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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.
"it uses a system much like Windows XP"
Newsflash: 20 days before the official release date of WinXP, a no-activation version was already installed in millions of PC worldwide.
Maybe they could decrease the number of online gamers, even that was proven impossible. A huge percentage of online HL gamers use a pirated copy and a CDKey "they got from a friend".
^_^
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.
God, that's going to be annoying if you don't have internet access for some reason. Buying a game only to not be able to play it until you post off a card and get a response would be crazy, especially for overseas customers.
I hope it's like Windows XP where you get 30 days to activate your HL2. If that's what happens there might be nothing stopping me from installing an illegal copy, playing it for 30 days then reinstalling/giving up.
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.
Guess what happens when their "STEAM" content delivery system suddenly has HalfLife 2 available.
CRUNCH. No more Steam Content servers.
They say they have 1.8Gbps bandwidth, but a mere 3345 people used 1.3Gbps when the RedHat ISOs were released on BitTorrent. Centralised content distribution like Steam is simply not going to be able to handle the load for the size of files they're going to be throwing around.
Without some decentralised P2P file downloading action it's about as bright an idea as their "Powerplay" initiative (and look how that turned out).
... 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.
"About the only thing left to try is hardware DRM, but even that's not fool-proof (X-Box)."
Xbox Live! service + XBox hardware = no mods, no cheaters. There's the odd bugged game that can be used in various evil ways, but the actual combination of a locked-hardware set and a locked-network is fairly strong.
Sure, you could possibly crack it, but it's so improbable as to be impossible.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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
That the source is kinda dodgy? As one AC mentioned, it's not a site anybody's really heard about, and it was submitted anonymously. Combine this with the way it reads. While Mr. Newell often made amusing responces to questions, they tend to at least have more humour than what was found in this interview. Not to mention the way the questions were posed. 8/27/03 Interview with Mr Newell for comparison
The first thing I do when I buy a game with a CD-Key is take out my trusty Sharpie pen and write the key on the CD.
You need a license to have a dog, but any fool can have a child!
If you stick it on the Jewel Case you can use a more brutal machine to stick it on than if it was the sensitive CD.
Plus you can get the jewel cases made ahead of having the CDs pressed.
But I agree, this is annoying move from Valve.
Like all copy protectin, the only people it will annoy is legitimate customers.
"No CD Present" - "Yes there is, it's on the shelf in the box"
5 minutes and a trip to
http://www.gamecopyworld.com
later
"ahh, no-cd bliss"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I was really looking forward to HL2. I had the date marked on my calendar and everything. However, with this news, I doubt I'll buy it at all. I've avoided buying Windows XP because of the whole issue, and continue to run Windows 2000 to play games. To me, the "upgrade" wasn't worth letting someone else tell me that I was "allowed" to run it, even after I've already paid for it because of a hardware change. What if I lose my internet connection after the change? I'm stuck until I make a call? I'm sorry. That's just ridiculous -- to me -- that I would have to fool with that, again, after I've paid for it, free and clear. Unfortunately, I've just tried this new "Steam" product, and I thought, "Hey, this will be great! All these games for free! It will even be perfect for LAN parties because we'll finally be able to play Counter-Strike even though not everyone has bought it." Then I realize that for one thing, there are ads every time you launch a game. Not big ones, but ads. "Fine," I thought, "this is a free product. I get what I pay for." On top of this, the other thing that bugs me is that it's "phoning home" every time I launch a game. Again, it's free, and I guess that's part of the deal, but if we don't have an internet connection at the next LAN party (and sometimes we don't), then we can't play Counter-Strike for free. The bottom line is that I like to install my games both at work and at home, so I can play on my own time at lunch, and occasionally after work. I take my saved games back and forth while I beat a new game to death. If Valve tells me that I can't do that without paying for two copies, that's their perogative, of course, but it's also my perogative to not buy it. It seems ridiculous to me that I can't treat a video game like a book, and take it "where I want to go today." Product activation "like Microsoft" indeed. It looks like Valve will inherit my Microsoft buying habits, and I don't buy anything from Microsoft any more.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
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.
Small error there. You need a valid CDKey to use the Sierra Update to download patches. Anyone can go to http://www.planethalflife.com/ and download patches and mods to their hearts content.
Kleedrac
Sure we wang, can.
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.
http://nerdsahoy.com/articles/view.php?articleID=1 66