Half-Life 2 Warez Crackdown

[lockhart]

I don't know if you realize this, but the source of this quote isn't exactly reputable. It might be just made up, since it was posted by some guy with a filefront account.

Until Gabe releases a statement through official channels, don't believe it.



I'll give you a Gabe quote now:

Gabe Newell wrote..

Download the game for free or we'll take 6 years to make Half-Life 3

It's gotta be true, look, I even used the quote tags!

[MrZero]

Edited by [user="238013"] @ [time="1100814805"]

I already know of people who are playing the illegal versions...I was sitting right there with them when they downloaded it...installed it..and played it... DID NOT need to connect to steam at all. So...yea people who think its impossible...it's very possible. Oh yea..another thing.. the people who are downloading this version...are spending alot of time. 3-5 gigs of stuff to play it.. I say do what I'm going to do...BUY IT

[Scanner]

Oh yeah. My personal theory:



<tinfoil hat>

Gabe, gnashing his teeth at the prospect of a cracked version of their game already out in the wild, tries to think up some way of curbing its use ASAP. Inspiration strikes.



"Oh yeah. We know about that. In fact we're even monitoring it to see who uses it!"



Of course, this theory means that Gabe knew that the FileFront admin would publicly announce the threat and encourage the dispersal of the information. If the entire text of Gabe's response has been quoted, then that seems a bit of a stretch.

</tinfoil hat>



Anyway, as a fellow software engineer, I hope Valve's efforts--ruse or not--are successful. Kudos on planting the seed of doubt :).



--Scanner

[kodt]

[grendel03]

[Patrick_Bateman69]

If this is real, I can't wait for some post that sounds like this:



"Me and 6 family members bought HL2 and 3 other games via Steam, and I have a NAT-based wireless that got hacked and someone played HL2 from a neighboring apartment over my connection, and all of our Steam accounts got banned."



I liked Steam and thought it was a great system, but using it to identify thieves using half-assed, poorly thought out detection methods and potentially invalidating hundreds of dollars worth of purchases is enough to make me want to uninstall Steam.



Of course, can I even do that? I bought CS:CZ and HL2 via Steam. What if I decide I no longer wish to use Steam? How can I make my games work offline, and be able to reinstall them on new/upgraded computers, without Steam? Suddenly I feel very locked in to this software.



Additionally, having pre-ordered HL2 under the guarantee that I would get to play it "immediately" upon release, and then hearing that stores were selling it ahead of time and Vivendi was blocking an early Steam release due to legal issues just cements my desire to unhook myself from this system.

[dRage]

I don't think he would say that, I don't see the point in telling everyone the cracked version is being tracked. Now groups can label their own crack (now that they know they need to make a new one) as the non-valve one and valve catches not another cheapo.

appended @ [time="1100818587"]

Although, now that I think of it, they did alert the community before new anti-hack code was activated so they missed a few catches, so I suppose this is on the same track as that.

[Dragonjojo]

one of the CS:S cracked versions needed you to ledit some files and actually log into steam, chances are if there is a hl2 crack that does the same they've found a way to tell who is on crack-ed version and who isn't and then will wait until they have quite a nice number and ban them.

I definetly dont think they'd release their own warez version for same reasons others have said.

As for cracked versions that require no use of steam at all i doubt they'd be able to really do much about those.

[plastic_Fish]

Damn $40 Million to make one game. Thats more than making The Grudge (but that movie was horrible). What if VU Gaming wins that lawsuit and VALVe goes bankrupt :o!

[Tolarian]

SMOKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Actually I think they do monitor it, as I monitored the Battle.Net servers when I was a Diablo admin and deleted the accounts of people using cheats...

[plastic_Fish]

Yeah, I guess that's why they put it on the Steam platform. I guess it was great thinking by VALVe

[wckd]

Haha. Fighting back with a vengeance.

[Splatula]

roxors

[cleve-entity]

LMAO, anyone who uses an account which has money invested in it to use riske software is an idiot.

[Canadian_sniperfox]

dont you have to register a steam account with atleast a half life 1 cd key?