAT via router as mentioned above. This is because the router is not being configured properly then it will interfere with gaming.

http://www.portforward.co m is a good starting point, find your router (make/provider) then look for Xbox Live setting info to config your router to allow for free access (no interferences from router) which will help prevent the worse of lags.

EDIT: There are other reasons as well, but NAT is usually overlooked and something that can be quickly resolved.

Edited by 1 at 17/10/07 @ 19:53
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JavaJawaUK #38 4 years ago

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Do it for the PC too . . .
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JANER #39 4 years ago

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Not a trace of lag on PV version, was a few otehr teething problems but Valve released "updates" regularly.
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VMerken #40 4 years ago

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You think UK has it bad? Try Belgium.

Here's the ELITE DSL offer from a major Belgian provider:

17Mbps down
400Kbps up
Monthly volume limit: 35Gb

That's about the best it can get in the land of chips. And all this for the low, low price of 62,15 Euros a month, a mere pittance wouldn't you say? Don't know whether to laugh or to cry...

Edited by 2 at 18/10/07 @ 01:23
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Vandrius #41 4 years ago

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Hah, lag, pfft.

PC ftw.

32 players, ftw.

16 players, ftl.
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YourMessageHere #42 4 years ago

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How about EG doing some sort of feature on simple optimising of router settings, NAT stuff, port forwarding and that sort of thing for XBox Live/Playstation Network/Wii Whateveritisthattheycallit?
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