No-ads Ad Disabling Method Disabled

[WooFerPPK]

i cant wait till my theory of banning people who attempt to disable, or run ad less free servers comes true :)

[-:Nighthawk:-]

I was going to post this in the previous section but I suppose it's more relevant here. Much of this is in response to a few comments such as:

omgomgz wrote..

As far as illegality... Valve defines it in the EULA as:

Valve may terminate your Account or a particular Subscription for any conduct or activity that Valve believes is illegal.

So it honestly doesn't matter whether you believe it's legal or not, it's up to what Valve thinks is illegal or not.

...and this one as well:

Thortok2000 wrote..

Nighthawk, while 99% of the time I agree with you, in this case ad-prevention programs are considered third-party programs, cheats, hacks, or according to the official term in the rules you quoted, 'warez'.

There has to be reasonable cause to believe in illegality of acts.



Saying you can't modify your game client to suit your tastes would outlaw buy scripts, custom weapon and player models. I have a hard time seeing how bringing a visual component of the game (not gameplay or anything otherwise related to hacking or cheating against other players) back to how it was when you bought the game could be considered "illegal" in any court.



For VALVe to claim they believe such a thing is illegal, they'd have to have not just a vague notion that they dislike you doing it, but rather a clearly written law they can reference that they believe outlaws such an act. I'm no lawyer, but in my casual studying of applicable software laws, even with the overbearing DMCA, nothing comes to mind that would outlaw such an act.



Warez is a free version of software you're supposed to have paid for. I fail to see how returning your software you paid for to a condition similar to that of how you bought it could in any way be extrapolated to be a similar act. Rather, this is a logical and natural conclusion of customers reacting to being abused and mislead by a corporation using the bait-and-switch technique on them.



Imagine it in these terms. Let's say you purchased a DVD player to watch movies on, and it worked great, you loved it just the way it was. However, this was a forward-thinking company that connected their DVD players to your home network so it could download firmware updates automatically to keep it current with any advancements in the DivX codec and such.



Now let's suppose that after half a year of wonderful operation, the DVD player will not operate without installing an update. As soon as this latest update is installed, every movie you watch pauses every 10 minutes for a commercial break. You cannot fastforward through these commercials or skip them outright -- they must run the duration before you can continue your movie.



How much outrage would that cause you? People would return the product and demand their money back. However, in our digital world, the rights of the software companies granted by EULAs have far exceeded their logical and just limitations for some time now. There is no returning Steam, there is no other way to get the same CS service provided by an alternate vendor.



If our DVD example was to be the same in all respects, then we would have to suppose that the only way you could watch DVDs was to use this company's player, infested with advertisements. How long do you think it would be before after-market mods would come on the scene to remove the unwanted advertisements? After all, everyone had already paid for the player itself, with no expectation at that time of being used as a recurring revenue source for the vendor.



Honestly, I have to say I fully support those who are working on various sorts of work-arounds to remove these advertisements. By their very nature, the addition of these ads is unethical and abusive to customers, and the fact that VALVe has full control (a monopoly of sorts) over access to Counter-Strike is the only reason why people are tolerating being thus treated.



Seeing as the first published method of removing these ads has been broken by VALVe's amazingly quick update, the point is more or less moot at the moment. However, the effort will continue until either it is effectively stopped by VALVe's unwanted updates, or an unstoppable workaround is created. I, for one, hope it's the latter.

[Diamond Dust]

how about you stop complaining and stop playing 1.6 That is the only way to show them this is wrong. Just stop playing 1.6 , it's not like they won't notice. Take a week or two of of counter-strike, thats not hard to do and it will make a difference

Renegade[CSR] wrote..

I hate EA

i only liked EA when they were making NFS hot pursuit and high stakes. Dice can go to hell also because they are making the shit updates for bf2, as i said before valve is on course to be ea

[Thortok2000]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

There has to be reasonable cause to believe in illegality of acts.

Illegal as in breaking the EULA.

Saying you can't modify your game client to suit your tastes would outlaw buy scripts, custom weapon and player models. I have a hard time seeing how bringing a visual component of the game (not gameplay or anything otherwise related to hacking or cheating against other players) back to how it was when you bought the game could be considered "illegal" in any court.

Again, not illegal in terms of a court of law, just illegal in terms of breaking Valve's EULA, which is what makes things 'related to hacking or cheating against other players' also illegal and bannable.



Perhaps the correct way of phrasing it is that CS-Nation can't post or allow to be posted anything considered a bannable offense by Valve, otherwise Valve will essentially ban CS-Nation and those interviews and stuff you used to get won't be there anymore, and this site will die just as much as the game is dying.

For VALVe to claim they believe such a thing is illegal, they'd have to have not just a vague notion that they dislike you doing it, but rather a clearly written law they can reference that they believe outlaws such an act. I'm no lawyer, but in my casual studying of applicable software laws, even with the overbearing DMCA, nothing comes to mind that would outlaw such an act.

The EULA. The technicalities you're mentioning here is that cheating and hacking isn't technically 'illegal', either. You're quibbling over the word 'illegal' when it was just settled upon as the easiest word to describe what we meant. 'Illegal' in the way we meant it, means 'not allowed by Valve'. You're interpreting it to mean 'not allowed by the law', which is not how we meant it.

Rather, this is a logical and natural conclusion of customers reacting to being abused and mislead by a corporation using the bait-and-switch technique on them.

Totally agree...but if you allow such things to be posted here, Valve will disown CS-Nation, which is why CS-Nation enforces Valve's wishes. For the moment anyway. Until Valve goes far enough to piss off CS-Nation, too, which I think could happen sooner or later, the way Valve's been behaving lately. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Interviews conducted by e-mail with half the questions unanswered and most of the rest dodged? 'Official fansite' status doesn't really count for much in Valve's eyes, apparently.

How much outrage would that cause you? People would return the product and demand their money back. However, in our digital world, the rights of the software companies granted by EULAs have far exceeded their logical and just limitations for some time now. There is no returning Steam, there is no other way to get the same CS service provided by an alternate vendor.

Totally agree.

Honestly, I have to say I fully support those who are working on various sorts of work-arounds to remove these advertisements. By their very nature, the addition of these ads is unethical and abusive to customers, and the fact that VALVe has full control (a monopoly of sorts) over access to Counter-Strike is the only reason why people are tolerating being thus treated.

Agreed. However, keep in mind that until CS-Nation supports it too, the workarounds can't be posted here. (Just Google for them.)

Seeing as the first published method of removing these ads has been broken by VALVe's amazingly quick update, the point is more or less moot at the moment. However, the effort will continue until either it is effectively stopped by VALVe's unwanted updates, or an unstoppable workaround is created. I, for one, hope it's the latter.

I as well.



And on the note of 'amazingly quick update', their karma just took another major hit. We've been posting about bugs for YEARS, with step-by-step methods of reproducing them, but the instant even SOME of their users start disabling ads, BAM, fix is released, practically the next day.



I'm never buying a multiplayer Valve product again, with the exception of TF2 because I have to in order to get the two single player products (another marketing scheme I really hate, and I'll only buy Episode 2 if it is at all possible). I already own CS:S so I'll continue to play it until it has ads, too. And if they add ads to any single-player game, I'll just have to say goodbye to the Half-life series.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Diamond Dust wrote..

how about you stop complaining and stop playing 1.6 That is the only way to show them this is wrong. Just stop playing 1.6 , it's not like they won't notice. Take a week or two of of counter-strike, thats not hard to do and it will make a difference

That's what they're trying to do. Kill CS1.6.

[Hutz]

I'm all for these people inventing ad-free methods/programs. Unlike a cheat which only ruins things for other players, ad-hax will ruin IGA's/Valve's finances. Which is fine by me, since this is the best form of feedback this experiment can give to Valve.



This feedback says: "1.6 kicks ass, and leave your damn ads out of it".



Valve can't legally close accounts for using hacks, but they are perfectly entitled to VAC-ban people since it doesn't disable the game, just limits the number of servers they can join.

[K-16]

Hutz wrote..

Valve can't legally close accounts for using hacks, but they are perfectly entitled to VAC-ban people since it doesn't disable the game, just limits the number of servers they can join.

They can't? Didn't they do that for people who tried to circumvent Half-Life 2's anti-piracy protection in terms of the CD versions? (I can't remember if the DVD collector's cookie tin version counted as well.) People couldn't run the game with the anti-piracy protection, because it wasn't compatible with their disc drives I believe, so they tried to run third-party software to disable it. As a result, the game they paid for is now locked out and their accounts closed.



My point is, wouldn't disabling ads also qualify for account disabling and likely deletion? Oh and if you were referring to hacks as cheats, then I apologize for misinterpreting.

[Diamond Dust]

Edited by [user="21673"] @ [time="1173576957"]

People say they are trying to kill 1.6 , I think thats a ridiculous statement. They can't possibly believe that disrespecting the player base of 1.6 is going to make them start playing another game from them. I don't play 1.6 but I assure you if the tables were turned and source had ads and 1.6 didn't I wouldn't be moving over to play 1.6 again. I would be so pissed I would delete steam from my computer until the issue was resolved. That is the way to make a statement.



When other companies start advertising in cs be active and write to them explaining what the problem is here and also threaten to boycott their products, if valve won't listen to us maybe their advertisers will.

[X.Madness.X]

ZOMG valve fail. if they put adds in source, i'll uninstall steam and play swat 4 more. /sigh

[Scanner]

X.Madness.X wrote..

if they put adds in source, i'll uninstall steam and play swat 4 more. /sigh

What on earth makes you think they will put ads in Source and stop there? They will continue to do this to every Valve game once they no longer gain revenue off its sale.



Valve knows better than to sell a new game with ads in it. We wouldn't buy it. They know this. You don't see in-game advertisements in those TF2 screenshots, do you? Learn from their business tactics. They've shown you with 1.6 what they will do once they have a community of players instead of buyers. They will fill it with ads to both gather revenue from advertisers and to drive players to purchase other games. The same thing will happen with CS:Source, DoD:Source, HLDM:Source, TF2, etc. All Steam games are suspect..



If in-game ads make you want to stop playing, direct your buying dollars elsewhere, not to a game that is almost certainly doomed to the same fate. Support a game company that doesn't use bait-and-switch tactics.

[nzc]

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/...n.cgi?cs16ads

[Thortok2000]

Yeah, totally, they'll wait until everyone's bought TF2, and then they'll put ads in it, AFTER everyone's bought it. So don't buy TF2. I don't plan on it, if it's at all possible to get Episode 2 without it.



I reinstalled CS 1.6 and tried dust for a good 3 minutes. Ads too intrusive. CS 1.6 uninstalled.

[audi80]

No Ads in game !!!

Affix also this image in your messages to fight publicity in Steam :



Visit www.team-bonobo.com for more information

[EviLuoTioN]

[MajorDisaster]

Type in console

gl_polyoffset -999

that will get rid of the adds :) have fun