Pirates Beware

[Pan the Goat God]

gj Valve, atleast slowed down the pirates.



What the heck ever happened to gary,anyway?

[Antinous-ODY]

I haven't read the EULA, but I know that Microsoft put a clause in theirs for Xbox Live giving them the ability to change it as long as they post it ahead of time somewhere. I think that putting it in the new EULA could be considered that. Also, do you know for sure whether or not they state in their EULA that if it is a pirated copy, that they can disable your entire account? I would assume so, but I haven't read it.



Do you know for a fact that Valve intentionally leaked the key? If so can you point me to that information?



It is always possible to bypass authentication once the process has been figured out. Most programmers excel at math, I'm not saying that this was simply the case of some algorithm, but people can find ways around anything.

[defuser]

still i bet people will find a way to play HL2 without registering online with steam.

[Sn00p_B0B]

Gpig wrote..

I bet 10,000 of those people managed to beat the game before getting banned.

i bet 19999 out of those 20000 ppl made a new account to put the cd key in, oh no they cant use x email to make a new account anymore, and all the ppl that dled it were ppl that didnt have the game... so the ppl who used that cd key didnt lose anything, since making a new account only requiere an email, so much trouble for nothing :O

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Pan the Goat God wrote..

What the heck ever happened to gary,anyway?

Hopefully he died in a fire. Slowly.

Antinous-ODY wrote..

Do you know for a fact that Valve intentionally leaked the key? If so can you point me to that information?

I was basing that comment off of DchozN's news post last week:

In other words, Valve has launched their very own "warez" version of their pride and joy whose purpose is to nail down those pirates out there.

I suppose it's possible he was mistaken in this, however, so I'll try to not be too firm on that point.

defuser wrote..

still i bet people will find a way to play HL2 without registering online with steam.

Yeah, that's inevitable. How fast you can do it, and people's patience, however, are important factors. I don't understand the appeal to trying to warez HL2 for the single-player experience, when the real lasting appeal is in the multiplayer component, but that's yet another issue altogether.

[steel877]

yeah, ive heard people do it by disconnecting the internet cable at 2 bars while cd key was validating. then they got to play

[Evil Timmy]

It's really not too complex a process to pirate even a Steam game, but only utter morons used a legit account to pirate the game. It even stated in the NFO's instructions to create a new account, and not to put anything onto that account.



I was curious about how the bots worked, and already owned CS:S (thanks ATI), so I created a new account and grabbed the pirated version of CS:S. I really hope they're receiving a good going-over by the coders/scripters/testers and we'll see them in a later update to CS:S. CZ's bot matches were actually quite entertaining, when I couldn't find a good match locally or was downloading something and my ping was through the roof. The bots in CS:S are decently competent gunmen as it is, and the AI's actually quite good in some situations, but there's also some obvious bugs present and some situations where it fails utterly.

[k1nk0s]

gary was cool!

Whoever used the key just got owned!

[KuRRupT]

steel877 wrote..

yeah, ive heard people do it by disconnecting the internet cable at 2 bars while cd key was validating. then they got to play

2 bars? funny. 1 milisecond is enough for them to know you pirating the game.



how? Once you make ANY type of connection to their server, they get your IP, from that IP the find your Steam acccount, and then ban you. Less than a second takes it all.

[CheesyPeteza]

I'm with nighthawk. Valves actions are simply scare tactics, but don't really achieve anything.



Who is being banned and what does it mean?



The Smart Guy

First he creates a new steam account, then he uses the exploit to get HL2 for free.



Banning him means he has to create a new account and install a crack to carry on playing HL2. His previous account was worthless so nothing lost there.



The Half-Life 1 Owner

He uses his original HL1 account with the HL2 exploit.



Banning him means he has lost his HL1 account. Fair enough and a pretty good result. Hes forced to either buy a new copy of HL1 for £5 or try to use one of the thousands of HL1 keys you can find with google.



The Impatient/Inquisitive HL2 owner

He uses the exploit to get the game early, or simply out of curiosity to see if it works. Then he buys the game a few days later as he doesn't want to rip off Valve.



Banning him will result in the most pain. £35 or $50 is lost on HL2.



The worst users of this exploit have the least punishment. The most honest person gets stung the hardest. Even though they all technically broke the rules, it just doesn't seem like justice to me.

[sheardjr]

Mercenary13 wrote..

just a scare tactic

Just a scare tactic? 20,000 people have lost tens of thousands of £/$!



:P

[defuser]

sheardjr wrote..

Just a scare tactic? 20,000 people have lost tens of thousands of £/$!

It's their fault for buying the illegal HL2

[azz0r]

What actually does it do?



No-ones stated how the people are losing money, are Valve making their HDD explode or something?

[tspoon1066]

Pan the Goat God wrote..

What the heck ever happened to gary,anyway?

www.garry.tv

He's making a kick ass platformer by the name of 'Facewound'

[Weine]

Hooray!

gg Valve.