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Valve Takes the Offensive on Warez Users?
Drull writes "It's claimed by a poster on filefront.com that Valve might have released a "Warez" version of Half-Life 2 to monitor and ban those who attempt to use it. This is the news from some guy with a filefront account, so take it with a grain of salt.
What alternate reality do you live in? I've seen more complaints about Steam and Valve in the past week than ever before. Valve has pissed off plenty of people lately.
Hey, I too hate the RIAA and the MPAA for their jack-booted techniques, but I wouldn't exactly point to Valve as the gold standard.
It took two hours to get HL2 actually up and ready to play on tuesday, even though the installer actually put the bits onto the disk from the CD in under 15 minutes. And now, to actually play the game, in single player mode, it still takes several minutes from the time I click on the icon to start the game before I can even choose to load a saved game -- this time is spent starting Steam, then verifying that my copy is legit.
And then, even when I'm not playing, Steam pops up and sends messages to my screen. So far, they've been related to HL2 and Steam, but how long will it be before Valve is advertising their new game? Or somebody else's new game, available through Steam? Or how about some new energy drink to drink while playing their game?
Don't pretend that everybody likes Steam. It seems clever enough, but really what it is is an advertising, piracy prevention and sales portal. And if you want HL2, to actually *buy* HL2 rather than pirate it, it's forced on you.
IF Valve is, indeed, running such an experiment, it's pretty unlikely that Gabe Newell (or anyone at Valve) would immediately fess up to it to some unknown joker on the Internet - WHILE they're trying to catch people.
:)
:)
However, this is a pretty neat idea - since Valve knows that people are going to pirate the game, the proactive step of CONTROLLING the version that gets pirated by modding it so that they can track it anthen releasing it BEFORE anyone else can do the same pretty much ensures that they'll get the personal info (name, credit card #, address, etc.) of lots of pirates, and then they can choose what to do with that info.
The first option that comes to mind is emotionally satisfying to but a horrible business plan - they COULD use that personal info to PERMANENTLY BAN that person from using Steam/HL2, ever. Although that might make Gabe & crew feel good for a few minutes... they just potentially lost ($50 x #_of_pirates).
The second option, which is BOTH emotionally satisfying AND a good business plan, BUT is ALSO only quasi-moral and barely legal, is to use that personal info to contact the pirates directly and extort^H^H^H^H^H^H encourage them to buy a legal copy immediately, otherwise Valve will turn their info over to the authorities for prosecution. This not only "sticks it to the pirates" but also generates additional revenue (($50 x #_of_pirates) - ($50 x #_of_stupid_pirates)). Heck, if they went the extortion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H encouragement route, why not "encourage" them to buy the $90 package instead?
The third, and most likely option, would be to turn all of that personal info over to the authorities and make a huge example out of all of them, thus instilling the Fear of Valve into all pirates everywhere, which would hopefully reduce the number of pirates and create a Utopian society for all.
All that said, though, I doubt there's any truth to the story, since, again, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a sting-operation if you TELL EVERYONE you're running a sting!
there's nothing illegal about banning users from your private system for what ever reason that you choose as long as you stop billing them. Also, it is probably written into the TOS that the users of this software must not modify it.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
These same server problems affect every MMORPG on day 1. They affect every popular game that has online content (e.g., every Blizzard game).
The difference, of course, being that in those cases you only have to validate games that are online.
I'm waiting a few extra days before I buy the game, simply because I don't want that hassle.
And you don't think that this is an unnecessary hassle? Why should you have to wait a few days (or any amount of time at all excluding the few minutes of installation) to play a $50 game offline?
Rob
At least Microsoft provided the option of activating the product over the phone.
And on the same note, why should Valve go through 5 years of cost and trouble to design the best game ever made (my own opinion after playing it) only to have it widely stolen and pirated?
I'd much rather have Valve protect their creation via technology than in the courts.
Compare Valve's approach to that of the RIAA / MPAA. I'll take Valve's any day of the week.
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On some machines quite capable of running HL2, the steam part takes an extra four minutes or so, simply because Steam sucks and/or the servers are overloaded. Why should consumers have to wait for steam to play a game they paid for? We're being treated like criminals - nice reward for giving Valve and Vivendi our money, eh?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"And you don't think that this is an unnecessary hassle? Why should you have to wait a few days (or any amount of time at all excluding the few minutes of installation) to play a $50 game offline?"
Then DON'T BUY THE FUCKING GAME. Why do people complain about stuff they know they're going to hate, then hand the makers $50 anyhow?
Indeed...Valve is not the gold standard.
But the geek side of me has to acknowledge that the idea of downloading premium game content over the net versus having to walk/drive to the store is a great advance, and while it may havebeen inevitable, its good to see it actually working today (albeit with some growing pains in the first few hours/days/weeks).
This is exaclty the business model I'd like to see pursued with software, music and movies. It puts the money into the hands of the developers, rather than the publishers, and has the potential to eventually lower prices, if competition is good.
I'd like to see $40 premium games on release day, rather than the push for $55-$60 pricetags, along with knowing that even though I pay $15-$20 less, more money is actually going to the guys who wrote the software.
That would be the The Right Thing.
The likelihood of Acclaim going out of business is what?
The likelihood of Argonaut going out of business is what?
The likelihood of Virgin/Vivendi/Fox being sold to another company is what?
"A) So as long as Ford sells enough cars to "be successful", they shouldn't make attempts to keep cars from being stolen off their lots or from their factories?"
Uh huh. Because software copying is EXACTLY like removal of physical property. But as long as we're going down incongruous metaphor lane, let's make take this to an even stupider level: Would it be okay for you if Ford protected their cars by causing you to have to call them and seek permission to open the door? What good does that do if somebody can still force their way in?
If you're shaking your head, fine, don't bother hitting reply on that. The metaphor was stupid to begin with. I never said it was okay for people to steal, nor was I rationalizing it. What I was saying was that it wasn't worth hurting the customer over.
"B) Of course it will be cracked. Almost everything gets cracked. But for online gaming, what percentage of those playing the original Half-Life multiplayer were doing so on pirated software? 0%. Authentication works."
Right. Ask Blizzard about BnetD and then tell me again how succesful authentication is. If Half-Life 2's authentication is bad enough (not saying it is, as I'm not afraid to admit I really have no idea.) they could get around the authentication problem by developing their own server for it. It's difficult, not all that practical, but not impossible. (There's a big question mark over my head as to whether anybody can host their own game or if it's STRICTLY being done by Valve. If you're getting the sense that I don't know much about this game, your intuition would be correct.) If you can host your own game, authentication seriously loses its effectiveness in the hands of pirates. If the servers are 100% Valve owned, then I'm willing to concede this point to practicality.
C.) Nothing about this makes it unplayable.
Yet. Most of us have a tale to tell about losing an important element of a game, like the ID#, and having to buy another copy to play it again. History's against you here.
"Derp de derp."