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Half-Life 2 'Interview' - False Activation Claims?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a mini-interview with Valve's Gabe Newell at Nerdsahoy.com, Half-Life 2 will use a form of online product activation to prevent more than one install per copy." Newell also allegedly comments on distribution, saying "...our marketing will mostly lean towards [Valve's online 'content delivery system'] Steam as the method of acquiring the game." Update: 09/02 14:34 GMT by S : Unfortunately, many signs point towards this being a fake, fabricated interview.
Why do companies continue to insist on spending more and more resources on copy protection?
A) It's been proven ineffective, everything from the first disc-copy protection format to activation has been proven to be worthless. About the only thing left to try is hardware DRM, but even that's not fool-proof (X-Box).
B) If anyone is willing to go through the effort to search, or learn, how to copy games they'll find a way to do it. Those that don't bother with passing copy protection either don't buy the game or will be turned aside by anything beyond a key code.
I'm sure I misunderstand but
it allows one copy of HL2 per machine
Does that mean I can't install 2 copies on my own machine? Well fair enough.
I bought the neverwinter nights expansion recently, unfortunately the CD was a bit flaky so it would barely install properly. After about 4 hours of work on the net, I managed to make a backup of the CD that I could trust would work in 6 months time.
I don't mind product activation 'provided' you can backup the CD without digging around for special tools, and there is a nice system in place whereby if you re-install/upgrade your PC it can be re-activated.
And it would also be nice if these measures start to work if they dropped the prices back down to the levels before they raised them to combat piracy. Can't see that happening though
- The current management don't have a clue about the business, and
- There are no innovative people left in the company.
Obviously a really large business is not a coheasive blob and some sections may still be doing a good job, but it does tend to indicate that the person with the reigns doesn't have a clue where they're going.At least, that was my first reaction. If I can't install this game on my home home computer, then install from the same CD on my computer at work to play LAN games at lunchtime with my co-workers who are also going to be buying a copy - the effective cost of the game just doubled and I'm not going to bother with it at all.
And this is from someone who bought the original Half-Life TWICE. I got it once when it first came out, then again when it was available in the giant bundle with both expansion packs as I'd since loaned the CD to a friend who'd moved away. If me buying your game twice isn't customer loyalty, I'm not sure what is. If you're going to turn around and screw me by forcing me to buy two copies of your product - adios. I'm not buying another one of your games ever again.
If the activation would allow me to install it in two places, so long as I only ran it in one place at a time (and even if it required me to be connected to the internet - I'm used to that for massively multiplayer games) that would be acceptable to me. So long as there were an uninstall feature that would let me move one activated copy to another computer if/when I upgrade my machine.
But product activation in HalfLife 2 would be such a monumentally horrible idea that I question the source - especially as I've never heard of that site before.
... pirates get to wait an extra couple of hours for a crack, and paying users get yet another annoying "protection" to get in their way. Yet again, those who aren't paying are getting a *better* product (no faffing about keeping the CD in the drive, no mandatory registration) than those who are. That's great! No, really...
Are they at least going to offset the annoyance factor by forgoing the CD checks? I have 300GB of disk space - I don't want to have to screw about hunting for a disk I can't copy properly which should be in storage somewhere safe.
Screw Steam too; post it to Usenet and P2P, and give me a way of buying a cheap license which factors in the fact that I didn't cost anything to distribute the game to. It's going to appear there anyway; it might as well do so legitimately.
Sierra seems like they are trying to beat out Activision and Electronic Arts for pissing on its customers, lately. First, the public relations debacle that culminated here, with one of Sierra's PR reps calling his customer base miniscule and sophomoric, and now an adoption of a licensing scheme which, like every scheme before it, won't hinder pirates but will annoy legitimate users to no end.
I was on the fence about buying Half Life 2, since I really enjoyed the mods for HL1 more than Sierra's game, but I don't think Sierra will be getting a piece of my entertainment budget for a while. It's a shame, because I really like Relic's games.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Now that Live has been up for a while, it's probably just a matter of time before X-Box hackers learn what Live is looking for to confirm it's legit, and come up with a mod chip that spoofs that.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I seriously doubt this article is authentic, as someone else pointed out. I'm surprised no one else has posted the whois info yet.
Domain Name: NERDSAHOY.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS0.WASABIDNS.COM
Name Server: NS1.WASABIDNS.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 24-may-2003
Creation Date: 24-may-2002
Expiration Date: 24-may-2004
Notice the creation date. The main page of Nerdsahoy.com claims it's been up since 1999. Netcraft has no history on the site, nor does the Wayback machine.
nerdsahoy.com claims that all of it's previous news was accidentally deleted... a likely story indeed.
I'm posting this anonymously cause I'm pretty sure it'd get modded to flamebait otherwise. I can't fucking stand the fact that you assholes are using such a pitiful excuse as a copy protection scheme as the reason you're gonna pirate a game. If you want to pirate and don't want to give Valve money for product don't. But don't try to excuse it by saying "I don't like their copy protection, they are gay, so I won't buy it." That's lame.
This inverview is an obvious fake. Has ANYONE ever heard of Nerdsahoy.com, come on! The site is extremely sparse and if you go to the main page you get some BS about how their news archive was deleted, so to ONLY article on this site is a FAKE HL2 interview. LAME. This never shoulda made it to /.
A little common sense goes a long way.
Thanks for everyone cluing me in as to the possible suspect nature of the interview. The headline's been changed here and at GameTab, and the article's been updated. Honestly, don't people have anything better to do with their time than make up interviews, and then anonymously submit them here? Grr.