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.

Comments

Journalism experts we are

[sweede]

" This is the news from some guy with a filefront account, so take it with a grain of salt "

I think that before /. questions the accuracy of some news submission, they should look at the accuracy of their own comments, News submissions, and what users title their submissions.

some one needs to change "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." to something like,

"We think we're un-biased when we report stories that are different than how we feel, but thats not what gets subscribers paying the bills, and thats what maters"

burn karma burn!

Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base?

[dougmc]

Sorry, but you're wrong here. That time is spent loading the game. Want proof? Exit Steam. Disconnect from the internet, and restart Steam. This will start steam in offline mode (it can't talk to Valve - you have no internet connection).

Maybe you count time differently than I do. I don't want to play Steam -- I want to play HL2. So I consider the time spent starting Steam as part of the time spent starting HL2. And I don't want to spend time unplugging my computer from the network just so HL2/Steam will start faster.

Also, this is my `game' computer (I do most of my work and other stuff on a Linux box that's up 24/7.) So it's not left on all the time. If it were, and I left myself logged in all the time, it might be a lot faster, as Steam would have started at login and would be ready to go. But that's not how I do things on that computer, and I don't plan on changing, in spite of how slow it makes HL2 start up.

This will start steam in offline mode (it can't talk to Valve - you have no internet connection).

I suspect that this would make things even *slower* for me. After all, the connection to the Steam servers will probably have to time out, which is generally even slower than making the connection in the first place.

I suspect that this Steam requirement was made with the assumption that people turn on their computer, log in and leave themselves logged in and don't turn the computer off. That's fine, but in my case, I turn the computer on, log in, click on my application to run (in this case HL2), wait several minutes for all the crap to start, then play my game, then shut down the computer. (My computer room gets very hot with two computers on all the time ...)

All this, so that Valve can watch me, and serve up advertisements to me, and know when I play their fine game. Thanks guys. Really.