Half-Life 2 "sting" Confirmed

[Thrik]

http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=184810

There were rumours surrounding Valve putting a warez torrent of HL2 onto various sources around the release date. It looks like this has been confirmed, and anybody who used the key to play HL2 through Steam has now had their joy cut short with the banning of any Steam account affiliated with it.

This tactfully nullifies all online usage of any other Steam games which they have affiliated with the account such as HL1, or even HL2 if they decided to warez it initially to test it and then buy it later (which I know a lot of people have suffered from).

Ph34r the Valve. Hopefully there'll be more of this happening in the future.

[Salka]

Isn't that a much better idea that making poor, honest dial-up users, who've legally purchased their copies, SUFFER? Trick warez-downloaders into downloading a BOMB. Excellent, I say! A BOMB.

[Fum]

I have to say I support what Valve is doing all the way, internet activation and all. It's pretty much necessary. I'm mean, even I can get most games for free within a few days no problem on my dial-up connection. This just really has to stop. I have to say sometimes I'm kind of happy when I get a corrupt music download on Kazaa, just brings me that much closer to stop being lazy and setup an account for legitimate music service.

[Salka]

The bomb idea is excellent.

[Thrik]

Yeah, I'm fully for developers doing anything they can to stop piracy -- including bombs, and anthrax-loaded torrents. Steam isn't really that much of a hurdle, and is far more effective than various attempts to stop the game on our end, such as SecuROM and other such dodginess.

Whilst it is a bit of an inconvenience to get people that're on dialup and such to do the labourious activation process, it's worth it in my opinion for less piracy casualities -- you have to remember that piracy can cause an awful lot of profit loss, which is a massive problem for big-budget games like HL2.

Piracy does make me sick at times though, particularly the people who use key generators with games. With pretty much every online game now being fixed so that the same key cannot play twice, and some going even further and directly affiliating keys with accounts like with Steam, this opens up the problem of direct theft.

Imagine you get Half-Life 2 for Christmas. You're pumped. You're excited. You're looking forward to a week or so playing the best single-player experience that the PC currently has to offer. Then, as you go to type in your CD-key which will be tied to your Steam login, it responds with a big "CD-Key is already in use. Please check your details, and re-enter the key.", whilst some Counter-Strike loving 13 year-old geek in California happily continues along with your key.

Well, fuck.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

I agree with disabling stolen things, but I don't think it's fair to ban things that are legit.

Many of them (at the steam board) are saying it's like a fine for a crime, and comparing it to theft from a store. Bottom line: If you tried to steal that game from Best Buy today, they'd let you go, because it's not priced high enough to prosecute.

[Thrik]

You should try that logic over here.

Seriously though, I don't see how it can be looked at in any legitimate way whatsoever. They download the dodgy HL2 (even if they intend on buying it later), and get burnt. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson. It's like going up to a Pick 'n' Mix counter and biting a sweet before you buy it.

The simple route is to either buy the full game (which is pretty well priced at various places, I might add), or wait for a demo if "OMG BEST GAME EVER" being shouted from everywhere ever isn't enough to convince you.

[Jake]

If these people intend to buy a real copy at some point, there's nothing stopping them from getting a new Steam account... I don't understand what the big deal is, aside from people whining that they were caught stealing after years spent rationalizing to themselves that pirating (new ) games is okay.

[Thrik]

What's hilarious is that quite a few people claim to have used the dodgy key, and then later bought it and used the legitimate key on the same Steam account. This of course all happened before Valve shut the lot down, and took the legitimate keys with it.

It's by no means a perfect method (an "experiment", in Gabe's words), but it's highlighted how easily 20,000 people have been screwed by such a simple little bluff. If they start getting more advanced (report and keep tabs on individual IPs for example, and if that IP has ever been affiliated with a dodgy copy..) it could mean big things in the industry's quest for piracy-free gaming.

[Erwin_Br]

I wish they'd do the same with the fucking cheaters in Counter-Strike Source. Damn it.

--Erwin

[Metalmickey]

Yay! Go valve I'm all for this kind of thing. Sounds like the tricksey little pirateses got bamboozled for a change. Pulling fast ones and being sneaky is much more fun and interesting to read about than boring (and inevitable) copy-protection workarounds

[Erkki]

Although I do pirate some games, I think this is a good thing. I would most likely have bought Half-Life 2 anyway, but because I assumed pirating HL2 would be more complicated, it made my decision even easier.

The only problem I see with this is if the person who tried this warez version would not be able to play another game he has legally purchased any more. Is that the case?

[Spaff]

Yawn. Some people are just idiots.

[b0b]

Anyone stupid enough to try and use a suspect CD-key with Steam deserves to get pwned - whether or not they deserve to have all their other valve software trashed as well (seems to me that's what's been happening) is another matter.

Especially when you can just torrent the damn thing and use an offline activation crack if you wanted to play Hl2 without paying.

I bought HL2, btw : I wanted CS: Source, and to be able to play the thing immediately rather than wait for a two day download (a legit steam download I might add)..