Pirates Beware

[CheesyPeteza]

This is why you speak to a Lawyer instead of some nubcake on the Internet who thinks he doesn't need to do the 7 years of training to pass his half arsed opinion off as fact.



I'd like to see you tell a judge what you just said, they don't tend to take fools gladly.

[CaRNi4]

I wish they'd update VAC and disabled all the accounts of people cheating...



Every bloody cheat that excists is working again...

[Vlux]

Tenreh wrote..

What I'm saying is, the only people who lost anything because of this "experiment" were paying customers of Valve. o.O

Have to agree with you on this one. They should lock the CD keys that has been validated and registered from the database so it doesn't get duplicated, or something like an invalid key message.

[tekproxy]

MrZero wrote..

Sounds like a plan. May I join you? I'll bring along my friend Goatse

Son you're talking to the guy that has his own goatse boot cd. You pop it in (usually to someone else's computer at a lan party, or with some super glue in key spots on the cd-drive) and then turn it on and ANY x86 computer will boot up to a beautiful goatse anus.



Kind of brings a tear to my eye.

[MrZero]

tekproxy wrote..

Son you're talking to the guy that has his own goatse boot cd. You pop it in (usually to someone else's computer at a lan party, or with some super glue in key spots on the cd-drive) and then turn it on and ANY x86 computer will boot up to a beautiful goatse anus.



Kind of brings a tear to my eye.

LOL....oh the days of doing that at LAN parties...ROFL



I remember we had a lan party at our friends house one day...and his mom is a teacher..



and she started up her pc we were using.. and poof...GOATSSEEE



this is her son...drunker than hell.



www.stildo.com



no its not goatse....it's seriously a funny pic of him drunk..

[-:Nighthawk:-]

The whole situation sickens me still. I'd hand out temporary bans for attempting to use fake/registered CD keys. Say, a 1-2 week initial ban for trying, say, 5 invalid keys in a row, or for trying a single bad key that has already been tried multiple times by others. After all, do you want to mend their ways, or simply punish them? Seems quite similar to the prison system in some regards...



After thinking about this for a while, it seriously makes VALVe seem no better than the bunch of would-be thieves they're after.



Except that, unlike the wannabe thieves, VALVe is actually taking real money from people. "Legal" or not, who's the worse for their actions?



I don't call VALVe onto the carpet often, and I've often been accused of being a VALVe fanboy, but in this instance, no matter what angle I look at it from, it just doesn't sit right with me. The reality is, the only people who have lost something are those who paid money to VALVe at some point, whether for HL1 or HL2.



Those simply attempting to get a free game have lost nothing, and they'll just be looking on the net once again for a different, Steam-proof way of hacking the game, and yes, they'll be playing it eventually for free. Apparently quite a few already are, and a good number of the rest will be in time already. That's just how single-player games go... there's nothing you can to do stop it, short of Microsoft releasing a new operating system and totally redoing the way it allow you to access files.



So from the sound of it, basically a bunch of fake accounts that didn't work in the first place got disabled. No real effect there. Possibly a few fake accounts that did work also got disabled. Again, no real effect. But by and large, the only people really affected were those who DO buy VALVe games. That's simply disgusting to me, and as much as I'd love to be here supporting VALVe... well, instead, they've lost some respect from me once again.



In conclusion, VALVe at times supports the community to extreme lengths, and at other times turns around and screws their fans with some of the worst PR I've seen from a company. Kind of sad they're not consistent, but hey... computer geeks aren't known for their social skills, now are they?

Helkite wrote..

It's deja vu all over again!

Are you sure it's not original for the first time?

[Helkite]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

Are you sure it's not original for the first time?

Huh?

[-:Nighthawk:-]

I was just illustrating being repetative multiple times over and over again. If you still don't get it, just give up and settle for a mid-level job.

[Thortok2000]

At this point in time I'd normally make a joke about repetition, but since it's something I've done before, I'd only be repeating myself. ^_^



Nighthawk nailed my opinion except for a couple things...



From all I know (which isn't much), it was a CD key that multiple people were using. As far as I know, this should not have happened, people shouldn't be able to register the same CD key on separate Steam accounts. So it's really Valve's fault anyway, a flaw in their security, and at the most they should ban THAT CD KEY...not all the accounts tied to it.



That's what I think, anyway.

[ShittingBasterd]

[Stagger Lee]

I don't know.....at some point you finally get tired of trying to find better ways to protect your sheep and just shoot the wolves. It doesn't really matter if they were previous paying customers of Valve or not. These people chose not to pay this time and instead stole it.

These same people probably go around ripping all games they want to play rather than pay for them. This time, a game company had the ways and means to slap their hands for getting in the cookie jar. Just ban that IP? No. Another appears in a hour or less. Now, while all these hackers (slackers?) can still circumvent their setback Valve made for them, they at least have to work more at it. Perhaps they may even realize what a prick they were and mend their ways. Probably not though....They will more than likely become more resolved in their pursuit. I still support Valves decision on this.

Now if they can just bag the hackers on Source.

[piratethemeep]

I attempted to pirate it because I couldn't find my HL2 Voucher and so did my freind. A day later I was forced to buy CS:CZ off ebay ($9 w/ 5 keys for HL Pack) and find my real HL2 key. It all worked out and once ATI sends me a key that actuly works ill be very happy!

[tekproxy]

My account will not be reactivated and I bought the damn game. I'm never buying another Valve game again. I shall now explode and ruin Steam with my anger.