Valve activation has users upset and flooding the forums

November 24, 2004

Valve
SteamPowered forums are being swamped with users that are upset that they can no
longer play the game Half-Life 2. 20,000 or so are claimed to have had their Steam accounts deactivated that were caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection. If you peruse the forums there, this is turning ugly. Several members are claiming that they are legit users can no longer get support and can't get a response from Valve. They figure this is because when they see the account number Valve must assume it's just another pirate and ignores the plea. Activation type products are always contraversial, but this is going a bit awry.

Here is a staff member from Valve wading into the lions den. This is on the heels of another contraversy, several people are accusing that Valve let out some bogus keys in order to entrap pirates. Other "Read First" warnings are telling people to stay clear of Ebay if you are looking for Steam accounts.

Just to make things clear...

First, Valve didn't put out any kind of fake key or fake warez to trap people.

Second, the people that had their accounts disabled had attempted to steal an item worth about $50. 20,000 accounts times $50 - that's about a million dollars worth of illegal attempts. That's hard to ignore.

Third, the number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it.

Wow what a mess, heres the link to Slashdot. I guess
the moral of the story is pay for your software, it isn't right to pirate
anyones wares, let alone such a great game as
HalfLife2.

Source: Slashdot