Half-Life 2 Warez Crackdown

[entRo]

lrdhpns said basically the same thing I did and my comment got deleted. Admins should not be fanboys either.

[ALT+F4]

I paid my $55 for a legitimate retail version and I'm still being treated as a potential criminal by being forced to play WITH THE FUCKING CD IN!



Pity such a phenomenal game is published by complete cunts (yes, Vivendi-Universal, that's YOU!) who don't deserve to be associated with

such a classy piece of work. I now wish I'd preloaded it instead. Live and learn.

[bullet_head]

ALT+F4 wrote..

I paid my $55 for a legitimate retail version and I'm still being treated as a potential criminal by being forced to play WITH THE FUCKING CD IN!



Pity such a phenomenal game is published by complete cunts (yes, Vivendi-Universal, that's YOU!) who don't deserve to be associated with

such a classy piece of work. I now wish I'd preloaded it instead. Live and learn.

El oh el

[jjb]

"We're running a bit of an experiment. We're keeping track of the accounts that do this and will be shutting them off."



"In other words, Valve has launched their very own "warez" version..."



What kind of wacky journalism is this?



Though I suppose it would be one conclusion you could come up with if you were ignorant, all the no-steam cracks I've seen (for many months now), circumvent steam by ... authenticating through steam, using some sort of proxy/emulator tool.



It would be very trivial to track down accounts that use the crack/tool I imagine.

[NeoCrono]

jjb wins. What kind of retarded extrapolation is this? This is a non-issue. Gabe never said anything like what you're all ranting about. "In other words" my ass. This entire comment thread is like some kind of bastardized straw man argument.



Ockham's razor. Why the hell would Valve release a tainted version of the entire game and attempt to pass it off as the real deal when they can simply pull a list of IPs from the torrent tracker, or easily monitor when people attempt to "purchase" HL2 using outrageous CD keys containing invalid characters?

[xlokix]

bullet_head wrote..

El oh el

I'll second that "el oh el"

[lrdhpns]

Vivendi is the lesser of two evils here. Valve and steam are much more intrusive and a bigger pain in the ass than any CDcheck could possibly be. Not to mention the fact they didnt stop pirates for longer than a day (and even that becuase of minor mess-up on the pirates' part, creating confusion etc).



For example: say 1 year down the road valve goes out of business. Obviously they're not going to keep the steam servers up anymore after that. And at that time you get this strong urge to play your HL2 again. You put in the discs, click install, get to the activation part. Question: where exactly are you planning on activating it?



And I'm not talking about people that bought it over steam and never even got a CD........

[traemyn]

the whole thing is BS, if you know anything at all about the HL2 warez you know this is some moronic attempt to scare people.



csnation, DONT FEED THE MONKEYS!

[Loomis]

lrdhpns wrote..

Vivendi is the lesser of two evils here. Valve and steam are much more intrusive and a bigger pain in the ass than any CDcheck could possibly be. Not to mention the fact they didnt stop pirates for longer than a day (and even that becuase of minor mess-up on the pirates' part, creating confusion etc).



For example: say 1 year down the road valve goes out of business. Obviously they're not going to keep the steam servers up anymore after that. And at that time you get this strong urge to play your HL2 again. You put in the discs, click install, get to the activation part. Question: where exactly are you planning on activating it?



And I'm not talking about people that bought it over steam and never even got a CD........

Most likely Valve would get bought up by another game company, or publisher such as Vivendi, who would keep the servers running. Sort of like C & C Renegade, after EA bought up Westwood they kept the master server running. Otherwise there'd be no point to selling it in the first place.

[ziggie216]

why is everyone complaining about the having a CD while you're playing??? as in any other games these days, you are required to have a CD in there unless you have a ***** crack, but then you're breaking the license agreement.

[Linux]

Gj Valve. Shut 'em down :-D They deserve it if they don't want to support one of the best games of all time :-D

[Scanner]

.b0w. Bushwacker wrote...

its no different than Vancouver (B.C.) using bait cars...



they are cars that are put into places where cars are often stolen...and are equiped with gps, auto/remote shutdowns and more... people who steal them go to jail...



just because the gov. put them out, doesnt make them legal to steal.

Totally apples and oranges. The government isn't the manufacturer of the car, and the people aren't being handed the keys by the dealer. If Valve actually provided the cracked version, it would be analogous to someone pulling up to your house in their car, handing you the keys, walking away, and then later suing you because you drove his car. You didn't have to pay for it, and you have automatic authentication (keys) so you can drive it. By them providing the product and the means to operate it without you circumventing the protection, it's legally shaky ground to try to retaliate against you for taking them up on their offer.



But anyway, like I already said, I think this is all silly speculation and the whole thing is a ruse. A ruse that will hopefully earn the developers some more bucks for their hard work.



--Scanner

[wee bull]

Edited by [user="10059"] @ [time="1100901905"]

bLaCKaT wrote..

The funny part about this story, is I saw nothing from those comments that suggested that Valve had released a leaked version of the game. Which they probably didn't, they are probably keeping track of the steamid's who log in with the cracked version.

Thank god I'm not the only one who noticed that. People seem to have taken this news post as gospel (not just here, but on the other sites that've picked up on the news and passed it on), when it's clearly not even remotely true if that's the quote you're trying to base the point on...

[Linux]

I agree with the people above me ^^. Its true... I think valve such just track downt he people who started the cracked, version A.K.A. a warez person, and take them down, not just randomly ban accounts, pretty lame. But other than that, I agree with legal stuff you guys are talking about and what not.

[abysmal]

Quite frankly this issue exists on all games. Ive been browsing these comments and seing 'omg cheapo fuckers cant buy the damn game'. True but quite frankly 90% or more of the user group here im sure has some form of warez game or movie on the hard drive (or has had). How are valve any different in this situation?