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They were there during game-modding golden years of Quake/duke/doom/etc that has been smothered

Something tells me you've never tried to mod a game that was written for the Source engine (probably has something to do with your irrational fear of Steam). There is a very large open-source community that regularly mods the ever loving shit out of every Source engine game ever - all with Valve's consent. Source is perhaps the most easily hacked engine ever. I have myself written thousands of lines of code in Sourcemod so that I can customize Left 4 Dead 2 to my liking, and that doesn't count the tens of thousands of lines of other people's plugins. L4D2 launched in 2009 and to this day still gets updated (last update was a week ago)

Valve also has the Steam workshop so that they can pimp user-made mods, and even allow the mod developers to make money off their creations. Valve also endorses custom campaigns for L4D2 and even went so far as to take a community campaign and make it official, releasing it for the XBox as well (which requires significant certification fees). So the idea that game-modding has been smothered is totally bunk, proven such by the very people you are deriding here.

You might want to ask on the AlliedModders forum if it's possible to create a new class in TF2. They're the people who make SourceMod, which is a pretty popular mod framework for Source games. I know the TF2 Zombie Fortress mod was written into it... as well as RMF Ability Pack, which gives new abilities to the various classes.

You might want to ask on the AlliedModders forum if it's possible to create a new class in TF2. They're the people who make SourceMod, which is a pretty popular mod framework for Source games. I know the TF2 Zombie Fortress mod was written into it... as well as RMF Ability Pack, which gives new abilities to the various classes.

To be honest, I'm not sure. I know if you own TF2, you can access TF2's assets in Garry's Mod. This is how most Machina TF2 videos are created. Garry's Mod also has a dedicated server with which to host online games (this is how the Garry's Mod version of Prop Hunt works). Having said all that, if you use TF2 assets in a Garry's Mod online game, the players must have both TF2 and Garry's Mod in order to play it.

Taking things you created in Garry's Mod into TF2 doesn't really work, though. TF2 itself is too locked down to patch in new classes. However, you can adjust their behavior with server plugins, as Zombie Fortress demonstrates.

On a side note: Valve uses their master servers to control new item drops in TF2 (which you are given at random time intervals). I think this can be overridden, but Valve recently released an update that severely impacted... hat mods of all things. Again, this only affects the TF2 side, not the Garry's Mod side.

There are no tools for the server admin to make things like md5 or cvar checks

MD5 checks are built into the game. This is controlled through the sv_pure cvar and the pure_server_whitelist.txt file (when sv_pure 1 is set, this file is used to determine which files the client can use that don't match the files on the server).

As for cvars, some are already checked and disallowed (anything marked as a cheat in the game).

Also, the Sourcemod plugin "Kigen's Anti-Cheat" has more rigorous cvar checks.

no screenshot facility to check players

Spectate, left or right-click until you find the problem player, then hit F5 to take screenshots (at least in TF2). Or even better, spectate and use the client-side record command to record a demo, which you can later play back. I believe SourceTV can be used to record demos automatically, but I don't think it records one for each player.

or even the ability to kick a player

OK, now you're just being ignorant. Source servers have built-in commands to kick and ban people through either the server console or through the game using the RCON commands (which require a password that you set in the main server configuration).

This is in addition to addons such as Sourcemod, which include kick and ban abilities for any users matching specific Steam IDs, and the optional Sourcebans module, which allows bans to be synchronized between servers.

If the gaming industry was like Hollywood, you would have to sleep with some producer, just to get your foot in the door.

Can you really see Hollywood embracing a distribution system that makes it easy for independent studios to reach consumers?

Please dont make me sleep with gaben :|