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Is the Half-Life 2 EULA Illegal?
Ant writes "Many people are having problems connecting to the Steam servers to play Half-Life 2, and now the legal agreements that surround a purchase of Half-Life 2 have been examined. The German Consumer Association has found that the packaging on Half-Life 2 is misleading. In a report made following complaints from the public, they said that the mere listing of an internet connection under the 'other' category in system requirements did not accurately describe the true extent of the internet tie-in with the game, and ordered Vivendi to amend the packaging and untie Steam from HL2 or face a hefty fine."
Or is this going a little overboard
I think this is great news, and I really, really hope they don't choose the fine!
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
EULAs - who reads them anymore? I started reading through more, and it's amazing on what they say. Item IIV - you must give us all your money. Item IV - all your money belong to us. It seems crazier with the online games more than anything.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
it should be.
Does that mean only the U.S version now will be forced to rely on steam? So we get screwed and have to remain connected to this service while everyone else doesn't.
In a report made following complaints from the public, they said that the mere listing of an internet connection under the 'other' category in system requirements did not accurately describe the true extent of the internet tie-in with the game.
Wouldn't listing "Internet connection" under "System Requirements" (even under some "Other" category), imply that an internet connection is a requirement?
I haven't seen the packaging myself, but it seems pretty clear-cut to me.
The "mere listing" of an internet connection as a requirement IS misleading, and not just for the reasons they mention in the article. I made the mistake of trying this with my aluminum-line, out-in-the-boondocks 26.4k connection. I returned the (opened) software to the store and told them the system requirements were misleading. Internet Connection!=broadband
Mutant Freaks of Nature: "Frighteningly Addictive"
Don't turn this into a "we can finally rip Steam out of HL2" issue. It's completely irrelevant.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
Sees this and jumps ship. Valve can survive on its own with Steam as their primary distro .And if you have to be online to access steam, well... Kinda stops this kinda thing in the bud.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
I'm not so sure if this would hold up. The box specifically says "internet connection REQUIRED." It's not Valve's fault if you don't know what the word required means. MMORPGs don't list anything more than this, I don't see why HL2 should have to. Sure, there are going to be the people who say "But it's a single player game!" Too bad. That's the way Valve chose to work it. The fact is, everyone knew about the Steam aspect of this before the game ever shipped. Like it or not, you were warned, by the media AND by the box, and you STILL bought it. You have no right to complain. (Except about not being able to run correctly in offline mode; that's a valid complaint.)
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
ordered Vivendi to amend the packaging and untie Steam from HL2 or face a hefty fine
I really hope that this is just the author misinterpreting the decision.
Vivendi shouldn't be allowed a choice. Well, they should, but it's the wrong choice. The choice should be: untie Steam from HL2 and pay the fine, or stop selling HL2 in Germany.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Those fuckin bastards at Valve have been stealing my rights for too long. It's about time someone gave it back to them. It's been too long since they sucked my life away with the original game, and I'm damn tired of it!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Is it illegal? Probably not. It is an EULA, ergo it is not legally binding, but illegal? Overstatement.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
For years, large corporate game publishers have been setting all the
rules for gamers and game developers alike. Valve software, because
they are privately funded, has a chance to change the way games are
not only distributed, but the amount of control that the corporate
pointy-hairs wield. What do gamers do? They promptly shoot
themselves in the foot by whining about how steam is n't perfect.
And it's not. Steam still has all kinds of things that bug me.
However, Steam is a huge step in what I believe is the right
direction.
Game publishers have been REQUIRING that more and more copy
protections be added to games. These protections often make the game
UNPLAYABLE to PAYING CUSTOMERS. (Note the idiocy of Vivendi in
requiring a CD check for the CD version of HL2.) They go as far as
installing stealth DRIVERS for your hardware to enable these copy
protections.
Steam offers an alternative. True, it requires an internet
connection. (Oh no.) True, it's not perfect. But it's got a MUCH
better future then the alternative.
Not only does Steam offer an alternative way of authentication, it
ALSO offers and alternative method of distribution. The beauty is NOT
that distribution occurs over the internet. The beauty is that
distribution is easily available to small developers.
No need to fight for shelf space at distribution outlets. No need to
coordinate mass-production facilities and release dates.
Vivendi, et al. would like few things better then to see Steam fail.
It would be icing on the cake if gamers themselves stuck a knife in
its back.
On the other hand, I think that requiring an internet connection to use software you bought in the store ought to be fucking illegal, unless the software is internet-centric. HL2 is not; only some of its features are. They are holding your software hostage. You're just leasing it.
Of course, that's not what the law says, so I think this is the wrong way to go about this.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its not about an internet connection being required, its about the fact that the box doesn't mention having to install Steam to play it and how "internet connection required" != Steam.
While I agree that online distribution is a potential boon for the independent developer house, it doesn't have to come at the price of "if we go under, you can't play". Having been bitten by *that* shell game already I refuse to buy any software that requires authentication with the mothership if there is a viable alternative available. There is nothing like upgrading your computer to find that your reg key is missing or invalidated by the upgrade... and that the company either doesn't exist or refuses to issue a new key without a browbeating. I have enough to do each day without battling authentication schemes. (And yes, I have a few disks that fail due to DVD incompatability... that's why I keep a CD drive installed.)
Off topic: WTF is up with the manual line breaks?
Sig under construction since 1998.
Can someone please explain what this "[tt]" thing is? I've seen it used in a number of posts lately, what memo did I miss that explained it???
[javac] 100 errors
It's simple: by buying HL2, you just haven't bought a game. Not even a user license. What you have paid are "subscription fees". And what you have is just a subscription to some content on an online (?buggy?) service. And don't believe it is a lifetime subscription. Just read the damn SSA, it is definitely not a no-brainer.
And it's getting really fun when you start comparing with the retail HL2 EULA. There are contradicting themselves on such little details like change of terms and billing, termination and transferability. But bad luck, the evil SSA is suposed to superseed the nicer retail EULA.
I know I'm paranoid and that Valve may not do something of terrible taste, like for instance adding recurring charges to Steam in order "to defray" bandwith costs (a bit like they are charging $10 if you want to re-sell the game, to "defray the costs" of this operation). But they claim in the SSA to have that kind of rights. And I find this legal trick with the SSA/EULA to be already of VERY bad taste, especially for a company whose marketing line is to be THE company who really cares about its fan base....
And is there any official clarification on theses issues from Valve? Well, on the Steam forums, apart the "We are tired of these legalese chats" from the mods and the "We are experiencing a troll infestation" by a Valve representative... nothing really meaningfull. (Apart maybe the funny "our $10 re-sell fee is *consistent* with VU after-90-days warranty" which was very rapidly deleted...)
I'm tired of people saying you can't play Steam games offline. You don't need the internet to play Steam games, you just need the internet to authorize the games and unlock them. I unlocked and updated HL2 on a 56k modem. When I am not connected to my ISP through my 56k modem, and I run Steam, it asks me if I want to run Steam in offline mode. When I confirm that I do, it allows me to play all the Steam games offline including the single player Half-Life 2.
About the reference to a friend with a friend with a high-speed connection, you don't need to give out the disks for Half-Life 2. Any valid Steam account can download the game files for any game that account owns. As long as the same account doesn't download the game files more than twice or so, they probably won't ask questions.
To sum up: By mildly annoying anyone that bought the game, they have given you a system to pirate the game one person at a time without needing to copy the disks, nice job.
yeah!
Seems like the problem here isn't with Steam the distribution system, but Steam the authentication system.
I have no problem with Valve distributing games via Steam. That's there prerogative. I do have a problem with having to reconnect to steam, unless I want to pull my network cable (offline mode has not worked for me unless I do that), every time I want to play.
As so many people have mentioned, some of us like to come back to games we've played in 5 or 10 years and just give it another go-round. Steam the authentication system has the potential to make that impossible.
But I was certainly annoyed that even after buying HL2 at the store, I had to fight with Steam for hours (seriously) before I could play the game. And even after that was all done, it was 5 minutes after I booted up before I could even play HL2 (Steam had to fully initialize first, and that took several minutes) for several weeks. Then that got fixed somehow.
Distributing games via the Internet is a great idea. Buying games at the local store is a tried and true technique, which makes it a great idea too (just not that new.) But don't mix the two, unless it's for more than just copy protection (like with a MMORPG.)
Valve stuck the knife in itself by requiring that the retail version of HL2 require Steam. The gamers are just twisting the knife a little -- which certainly seems fair considering what Steam has done to many (including me), and without even offering some reach-around.I don't know about illegal, but for me it certainly was illegible. The agreement as experienced on my system required me to scroll to the end before I was allowed to agree to it, and the mere act of scrolling it caused it to become unreadable, whether I was using the scrollbar, the mouse scrollwheel, or just the cursor up and down keys. Portions of letters from some line were mixed in with other lines. Lines were doubled or tripled when they should have been distinct. I don't know what they're using for a textbox but I must say I had no reasonable opportunity to read their license and thus do not feel bound by their license.
Not that I'm expecting to do anything that would violate a reasonable license agreement.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
But for those with broadband, should we be forced to unplug our network connections before firing up Steam? I don't see why I would essentially have to rewire my PC and re-route all my network cabling to make them easily accessable just to play a game. Although I feel like I'm missing out, I am one person who has already voted with their wallet, and refuses to buy into this whole Valve/Steam thing.
F*ck Vivendi, Valve, Steam, and all of their rediculous shinanagans! It is rediculous to make consumers jump through these kinds of hoops to play a friggin video game.
I will never, ever buy another product released by these greed mongers.
I bought HalfLife 2, and thats all I will ever buy from them.
They will eventually fail, because they will never produce a title even remotely close to the quality of HL2, therefore nobody will be buying their products.
Good riddence you greedy bastards!
No argument there. However, the alternative is hardly more promising.
I've had numerous CDs fail due to scratches. As more and more copy protections are forced onto CDs, it becomes harder and harder to make a backup copy.
With Steam, I don't have to worry about physical medium at all. I can (and have) installed HL2 on multiple machines with only my username and password. I don't have to worry about transferring a CD back and forth between computers (possibly being lost or scratched in the process).
Currently gamers use 3rd party "no CD cracks" to achieve the same thing. However, as copy protections foisted upon us by corporate "geniuses" become more robust, that option may disappear.
Yes, it would be nice to have some guarantee of a "no steam" patch in the event that the Steam servers disappear, but I'll settle for now without it.
I typed this previously as a response to a Blues News article. I emailed it to myself because I was waiting for my account password. The line breaks are preserved from the email.
:)
As a side note, useability studies have shown that somewhere near 2 alphabets of length is ideal for ease of reading. That's why I didn't bother to reformat it.
Untrue.
There already are indie editors who tries to deliver their programs without getting into the publishers greedy hands.
It is not what valve is trying to do. Valve is trying to become the new big guy around the block instead of the current publishers and is already using the same control freaks tactics, but adapted to the current technology. That is the only difference i see here.
So don't tell me no nonsense of a better future or that valve's behavior can be compared in any way to "small developpers".
Those are fan boy conceptions which are nice on penny arcade or in a schoolyard, but can't be farther from the truth of what's happening.
All that Valve is doing is part of a strategy to get more control over their customers. Steam is nothing else than that, no small editors could have afforded the cost of that beast, especially considering the time it stayed useless. And nobody would have gone into that costy direction without thinking that it will get big cash in return.
To get big cash in return they are forced to tie their customers to steam, since the internet already provides everything that steam can provides but for free. That is what theyr are trying to do, not bringing a better future.
1. The offline authorization expires, and requires you to re-authorize periodically.
2. If Steam goes down, but your internet connection is still working, you'll lose your offline authorization.
3. Because of #1, if Valve ever goes out of business, takes Steam offline, or disables HL2 on Steam you'll lose the ability to play HL2, even offline, once your authorization expires in a month or two.
#2 is the really nasty one right now-- it's impossible to know if Steam is up without checking (their status page said "steam is online" during the last whole-day outage), and once you check, your old authorization is cleared out while it waits for a new one from the server. Of course, if the server's down, you won't get a new one, leaving you with an unplayable game until they fix their shit.
#3 will be particularly nasty in the future. Although they're nice folks now, if Valve is ever purchased by a nasty company, they could push us all out of the game to encourage "upgrades" to newer games. Or, valve could just die and leave us in the lurch.
The software for my slide scanner exits if you don't have an internet connection. While I can understand some software checking licenses, It makes no sense that this one should have to check for piracy as the $500 piece of hardware makes a pretty effective dongle.
Wow, I don't know how you could possibly be more blind to whats happening. Valve most certainly has a chance to change the amount of control the corporate pointy-hairs wield, and low and behold, they now have even MORE power of what you can and cannot do with software that you have purchased. And if you think its fun playing all the free mods for the game, wait until they start buying them up and charging for them all. Oh wait, thats already starting to happen.
I really don't know what it will take to make gamers realize that Valve now has them by the balls and can twist them whenever they want. Valve lost all my respect with this Steam fiasco, and while I commend them on their new attempts at distribution, the cost of using this distribution method is chilling. This is NOT a step in the right direction, this is a step forward and two steps back.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
You just got a place on my friends list for answering that ;)
Sig under construction since 1998.
My internet was down last night, so instead of Counter Strike: Source, I thought I'd try HL2, again. But, since Steam couldn't get online, I couldn't play that either. Fine away! And while they're at it, there needs to be an option to get a fucking refund. The whole system sucks. I'm in favor or boycotting Valve's future products.
Steam offers an alternative. True, it requires an internet connection. (Oh no.) True, it's not perfect. But it's got a MUCH better future then the alternative.
So what happens to our precious Half Life 2 in ten years when Gabe Newell suddenly decides to start flying into space or kayaking instead of making computer games, and disbands Valve? Or when they decide to can Steam for Steam 2? While copy protection blows, Steam doesn't really help the consumer because they are as reliant on the company as they were with copy protection - perhaps even more so. For example, I have long since lost my code wheel to Starflight, now nearly a 20 year old game. For kicks, I tried contacting EA (the publisher) who had no idea what Starflight was. Thankfully, I had already found a crack on the net. The dependence is easily kicked.
But let's say that your dream of complete Steamed anti-piracy comes true. Let's say that with the next expansion pack, the only way you can possibly play it is by verifying with Steam's servers. Then, the next year, Gabe Nevell decides to start flying into space instead of working on games and shuts Valve down. So where's your precious Steam then, when it doesn't even exist and you can't play HL2 for old skool kicks? You have no physical product to even prove that you bought the game. Sure, ok; realistically someone somewhere would come up with a solution, but it would be akin to downloading a crack now. How does that solve anything? What's more is that I can lend Starflight to anyone I want. Can you do that with Steam? Nope. Is that exlusion in the EULA? Nope. Do I have a guarantee that as long as I own Half Life 2 and the PC to play it on, I can play it? Nope. You can only play HL2 on Valve's terms, and on Valve's timetable. How is that helping the consumer?
You talk about Valve software as if they're some kind of perfect Messiah sent to rescue gamers. Well, they can admittedly produce great games (two of them, to be exact). But Steam blew my system a four hour kiss, and then it took 4 more months - four months - until they released a patch that stopped the stuttering and made the game playable. Remember September 30th? They openly lied to you about their release date. They've also screwed the mod community several times over. Sorry bud, but they are as much the "corporate pointy-hairs" as Vivendi.
If there's a limited amount of "power" in this publisher-game studio-consumer relationship, all that's happened with Steam is a transfer of power from publisher to game studio. None of it comes down to the consumer. In fact, it seems to be robbing us of it. I prefer the "system" now in comparison Steam. I'm not an idiot for thinking so either, and if it means helping Vivendi so I have more control over products I rightfully purchased and own, than so be it.
If all internet connections were created equal, I would agree with you. But merely saying "internet connection required" when, for all practical purposes a *fast* DSL/Cable is required to avoid using DOZENS of hours of dial-up time for the MANDATORY updates) is deceptive. Another item not mentioned is the lack of first-sale rights by binding (irrevocably) the sale to a particular steam account and requiring "check-in" connections/updates to be run on a regular basis to use the game in the future.
Put another way, the problem is that the nature of the connection and the required frequency of the connection was not adequately explained. For instance, some software packages require a one-time connection to authenticate the software. A few hundred bytes sent, a few hundred received. Done. Steam required dozens of megs be downloaded, and the software must phone home once per month or so in order to continue to be used.
Sorry, but "internet connection required" doesn't cut it.
Piracy is probably always going to happen with the latest songs/software/movies. Someone will find a way to crack a product, no matter how good the protection is. Unfortunately, most companies try to screw everyone who uses their software to prevent piracy. If more efforts were made to stop piracy, maybe we wouldn't have these problems. And to punish those who pirate games like HL2, everyone who had to put up with Steam could get a punch at these people!
Scott Simontis
I really hope people like you don't end up forcing Valve to kill steam. I've had nothing but great results of it, and I really liked the fact that by purchasing it off of steam I...
A. Can download and play CS:S anywhere I have steam installed without CD's
B. Bought it without giving a god damned dime to Vivendi.
I honestly would rather have a fantasticly awesome game that is avalable to play 99.5% of the time than a rushed out garbage heap avalable 100% of the time.
But then again, I play World of Warcraft, so take with that what you will.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
I personaly didn't know that Steam was going to be tied in this much. The last time i had read you would be able to play HL2 without steam when you first installed it. But if you wanted to play Counter Strike:Source you would have to make a Steam account. To me personaly this would make more sense. You should be able to play a Single player game without any form of internet.... After all it is single player.
How many SINGLE PLAYER games out there do you know that you need an internet connection to even get the game working?
Its just the issue of VALVe not offering a version that is Steam free. I find it realy hard to swallow that the people that have 56k internet have less of an issue than the majority of gamers that have broadband.
As for the internet connection being a requirement HL2 was advertised with Counter-Strike:Source. I and many others thought that the internet connection requirement soley involved the ability to play CS:S and not HL2 also. As this would seem to make sense to any person that knew about the HL series.
Call me stupid but why would you need to connect to a content server for a single player game? Are they going to randomly keep changing the ending so that you'll never be able to reach it? Or are they going to finish the game and have you download the ending as you play it? You would think when you release a single player game that it would indeed be the final version and not need any updating.
So if thats the case why must you download the updates to the content program that you technicaly should even have to use?
It really is a lose-lose propisition. Gamers want something that they can play any time on any computer with minimal fuss. Publishers want to seel copies. Developers want to get paid for every copy that people are enjoying.
So, instead of bitching about the status quo, come up with a viable alternative.
You can require a CD in the drive. That sucks and is easily defeatable by Daemon Tools.
You can check for DT, but then you are violating my right to have my PC set up the way I choose. Imagine MS just outright refusing to run a non-MS app. That's what publishers are doing.
You can distribute online and hope piracy stays low. Of course, all the copies of WinZip and Cedega over at torrentreactor prove that doesn't work.
You can distribute online copies and require a server verification prior to launch. But what if you go bankrupt? Will you spend your dying breath releasing a patch to allow offline operation? More likely than not, your servers and their activation code will be auctioned off to somebody else who may or may not allow you to reactivate.
Personally, I prefer a random check. Let's say the game calls home after some random time span. The span will be hourly within the first week after install and maybe monthly a few months after release.
The trick is to really make pirates pay. Let them play for an hour or two. Then exit with a reboot if the server isn't found. The pirates will think it's a random crash. They relaunch and play some more...another crash.
Meanwhile, valid customers are playing just fine with no reboots.
Or maybe require an activation code to be used to access additional content. Imagine having to put in a code to download a patch. Then tag each patch with the code used to download it. If a patch gets in the wild, unregister that game code and release a new patch with additional content. The person releasing the patch gets screwed. Everone else is happy.
Off Topic -- Manual Breaks
Some people use an external editor vice the slashdot comment box. It's easier to edit text in a familiar place then cut/paste into the comment box.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Many people have complained (mostly on non-HL2, non-Vivendi, non-Valve sites) about the tie-in of HL2 and Steam. Many have complained about the "1984"-Situation and not able to play if Steam goes down, and so on...
Now, there is someone which complains about the same thing, but now many people here complain about the organization which does something good for the consumer (yes, that's you) !!
But hey, I don't have karma to burn, so: what the fuck do you really want (tie-in or not)?
I for one, am glad for the existance and work of such organizations... and yes I'm not american...
The difference between Steam and a good online distribution system is the the difference between a hammer made of steel and one made of uranium.
Sure, the hammer made of uranium is a step forward from pounding nails in with a rock but it isn't worth the horrible death by radiation poisoning that ensues.
Steam is a textbook example of a great concept ruined by greed/indifference/incompetence/evil (take your pick).
Until someone makes a hammer made of steel, i'll stick with my rock, thank you.
This is coming from someone who was enthusiastic about Steam back when the free beta started. Since then, Valve has done everything it can to make me hate their guts.
It's simple: by buying HL2, you just haven't bought a game. Not even a user license.
The german courts might not buy that argumentation. We have a law about "terme of service" that says
a) Terms of service only become a valid part of you contract if you can check them before closing the deal. Most lawyers seem to agree that a click-through EULA or similar falls under that law. If you have bought the boxed version of HL2 in a store, you might not have seen the EULA before buying. Poof, the EULA is invalid.
b) Terms of service may not contain "unusual and surprising disadvantages" to the private customer(since IANAL, this may be somewhat inaccurate). This is not as clear-cut as the above scenario, but one might still argue that a modem connection should be sufficient if the system requirements only say "Internet connection".
C - the footgun of programming languages
"So, instead of bitching about the status quo, come up with a viable alternative."
Woah there cowboy... my point is that I *prefer* the status-quo to the online distribution methods that are being created, as they hamper the use I get from the status-quo. I can still play MAX on my XP box, and that makes me happy.
Not quite sure how that obligate me to create a better solution again. I have *zero* problem with CD checks... that was the point of saying that I keep a DVD *and* a CD drive in my machine. If you have problems with the old order *and* the new order, perhaps you should go off and do the design. Me, my point is that the new order has too many kinks for me to bother with. In fact, I pretty much ignored all your ideas, because those are exactly the problems I am currently *actively* ignoring. I find a product that I can use as long as I can keep compatible hardware to be useful product. A product that is useful for as long as the company says it is... nope, not for me.
Sig under construction since 1998.
So what your saying, in very obtrusive formatting style, is that Valve is fighting the man by becoming the man!! Very ironic. I guess your right. Let's all praise Valve for saving our rights... by taking them away!
I for one welcome our new anti-game-publisher overlords.
May the Maths Be with you!
Agreed. I dislike the steam authentication idea, because of the inherent tracking/privacy issues among various others. But from a playability angle, I'm overjoyed that I can play the game without needing to cart "My Original Disc" around with me everywhere. Esp with a laptop, this has been a huge PITA, since I need to carry a CD folder full of "Play Discs" in order to play any of my games on the go.
The issues with valve going down one day.... well at that point they could release a patch of some sort that would allow the game normally to be played w/o steam (heck, they could just release an officialized version of the hacks that do the same).
Not that I like steam. I think the concept is in some ways better than CD-swapping, but it definately needs work.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side.
I just wanted to make sure that everyone understand there are TWO agreements in the case of a retail purchase: a good nice EULA between You and Valve/Sierra, and a *surprising* TOS (the Steam Subscriber Agreement) between You and Valve.
Those 2 agreements simply don't describe the same product/service. And the "Steam activation" basically takes your nice licence away and give you only a Steam Subscritpion in return. And by comparing the EULA and the too-opened-to-be-honest SSA, the subscription is in my opionion a product of much less value (can be terminated any time, cost more and is not transferrable).
The problem is not the EULA. It's the SSA, which is supposed to supercede the EULA.
IANAL, but if you look at the EULA, having to accept additionnal terms of use is only required for "Internet multiplayer". Thus even the *activation* should not force you to accept its SSA if you don't want to.
So there are 2 possibilities now:
- If Vivendi has the rights, by its publishing contract, to sell User Licences of Half Life 2 the way they want, the forced SSA *activation* is a violation of the EULA (except if Valve can prove that HL2 is an "Internet multiplayer"-only game). And it's wholly Valve's fault.
- If Vivendi has a more restrictive publishing contract, then they should have put more clearly on the box that HL2 IS NOT a game, but a subscription to some dummy online service (a bit like MMOs do).
For a Steam *purchase*, only the SSA apply. You've always had only a subscription.
Definitely more interesting than the game itself...
Well, the same arguments that apply to the EULA would apply to the SSA. I'm talking about customer's right here, not about contracts between Valve and Vivendi. When buying a boxed copy of Half Life 2, you don't get to see them beforehand and the SSA is not a valid part of the sales aggreement.
So what happens if you bought the game and find you cannot run it because of Steam problems? Let's assume you bother going to court over the 50 Euros or whatever the thing did cost. My best guess (IANAL, remember) is that the court would find the product defective. The dealer would have to take it back and refund your money. After that, the dealer might have the option of demanding his money back from the place where he ordered the game. But that would not be your problem anymore.
C - the footgun of programming languages
hi everyone, i know this will sound paranoid, but i think the real issue is not valve per se. think for a moment if microsoft pulled a stunt like this. there would *almost* literally be riots in the streets. what valve is doing is already quite a large imposition of our rights, but nobody cares, because it's valve. we still love them because they rock major arse. we've gotten over the slight pevishness of having to wait so long, and now the pixel shaders and gravity guns are making us tear up with joy. i'm just a little worried about the precedent this will set. if valve's system is a success, other less well loved companies will follow suit.
Currently gamers use 3rd party "no CD cracks" to achieve the same thing. However, as copy protections foisted upon us by corporate "geniuses" become more robust, that option may disappear.
History is repeating itself. Early in the history of the PC, all games came on floppies with copy protection. The user was expected to boot the floppy to play the game.
No matter how many copy prevention schemes, dongles, or stupid attempts to make entering the 232nd word on page 1008 of the manual look like part of the gameplay they threw at their customers, someone would find a way around it. A great many people had copy programs that could replicate many funky formats, or disk emulators that would simulate the built-in media defects, or binary patchers that could apply various hacks to kill the protection.
A whole sub-culture grew up around people who found hacking the game more fun than playing it.
Of course, that was just an extension of the Apple ][ scene where it got to the point that cracked copies became available before the packaging design was even complete. Successfully cracking a copy protection scheme was a rite of passage.
Sector editors that could disassemble machine code were common enough.
The worst problem for the publishers was that their prevention schemes WERE a giant pain and the need to back up unreliable floppies was real. Because of that, nearly nobody actually thought that cracking copy prevention was wrong.
Eventually, they gave up on that crap and just used trivial checks to keep Joe Average from copying and accepted that if someone really wants to make a copy, they will probably find a way.
The 'piracy' problem died down to a dull roar (I'm not about to claim it went away, just that it and it's social legitimacy was reduced) AFTER they quit trying to stop it. It turns out their copy prevention systems were such a pain that people who paid for the software wanted the cracked versions too. Eventually, many of them started asking themselves why they paid for software when they were going to get the cracked version anyway. Once they quit encouraging their customers to look for cracks, it bacame easier for most to just buy the software.
It would seem that the new crop of suits never bothered to look at the history of their industry.
For a while, they had it pretty good. Most people don't mind having to load a CDROM to play a game enough to actually do anything about it (besides, the CD had the Audio tracks on it). Free Software provides a constructive outlet skilled young hackers.
By re-introducing copy preventions that are a real pain for a significant fraction of their customers (and that have a growing probability of preventing legitimate buyers from playing), they're practically begging for the game cracking culture to come back to life. The pistol is loaded, the hammer is cocked, and it is aimed squarely at the foot.
It still piracy, because he didn't buy the game he cracked.
What I'm saying is, its ok to me(but no the Law) if you crack a game that you bought, but not this tricking. The trick might work legally with goods, but not with copyrighted stuff.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
If you have broadband, why do you want to use steam in offline mode anyway?
I wish to remain anomalous