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Valve Cracks Down on 20,000 Users
An anonymous reader writes "Valve have disabled 20,000 steam user accounts belonging to users who have been caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection found on the retail version of the game. The Steam Forums have been swamped with people now claiming they are unable to play, many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason. A Valve spokesman says, '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.'" People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything.
"A Valve spokesman says, 'The number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small."
So how draconian are they being? Is that "VERY small" number of users being excluded from the blacklist? Or did they trigger some End Game transgression of the EULA by even trying the CD key cheat?
If the latter, that would SERIOUSLY suck.
They are disabling accounts, thus effectively preventing people to play the legal games they did buy. So, is Valve obligated to provide refunds to users who cannot access their previously purchased games.
I mean, if I sell you a car, and you come into my house and steal my laptop, I don't get to take back my car and laptop and keep the money.
I think that's the only real issue here.
The problem's not that people are pirating the game -It's a problem, don't misunderstand, but the issue of legitimate purchasers being locked out of the game because they chose to circumvent the game's CD requirements.
IMHO, it's perfectly alright to bypass such protection on a legally purchased copy of the game. For instance, I downloaded such a hack to circumvent the protection on Civ III for the PC, which required that a CD be inserted to play, and which I had purchased at Best Buy. BTW, the hack works great!
And Valve has a right to 'lock out' customers stealing the game, but they enter a grey area of legality when they lock out legitimate purchasers who simply want to avoid the annoying CD checks on their legal copy of the game.
I think this is going to be a growing problem as game programmers get wise to the hacks and cracks that are put online almost simultaneously with the game releases. The ideal solution would be one in which the purchaser controls where and how they use the product for which they've paid money, while preventing unauthorized users from doing the same. Valve seems to have nailed a lot of actual piracy with the method they've chosen to use, but they've also impacted some legitimate users as well.
Interestingly enough, gamers on the Mac (Yes, there are a few!) don't have as many problems with this kinda protection since they can have store and mount CD images directly off their hard drive. When I play Civ on the Mac, I simply have to click the CD image of the game, mount it as a disk image, and bang!, the game thinks I've inserted the CD. Too bad PC users don't also have this option. It's also too bad that more games are not released for the Mac. The G5's ready, but the gaming company's still don't see it as a viable game platform. 8(
I can't seem to figure out who Valve is actually banning? If somebody has a pirated version of the game, then they don't even have a Steam account to ban in the first place, because the cracked version bypasses Steam!
Are they only banning people who actually paid for the game and used a no-cd crack? That's just retarded; It stops the legitimate users but does nothing about the pirates.
I saw the other reply getting modded into the dirt, and decided to reply here :-)
Up in Canada, the product is QuickTax (same company). I was trying to print out some tax returns for a exparte court visit (exparte meaning does not require proper service). So I find out late Friday afternoon that it's going to be a Monday morning epsisode in court, and I require tax returns. I have all my tax returns on cd, not printed, because, hey, I own the software.
I got 1999 printed, but not 2000, 2001 or 2002. Why? Because I had installed the software on an older, now dead and gone machine, previously when I did the original fucking returns. So their 'activation' detected that it was a new machine and prevented me from installing and printing out my returns. I attempted to call their amazing technical support, but because it was out of tax season, it was 9-5 Monday to Friday, or in my time zone, 10-6. So basically, they expect someone to make personal calls from work.
I ended up calling Revenue Canada and having someone pick up summary returns while I delayed in court. Thank you Intuit, for worrying that I might be trying to redo a 3 year old tax return. If you are going to disable shit, allow people to at least PRINT OUT WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE and kill the ability to make a new return, or something more useful than that. And it would be nice if you would reply to emails too.
I use XP, simply because it came with my laptop. I do not use Office XP or later, or other software that requires *activation* unless I can now absolutely avoid it. After all, how are you supposed to ensure the company you are buying from will remain in business in case you need to reinstall. And for all you linux zealots that are going to attack me on the using Windows statement - piss off. I develop software for the predominant platform so I can feed my kids.
You're missing the picture here. My example was a scenario where you buy a book, get home to read it, and find out you can only legally read it from 8 to 10am, on Sundays, and only if it's raining. No one is discussing the copyrighted media contained in the book.
You buy a book, you should get a book, and not a license agreement. You buy a game (which is being sold to you as a game, and not as a licence) and you should get precisely that as well.
The real question here is: are your options 1 and 2 correct?
1) The company does nothing. They loose sales. Bad for them.
Does a lack of invasive copy protection lead to decrease sales? Or, the other way round: do invasive copy protection schemes increase sales? And in a related issue:
2) The company builds in DRM. This causes consumers to complain. Bad for us.
Could the consumer aggravation lead to decreased sales? Does it have any other side effects for the company that could eventually lead to decreased sales?
Of course, the answers might well be that invasive schemes do actually increase sales by some margin and the consumer aggravation isn't something to worry about. There are few people who won't buy a game because of the current and previous "sins" of a developer or publisher.
On the other hand, many people quite correctly argue that many invasive schemes annoy the paying customer, but don't do much more than inconvenience the typical pirate. Publishers often claim that copy protection serves to prevent casual pirates from copying the game. I don't think that works anymore: cd cracks are incredibly easy to find on both the web and in filesharing networks.
Then you get only the bad aspects, and even if you don't care about your customers hating you, you don't get out of anything.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
More importantly, why aren't more people telling this company to fuck off? When TurboTax tried the activation bullshit, there was a huge public outcry, people applied for refunds in droves (and got them in states where the laws allow them), and rushed to H&R Block's TaxCut. TurboTax got the message big time and took out a full page ad in the NY Times and other major newspapers apologizing for the incident and as a result TurboTax for this year has no activation required.
Of course, I can answer my own question: because there are other ways to do your taxes, but Half-Life 2 is shiny and game addicts need their fix. If you hate a company's product, you shouldn't support them. People need to be stronger and stop buying movies and DVDs and software that impose restrictions. Only then will the companies wake up.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Actually, most states have that law. Most people do not realize it. The laws are also "dummy" laws - which means they cannot be waived no matter what sign is posted, or document you sign. Stores just try and "freighten" you by acting like the store knows best. In all reality - just grow a back-bone, know your rights, and stand up for yourself....within minutes the manager will refund you fully.
Another great thing to do is - buy with your credit card - you get plenty of protection. My mom's fiancee bought a laptop through Dell - didn't use it - but was able to return it two months later for a full refund due to his AMEX card...
Just a side note, I live in PA -A
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
And the state law backs this up? You guys got p0wn3d by the corps. Check up on that (if you haven't already) - but don't listen to a store salesman (obviously). Also, I suggest purchasing with a credit card. They don't give a rats ass about the law - they just tell the store to accept the return or never be able to use Visa, MasterCard, AMEX or whatever card you used... Very effective that pressure from the big guy.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
+5 insightful (at the time I started replying)? More like -1: No contract law knowledge.
Sale of an item is a contract between a seller and a buyer. If you accept that you are buying a game software at the store, then that's the whole agreement between you, the buyer, and the seller. If the seller wants to impose additional restrictions onto the buyer which were not agreed upon during the sale (EULA wasn't agreed upon or signed during the transaction), then the seller has to provide additional consideration in return. If the seller provides no additional consideration, then there can be no lawful contract. And buyer refusing that additional consideration cannot be denied the original purchase item either.
So, what does NOT constitute an agreement?
- printing some website URL on the back of the box does not consitute a buyer agreeing to it if the contract is not expressly agreed upon during the actual sale;
- some "common" knowledge or a suspicion that some kind of EULA text probably or possibly exists somewhere does not constitute to a buyer agreeing to it;
- anything else to which you, the buyer, did not expressly agree to at the time of purchase cannot be considered as a part of the sales transaction.
Now, to argue that the required additional consideration provided to you by the seller after the purchase is to let you actually play the game, then you have to admit that you didn't really purchase a copy of the game at the store, but rather a coaster and possibly a copy of a manual. In that case, the almost empty can of pears analogy is more appropriate, but of course not perfect.
It would be more like - buy this can of pears from IPFruit, Inc., having a small print that you need to activate the can before you can use those pears. When you go home you find out that "activation" involves agreeing to additional restrictions in an EULA that says you can only use IPFruit approved forks for handling pears, you cannot re-sell directly or any food item that contains the pears, and you cannot share them with your friends or neighbors either by any means.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
A friend of mine came up with the idea that the set of laws should be restricted, by forcing them to fit inside a book of fixed length (say 200 pages of 12pt text). That way, when a new law gets brought in, they have to get rid of an old one (or make an old one simpler), and everyone gets a better chance of understanding the law.
I reckon that's not a bad idea.
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Another great thing to do is - buy with your credit card - you get plenty of protection. My mom's fiancee bought a laptop through Dell - didn't use it - but was able to return it two months later for a full refund due to his AMEX card...
Correction: Do not buy with "your credit card". Buy with "your American Express card". American Express is notorious in retail stores because they defend you more than any other credit card company and even let you charge back a transaction to the store and keep the item (even if it's a large one) if you claim that they didn't let you return it. This includes items that are specifically marked "Open Box -- Final Sale" or "Last One -- Final Sale", because American Express apparently doesn't believe in such things.
Unfortunately, that's also why not everyone carries American Express, as well as why many people that I know have told me that they pay a premium for American Express in comparison to their other cards.