AMD Accidentally Leaks 1.7 Million DiRT 3 Keys

An anonymous reader writes "The free game with every graphics card deal has finally backfired for AMD and Codemasters. Due to a lack of .htaccess, 1.7 million keys for a free copy of DiRT 3 on Steam have been leaked. No word from AMD or Codemasters yet, but I'm sure Valve will block all the codes on Steam soon. One question that remains: if you used one of the codes, will Steam ban your account? There could be a few very unhappy gamers later today if that happens." The exact number of keys is in question — reports range from 250,000 to 3 million — but AMD confirmed that a leak did occur.

Comments

Steam policy on account bans

[headLITE]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZC-5519

There is a Zero-Tolerance policy for any violations of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Online Code of Conduct. All accounts in a user's possession for any of the following activities will be suspended:
Piracy or Hacking

This includes using an unauthorized ("hacked") Steam client to access Steam, attempting to register fake CD Keys or attempting to register a CD Key which has been published on the internet.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should people have to pay for others mistakes? Why should people have to take those "5 minutes out of their day to scan something", in order to correct a situation they weren't involved with? It's insane to think the customers have to "foot the bill", so to speak, to clean up after AMD's fuck up.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[Xest]

Hmm, definetely not buying anything from Steam ever again. I've never done anything illegal with it nor do I intend to but the idea that they can arbitrarily steal back from you what you have purchased from them is sickening.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[TheRaven64]

I'd be amazed if it's legal for them to block access to content you've legitimately paid for.

It's perfectly legal. You are not buying anything from Steam. You do not own anything that you pay for on Steam. You are paying for a revokable license, at the sole discretion of Valve. If you confuse this with an actual purchase, then that's your problem.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[DrXym]

You open a support ticket, show proof of purchase and a picture of the media/CD key or whatever they require, and they reallocate the proper CD key back to your account. No biggie.

No biggie? Legit customers would be treated by default as pirates unless they supplied proof of purchase, and until they did that could risk everything from their account being locked to being perma banned.

A correct and more sensible option would be for AMD to supply Steam with a list of email addresses of users who registered. Probably 90% of those are using the same email address on Steam and can be eliminated. Then you audit the hardware of the remainder through Steam (and it's already capable of this) and see who is running AMD hardware that the promotion applied to eliminate them too. Then you look for the date that the exploit got into the wild (probably obvious from a graph of # registrations per day) and you eliminate all of them before that date. Finally you're probably looking at a small % of legit owners to track down. You might then mailshot every game owner and tell them the game will be disabled in 10 days unless they run it on the proper hardware and then you eliminate people who do that. Finally you mailshot again and warn them to contact customer service with proof of purchase within 30 days or risk a perma ban.

Is it a major screwup by AMD? Yes. But Valve and AMD should make all reasonable efforts to not inconvenience legit users. Only as a last resort should a ban or account freeze should be necessary.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[AmiMoJo]

That's what the EULA says, but consumer protection laws override that. In the UK the Sale of Goods Act requires that goods sold be "as described" and "fit for purpose", i.e. if it says free Dirt 3 game on the box you must get a free working copy of Dirt 3 or your money back.

Contracts can never override your statutory rights, even if you had read and signed it before purchase.

Re:Steam policy on account bans

[Anonymus]

And as adults they are beholden to fixing AMD's fuck up?

WTF?

[Megane]

The reason access to all these keys has been granted is due to a lack of .htaccess on AMD’s site.

What's all this stupid talk about .htacess anyway? Those are the kind of files that should not be below a web server's DocumentRoot in the first place. The reason access to all these keys has been grated is because some moron put them in a live area of the web server where they didn't belong.

Re:'Zero tolerance policy' - i find this funny ...

[Co0Ps]

I got PERMANENTLY banned from the steam forums for simply stating that piracy exists and people pirate games. Apparently, if you close your ears, hold your hands to you ears and yell LALALALALALA all problems instantly disappear.

Re:'Zero tolerance policy' - i find this funny ...

[GameboyRMH]

Apparently, if you close your ears, hold your hands to you ears and yell LALALALALALA all problems instantly disappear.

I think this also explains how people who are normally anti-DRM see Steam as acceptable.