Russophones

[u/cordipickle]

Okay, before writing my story, let me acknowledge that I understand this is a very sensitive topic and I do not condone to racism, hate towards other nations/nationalities/ethnics and so on and so on.

Today, I was on Upward (Valve server) with a new friend of mine and during the set up time, some dudes started to speak Russian and when my friend who understood it responded in English, they commanded to use only Russian and votekicked him out. I was furious and I also put that guy on vote and managed to kick him. But, as you can guess, his friends also kicked me out from the server. And this is not the first time this is happening. Most of the rude interactions, invasive behavior were observed coming mostly from the players who speak this language.

This is NOT to say all Russians or Russophones are bad, I have Russian friends on steam and irl. And this is also NOT to say everyone else behaves very politely or respectfully. This is also NOT ignoring the influence of these people on keeping the game alive (Tbh Valve games are loved by this demographic

Also, same in Counter Strike. I played CS2 for a while, around 100 hours back in Winter and Spring and this is the same problem. Very invasive and loud and oftentimes rude.

This post was written only to share my experience and NOT to spread hate, xenophobia and so on.

[u/Void-Lizard]

I'm sure this comment section is about to get very normal and civil

[u/Bandlover899]

Ngl, literally every time I’m put into a Russian server/a server with a lot of Russians in it, they’re EXTREMELY racist and homophobic. They throw the n-word around casually all the time. Yeah, not every Russian is like that obviously. But a lot of them are super toxic in tf2 matches for some reason

[u/GrapeSoda223 → u/Bandlover899]

Yea of course we have to judge people as individuals and not just from where they are from, my personal experience has been the same as yours, they insult and be racist, but not in the "jokey meme" way (not that thats any better) but are genuinely trying to be hurtful and take the game much more seriously, always trying to votekick low scoring players. 

[u/cordipickle → u/GrapeSoda223]

Same. This reminds me of a time where I was in a payload match and we were stomped. We had one good played who was also a friend of mine. After the match, more than half of the enemy team bullied my friend in Russian in the chat for some reason, calling him slurs. We had to change the server immediately. 

[u/PlatformDizzy7988]

Literally ever since capping my ping, i very rarely encounter a toxic player compared to encountering one nearly every game beforehand. 🤷‍♂️

[u/cordipickle → u/PlatformDizzy7988]

Wdym?

[u/Void-Lizard → u/cordipickle]

I assume they mean not showing servers over a certain ping, and if they're american, that means russian servers.

[u/Bandlover899 → u/cordipickle]

It pretty much means you can choose to play on servers closer to where you live, rather than playing on servers in other countries. Tf2 has a ping slider that allows you to do that

[u/Smoke_Able]

Just because you're playing with Russian-speaking people and the server is labeled Russian doesn't mean you're talking to a Russian from Russia. I've been in this game forever and I've seen a ton of players who speak perfect Russian with no dialect or accent, but these guys are from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Poland, and other European countries. And you can never tell what country someone is from just by their ping — unless it's over 100+. You can check their profile, but that's often fake info too.

Also, foreigners almost never visit Russian servers — it's super rare. And when one does show up, they either stay quiet or start stirring shit up. These are just my personal observations over the last 5 years. I've been playing TF2 since 2009.

[u/EurekaEffecto]

they were and will be like that, kick them or get kicked

[u/RecommendationIll504]

Hi from Russia. Yeah, some people are shit and because TF2 is free, kids and retards are attracted to it. I think it's also connected to the fact that while western teens has some pocket money to spend on games and prefer consoles, eastern teens don't have that much and a part of PC race, which creates current situation. And a lot of more factors maybe. I'm working on a factory and I'll tell you that people there are the best I've seen so far, but I don't think that they are gamers)

[u/Hopbo735]

Morons with daddy problems.

[u/Leading_Sense9042]

I used to play tf2 a lot during 2016-2017 and i literally never can recall seeing so many Russian players in game- like every match I play has Russian players… nothing against them but can anyone explain why so many now?

[u/Vegetable_Mix_4715]

You mean russophiles right, not russophones?

[u/dreamscached → u/Vegetable_Mix_4715]

A russophile is someone obsessed with Russians and Russia-related stuff, a russophone is someone who is talking in Russian.