you did not enter in to an agreement with Valve that states that you are "entitled to remedies". But hey, I'm sure judge would sympathize with your "need for immediate remedies".... not.
I figure as much. Just tell me then, are software publishers endtitled to delivering a half-eaten stale cookie in the box labeled "Game of the year?". According to you they are. And since some stores do not take "software" back, and since the customers did not enter into any agreement with the "publisher", the only remedy for people would be to "eat it and smile"? Right?
* Greedy bastards (developers/publishers), who can't think of anything better to do.
In case of Steam it is worse than that. I think Steam is Valve's "vengence" or "revenge" for the fact that someone cracked their insecure network and stole some half-finished beta version. Their wounded egos demanded to punish everyone for that infracrion. Starting with their paying customers.
Exactly where are they immoral and evil? If you had contacted them with help to try and get working, they probably would have
Since you obviously didnt read the replies in this thread: yes I did contact them like the other thousands of people who did the same. The phone number is a voice mail black pit, the email gets no reply, the forums have even search disabled because too many people have problems. They did not hold up their part of the deal, simple as that.
For that I am angry at them, but it doesn't justify piracy. I think you just like the attention that your first post got
Justifications aside, that was the only remedy I had to achieve some sort of satisfaction and punish them in some way at the same time. As soon as you provide me with another solution that a) compensates me for my grief without causing a lot of additional hassle and b) punishes Valve I will do it instead.
You can wait all you want, mine crapped out permanently due to their server errors. CD-KEY got invalidated/stuck/whatever. And no it would not be moral to keep it because then I would be supporting the bullshit they perpetrated on me with no recourse to punishing them, I will never understand people who are all too willing to give up all rights because some game company decided to make their "protection" so onerous that it prevented the product from working. If they responded to my support requests and came up with a way to activate the thing, I would have kept it.
Well boo-fucking-hoo! Can't you wait for a day or two? "No, I'm entitled to immediate satisfaction!". Give it a break already.
It has nothing to do with "immediate satisfaction" and all with not supporting violently intrusive "copy protectuon" schemes that do not work, with my money and my time.
To paraphrase every post in this topic by Damvan, "The world revolves around Valve because they make Shiney Things Which I Am Addicted To! Noone has any rights except for Valve! They are my heros!"
I should not bother with this "your time is worthless" and "they owe you shit" and "its all your fault" save for this:
They make no garuntee that the game works
Right. You buy a "product" from someone paying real money for... "we havent promised you anything" message. This is far more criminal then me "pirating" the stuff. Even an attempt to sell such "product" is immoral and evil. Either you have a product which works and you stand behind it 100% or you are a scam artist. There is no third way.
Since you insist that Valve are indeed scammers, I have no choice but to agree. Ah! Scamming the scammer for fun and profit! I like the sound of that.
What idea is that? Trying to prevent piracy of a product that they spent millions and millions of dollars developing?Sure Steam was problematic when Half Life 2 was released, but the problems were shortly overcome. My boxed copy's authentication was delayed because of the flood of people trying do so at the same time, but I was still able to play offline and Steam notified me the next day when my authentication was complete.
My copy was wrecked by a failure of the Steam database to process the cd-key properly.
Trying to prevent piracy is OK by me as long as they dont do it at my expense. Since you obviously are enjoying being treated like a thief even though you are not one, my hat off to you. I on the other hand will get my revenge on these suckers.
What happens when you buy something like a pc that fails for some reason but is still under warranty? You have to call their tech support and go through the hoops to try to rectify the problem
Yes assuming the support answers. If it does not, you sue. If it happens to me I sue for the cost of the PC and damages.
Or what about if your Internet connection should go down? Do you cancel your subscription, then go and steal it from your neighbors?
This example would be more appropriate if you said: "What of the only ISP in your area one day decides to put surgical brain implantns into people to prevent 'piracy'". Sure as hell I (and half of the city) would be stealing from them.
In the case of the first claim, you basically responded that you did not owe them money because you were not contracted out to provide your time. Likewise, Valve never contracted out your time.
Not true. It was because he was never my "customer" and I never offered him any product in exchange for payment. The mere fact of a sale would obligate me to consider his claim. If my "advertising" was in contradiction to my "product" I would have to cough up the money.
First note that this is not guaranteed: its up to the restaurant. Second, note that Valve gave no guarantee about the amount of time it would take to unlock Half Life 2.
The example is skewed. It would be more appropriate to show up at a restaurant, order a lobster, wait a looong time and see a pair of half-cooked shoes arrive. Valve did not promise how long it will take but there are some implied accepted expecations (as it cant take 234 years) and also in the end the product actually has to work. It did not for me and since the support did not respond I was left in a situation where the future possibility of the product operating was in question.
I think I understand your position better now, even if I do not agree with it.
Of course it is your preorogative. I still feel strongly about it (although as time passes I am calming down, yesterday I would have used a baseball bat on the first Valve employee in sight).
See the difference? Rationalise it all you want. A game like HL2 is a genuine product of labour. Not just some intellectual product.
So were the copious volumes of gibberish Nostardamus wrote. The fact that something takes a lot of labour is not an automatic validation of its value. I hear it takes a lot of effort and time to crack copy-protection. By that token it is a valuable effort, no? I am not in the mood to discuss the fallacy of Intellectual Property at the moment, let it suffice to say this: they worked hard but some greedy nimrod who decided he will "show" those pirates "once and for all" created Steam and thus infuriorated me to the point of actually turning from a paying customer into a "pirate". So maybe HL2 is worth $59.99 for all their efforts but Steam makes it not only worthless to me but causing me pain enough to seek compensation for my grief. Should they get rid of Steam, I would go buy the game at the same price as before and be a happy camper.
Poetic justice is never buying a valve game again and discouraging others from buying the game.
Not really since I not only am left with the grief time, now I have to do additional work to get back at Valve. Justice it is but "poetic" it is not. It might come to that tho because the "pirate" copy seems to be having difficulties downloading.
I guess I followed the whole Steam thing for a long time...I knew what to expect. And with so many people trying to authenticate to steam at once, I knew the first few days was going to be rough and have problems like this. I know how difficult networking and programming is because it is my profession...it makes me understand how hard it is for what they are doing. I can see how if you had no clue about Steam that this would be an exercise in frustration. I just deeply object to the way you are going about resolving your frustrations.
Well it is not my obligation as a consumer to expect the unexpected. I went by my extensive experience with other single-player games before, including the original HalfLife. This is a completely new ball of wax. There should be red stickers on the box warning about "New Authentication Mechanism" or some such. Besides, I was plenty forgiving in the past, messing with the PC to get the games going. But in all those instances I was doing it to make my game run for me. Now they want me to work to make sure that the shackles they fashioned for me fit and lock properly. This I refuse.
I just deeply object to the way you are going about resolving your frustrations.
Well to each their own. I see very few other remedies that do not involve copious amounts of additional frustration (the bittorrent thing is getting already annoying) and work on my part. Valve has an upper hand in this battle in every respect except for the "piracy" angle and that is one reason I chose it.
It was your choice to spend all that time trying to get it to work. You could just have easily packed it up and returned it after 30 minutes. Instead you spent more and more time trying to fix it.
This is absolutely not true. The Steam "unlocking" process is set up in such a way that it is impossible to predict how far you are in the scheme of things. I gave up as soon as it became patently obvious that the thing is screwed beyond repair.
Beyond that, it was your choice of how much time you spent on the game, and trying to get it installed. As I said before, a line has to be drawn somewhere.
Oh yea I agree. I drew the line at $59.99, which is less then 30 minutes of my time. It is also some form of justice that makes me feel much better about these usurpers at Valve. I have so many games and none of their makes have ever treated me this way. I feel insulted. Spat on.
As to the law, it would have to be determined in court which would mean even more grief.
My point is I didn't throw a self-centered hissy fit about what I supposably deserve.
Well you got what you wanted. Were I in your position, I would be probably doing the same thing. My pain comes from the insulting attitude of Valve and all their "bait and switch" tactics, which stings particularly badly because I was a full-price retail customer.
Its pretty nice how you have no response to my point about calling us all Valve boot lickers. Any response to that, or can I assume that you're in agreement that not all issues are black and white?
No they are not black and white, and I do sometimes lose my temper, but at the same time you should have seen the amount of valve appologists on the forums who bash you when you try to get some help. I am sure a healthy dose of them is here, seeing the mad moderation war over my posts.
Well, I will try to be more civilized too. I am not sure what your problem was...that they sold you the game before they released it, or if the authentication stuff didn't work for you. Whatever the reason was, if you showed a little patience, it would have been working and you would be legally playing the game. I hope we can agree on that.
If you are interested, the actual mechanics are such: in order to "activate" the game it has to talk to Steam. The Steam does not start up because the servers are overloaded. When it does it crashes. When it finally does not crash it does not connect. There is no tech support of any kind that responds. Phone support doesnt work (a black pit of voicemail). Forum "Search" feature is disabled because too many people are having trouble and it cant handle it. After manually searching through forums you find that you need to open up a slew of firewall ports. We are talking a single-player on-my-PC exclusively game here mind you. Fine. I do it. Steam connects. I create the account. It goes. It crashes decrypting the game. The servers are down again. I go repeat the whole process only to find that my CD-KEY is now irretrievably locked because the account creation process failed. No support. This is about 10 hours of screwing around with the thing (most of it looking through forums one message at a time etc). I come to realization that someone is duping me here out of $59.99. The rest is history.
o because the thing didn't work out of the box, you demand ridiculous amount of compensation for your time. Let's assume you were just trying to make a point, and you would want something more reasonable for your time. They were spending a lot of resources giving technical support to people.
No they are not. Did you actually try to contact Valve? Their phone is a black pit of voicemail. Their web support does not work. The forums have "paging" feature disabled. The email gets no reply. Nothing. Just go over to their forums and take a peek. Its hell of really pissed off people over there.
Another thing is that you say you objected to Steam in the first place...well, if you really did, then you wouldn't have bought the game. Obviously they are providing something so good, you will overlook their terms.
I have never heard about Steam until I tried to install the game. I played HL and never CS although I am now told about Steam from CS players on the forums. The box mentions nothing about requiring Steam for single player not to mention the "per-play" authentication scheme. This thing is a monumental intrusion in privacy. The game reports each time I play it to the "mothership" and Steam tries to pop up some ads on me from Valve. Had I known before hand, I would have never bough HL2 and we would not have this conversation. Most people do not realize that Steam is required for single-player.
Eh, analogies are never perfect...you are pissed and decided to break the law. You can justify it all day, but that is what it is, justification. If you truly believe that Steam is horrible and Valve has done you wrong, you should just walk away and not touch the game. If you can't do that, you don't have any moral ground to stand on.
Walking away would not be an option because it does not address the grief factor. Breaking the law? Technically yes. I just thought that what I am doing is a poetic justice for what they done to me.
The problem with your argument is that you were able to take the game back. You got your money back, and therefore no longer have a right to play their game, other than your claims of "grief and wasted time."
Which according to you is worthless and thus demeaning to me. The assumption is that only Valve's time counts, mine does not.
Firstly, your claims that you deserve to play the game even after you have gotten your money back make you sound like a whiney, self-centered brat.
I sure desrve something from them, the pirated copy seemed like poetic justice to me.
I was going to try and be polite at this point, but considering you have no problem throwing insults at people, I don't think that you're due the courtesy.
Not to worry, "people" are not holding anything back.
I lost all respect for your argument after you started spewing idiocy about how you deserved a pirated copy of the game
I surely deserve something, and I admit I picked the pirated copy as my favourite compensation. It might not work out though, seems that the bittorrent thing is having trouble.
Hell, maybe I should send Valve a bill of $50 since I got my copy through the promotional tie-in with my ATI Graphics card.
That is your decision. I fail to see how it has bearing on any of the argumnts here.
Regardless of your informed opinion of me, it is Valve's fault that their servers crashed, corrupted their databases and rendered the game unplayable since the decryption/activation process depends on that information, following which their tech support failed to respond. But I guess to the likes of you nothing is ever Valve's fault. They are perfect and infallable. Maybe they will hire you, it seems a natural fit.
Your utterly incorehent moronic post really deserves no reply but for this hillarious bit: Although they don't get much of a direct renumeration they still feed their kids on some portion of what you paid
Oh yes and that is why the game industry overtook the movie industry in profits. Words fail me. Poor starving game makers. At $59.99 a pop. And we are to worship them and allow them to get away with anything. Scorn? Ridicule? From the likes of you it is a compliment!
If you really think you deserve compensation, there are legit ways to go about it.
Take it to the better business bureau or small claims court... hell you might even get valve's attention when they have to send one of their employees to court (or pay up).
I guess it's not as convenient or pointless as pirating. But as it stands valve can go after *you* for copyright infringement.?
You are absolutely right, but it is a question of degrees. If I go to court with them, it will cause me way more grief and frustration yet. Even if I win, it will be years in coming. I simply decided that such battle is not worth it... yet. Valve is the first bunch of scumbags trying this... if they fail, the point is mute. Should they succeed and be followed by others. I will end up in court, hopefully with other Canadians to back me up.
For the many hours of grief I spent trying to get it to work, of course. Or are you suggesting that my time is worthless and only Valve's counts? I do not consider myself worthless and neither is my time.
You're absolutely fucking clueless and lost your ability to whine about "compensation" when you recieved a prompt and full refund
The "prompt and full" refund does not take into account many hours of grief and frustration with the non-working non-product. That is the part that I am getting a remedy for. Alternatively I will settle for a payment from Valve based on an industry-wide hourly charge for similiar trouble-shooting activities I get paid for when solving computer problems for my clients. In absence of such compensation, I will take a one-time payment in the form of software worth $59.99 retail, which is far below the previous amount.
If we let software makers get away with this crap, pretty soon you will be expected to spend 4 weeks taking your computer to pieces and putting it back together each time you need to install some piece of software because your time is absolutely worthless. Well you might think yourself worthless but I do not.
That is some funny shit. Look, why don't you just go complain to mommy and daddy, and maybe they will listen to your "The world revolves around me" crusade
Could you elaborate on this wisdom? The way I see it you are in the "The world revolves around Valve" camp which makes it hardly possible to level criticisms at others.
Your "remedy" is a violation of law, which pretty much negates any claim to the moral or legal high ground you might have had.
Maybe so, because I decided that this battle is not worth fighting full scale through the courts. I still retain high moral ground no matter what Valve (and by extension all corporate) appologists say.
Go ahead, take a software vendor to court over some imagined violation of consumer rights laws. See what happens, I dare you.
If this shit keeps on happening, I assure you I will, hopefully with a group of other similiarly-inclined Canadians. We might see what happens indeed.
Lets us know when you do, so we can take it, and laugh at you when you start bitching about someone stealing your "idea."
You already do. Although it is not my day job, I take part in many GPLed projects and people use the software I contributed to all over. I consider it my small contribution to the human race and expect no pay for it. And I would never bitch about you "stealing" my ideas as it is not possible to do so. Regardless of my personal view on "intellectual property", for all these years I did play by the rules. Valve is the first company that pissed me off enough to go the trouble of dealing with "pirated" software. I will simply not roll over and let them walk all over me.
Yep, they spend money on copy protections because of people like you....It's just that I hate assholes who try to abuse other people.
As I said, this is the first time I felt pissed off enough to be doing this. I bought a lot of games before and have stacks of CDs to prove it. I was a faithful supporter of the industry. Since it is the very copy "protection" that drove me to "piracy", I fail to see the reasoning in your argument. As to RCMP? As soon as you explain to me how it is that I am abusing Valve after all I went through because of them and not the other way around, I will give you my name and you can start calling.
Since when is the ability to play a game a "Right"
Since when other manufacturers of old came up with similiar "ideas". They used to be called "Snake oil salesmen" and a whole slew of laws dealing with things like "false advertising" and "consumer fraud" were enacted in civilized countries. They are still valid here in Canada, although in US they were probably abolished in favour of "industrialist rights" and "robber-barron protection from whiney single-mothers".
It simply astonishes me that people here are willing to uncritically take side of a manufacturer whose product does not perform as advertised and contains grave. unexpected and unadvertised flaws in addition to attempting to take control of your computer. By your reckoning, no manufacturer should be ever held liable for the flaws of their products, regardless of the harm they cause. The "consumers" (or more likely "slaves") in your way of thinking are reduced to throwing the product they bought away or maybe getting a pittance refund after being abused by the maker. Good gref! You must be a Republican and dream of owning a slave-labour run plant somewhere in China.
Quit propagating the pirate lie. You don't make yourself cool by using the word pirate.
Sorry, that wasnt my intention. I simply used the same term that the software companies are using to describe "thieves" of their "intellectual property". I simply took the easisest and most logical remedy I could think of after being wronged by Valve and I believe they would have called it "piracy".
Slashdot Mirror
I figure as much. Just tell me then, are software publishers endtitled to delivering a half-eaten stale cookie in the box labeled "Game of the year?". According to you they are. And since some stores do not take "software" back, and since the customers did not enter into any agreement with the "publisher", the only remedy for people would be to "eat it and smile"? Right?
In case of Steam it is worse than that. I think Steam is Valve's "vengence" or "revenge" for the fact that someone cracked their insecure network and stole some half-finished beta version. Their wounded egos demanded to punish everyone for that infracrion. Starting with their paying customers.
Since you obviously didnt read the replies in this thread: yes I did contact them like the other thousands of people who did the same. The phone number is a voice mail black pit, the email gets no reply, the forums have even search disabled because too many people have problems. They did not hold up their part of the deal, simple as that.
For that I am angry at them, but it doesn't justify piracy. I think you just like the attention that your first post got
Justifications aside, that was the only remedy I had to achieve some sort of satisfaction and punish them in some way at the same time. As soon as you provide me with another solution that a) compensates me for my grief without causing a lot of additional hassle and b) punishes Valve I will do it instead.
You can wait all you want, mine crapped out permanently due to their server errors. CD-KEY got invalidated/stuck/whatever. And no it would not be moral to keep it because then I would be supporting the bullshit they perpetrated on me with no recourse to punishing them, I will never understand people who are all too willing to give up all rights because some game company decided to make their "protection" so onerous that it prevented the product from working. If they responded to my support requests and came up with a way to activate the thing, I would have kept it.
Well boo-fucking-hoo! Can't you wait for a day or two? "No, I'm entitled to immediate satisfaction!". Give it a break already.
It has nothing to do with "immediate satisfaction" and all with not supporting violently intrusive "copy protectuon" schemes that do not work, with my money and my time.
To paraphrase every post in this topic by Damvan, "The world revolves around Valve because they make Shiney Things Which I Am Addicted To! Noone has any rights except for Valve! They are my heros!"
They make no garuntee that the game works
Right. You buy a "product" from someone paying real money for ... "we havent promised you anything" message. This is far more criminal then me "pirating" the stuff. Even an attempt to sell such "product" is immoral and evil. Either you have a product which works and you stand behind it 100% or you are a scam artist. There is no third way.
Since you insist that Valve are indeed scammers, I have no choice but to agree. Ah! Scamming the scammer for fun and profit! I like the sound of that.
My copy was wrecked by a failure of the Steam database to process the cd-key properly.
Trying to prevent piracy is OK by me as long as they dont do it at my expense. Since you obviously are enjoying being treated like a thief even though you are not one, my hat off to you. I on the other hand will get my revenge on these suckers.
What happens when you buy something like a pc that fails for some reason but is still under warranty? You have to call their tech support and go through the hoops to try to rectify the problem
Yes assuming the support answers. If it does not, you sue. If it happens to me I sue for the cost of the PC and damages.
Or what about if your Internet connection should go down? Do you cancel your subscription, then go and steal it from your neighbors?
This example would be more appropriate if you said: "What of the only ISP in your area one day decides to put surgical brain implantns into people to prevent 'piracy'". Sure as hell I (and half of the city) would be stealing from them.
Not true. It was because he was never my "customer" and I never offered him any product in exchange for payment. The mere fact of a sale would obligate me to consider his claim. If my "advertising" was in contradiction to my "product" I would have to cough up the money.
First note that this is not guaranteed: its up to the restaurant. Second, note that Valve gave no guarantee about the amount of time it would take to unlock Half Life 2.
The example is skewed. It would be more appropriate to show up at a restaurant, order a lobster, wait a looong time and see a pair of half-cooked shoes arrive. Valve did not promise how long it will take but there are some implied accepted expecations (as it cant take 234 years) and also in the end the product actually has to work. It did not for me and since the support did not respond I was left in a situation where the future possibility of the product operating was in question.
I think I understand your position better now, even if I do not agree with it.
Of course it is your preorogative. I still feel strongly about it (although as time passes I am calming down, yesterday I would have used a baseball bat on the first Valve employee in sight).
So were the copious volumes of gibberish Nostardamus wrote. The fact that something takes a lot of labour is not an automatic validation of its value. I hear it takes a lot of effort and time to crack copy-protection. By that token it is a valuable effort, no? I am not in the mood to discuss the fallacy of Intellectual Property at the moment, let it suffice to say this: they worked hard but some greedy nimrod who decided he will "show" those pirates "once and for all" created Steam and thus infuriorated me to the point of actually turning from a paying customer into a "pirate". So maybe HL2 is worth $59.99 for all their efforts but Steam makes it not only worthless to me but causing me pain enough to seek compensation for my grief. Should they get rid of Steam, I would go buy the game at the same price as before and be a happy camper.
Not really since I not only am left with the grief time, now I have to do additional work to get back at Valve. Justice it is but "poetic" it is not. It might come to that tho because the "pirate" copy seems to be having difficulties downloading.
I guess I followed the whole Steam thing for a long time...I knew what to expect. And with so many people trying to authenticate to steam at once, I knew the first few days was going to be rough and have problems like this. I know how difficult networking and programming is because it is my profession...it makes me understand how hard it is for what they are doing. I can see how if you had no clue about Steam that this would be an exercise in frustration. I just deeply object to the way you are going about resolving your frustrations.
Well it is not my obligation as a consumer to expect the unexpected. I went by my extensive experience with other single-player games before, including the original HalfLife. This is a completely new ball of wax. There should be red stickers on the box warning about "New Authentication Mechanism" or some such. Besides, I was plenty forgiving in the past, messing with the PC to get the games going. But in all those instances I was doing it to make my game run for me. Now they want me to work to make sure that the shackles they fashioned for me fit and lock properly. This I refuse.
I just deeply object to the way you are going about resolving your frustrations.
Well to each their own. I see very few other remedies that do not involve copious amounts of additional frustration (the bittorrent thing is getting already annoying) and work on my part. Valve has an upper hand in this battle in every respect except for the "piracy" angle and that is one reason I chose it.
This is absolutely not true. The Steam "unlocking" process is set up in such a way that it is impossible to predict how far you are in the scheme of things. I gave up as soon as it became patently obvious that the thing is screwed beyond repair.
Beyond that, it was your choice of how much time you spent on the game, and trying to get it installed. As I said before, a line has to be drawn somewhere.
Oh yea I agree. I drew the line at $59.99, which is less then 30 minutes of my time. It is also some form of justice that makes me feel much better about these usurpers at Valve. I have so many games and none of their makes have ever treated me this way. I feel insulted. Spat on.
As to the law, it would have to be determined in court which would mean even more grief.
My point is I didn't throw a self-centered hissy fit about what I supposably deserve.
Well you got what you wanted. Were I in your position, I would be probably doing the same thing. My pain comes from the insulting attitude of Valve and all their "bait and switch" tactics, which stings particularly badly because I was a full-price retail customer.
Its pretty nice how you have no response to my point about calling us all Valve boot lickers. Any response to that, or can I assume that you're in agreement that not all issues are black and white?
No they are not black and white, and I do sometimes lose my temper, but at the same time you should have seen the amount of valve appologists on the forums who bash you when you try to get some help. I am sure a healthy dose of them is here, seeing the mad moderation war over my posts.
If you are interested, the actual mechanics are such: in order to "activate" the game it has to talk to Steam. The Steam does not start up because the servers are overloaded. When it does it crashes. When it finally does not crash it does not connect. There is no tech support of any kind that responds. Phone support doesnt work (a black pit of voicemail). Forum "Search" feature is disabled because too many people are having trouble and it cant handle it. After manually searching through forums you find that you need to open up a slew of firewall ports. We are talking a single-player on-my-PC exclusively game here mind you. Fine. I do it. Steam connects. I create the account. It goes. It crashes decrypting the game. The servers are down again. I go repeat the whole process only to find that my CD-KEY is now irretrievably locked because the account creation process failed. No support. This is about 10 hours of screwing around with the thing (most of it looking through forums one message at a time etc). I come to realization that someone is duping me here out of $59.99. The rest is history.
o because the thing didn't work out of the box, you demand ridiculous amount of compensation for your time. Let's assume you were just trying to make a point, and you would want something more reasonable for your time. They were spending a lot of resources giving technical support to people.
No they are not. Did you actually try to contact Valve? Their phone is a black pit of voicemail. Their web support does not work. The forums have "paging" feature disabled. The email gets no reply. Nothing. Just go over to their forums and take a peek. Its hell of really pissed off people over there.
Another thing is that you say you objected to Steam in the first place...well, if you really did, then you wouldn't have bought the game. Obviously they are providing something so good, you will overlook their terms.
I have never heard about Steam until I tried to install the game. I played HL and never CS although I am now told about Steam from CS players on the forums. The box mentions nothing about requiring Steam for single player not to mention the "per-play" authentication scheme. This thing is a monumental intrusion in privacy. The game reports each time I play it to the "mothership" and Steam tries to pop up some ads on me from Valve. Had I known before hand, I would have never bough HL2 and we would not have this conversation. Most people do not realize that Steam is required for single-player.
Eh, analogies are never perfect...you are pissed and decided to break the law. You can justify it all day, but that is what it is, justification. If you truly believe that Steam is horrible and Valve has done you wrong, you should just walk away and not touch the game. If you can't do that, you don't have any moral ground to stand on.
Walking away would not be an option because it does not address the grief factor. Breaking the law? Technically yes. I just thought that what I am doing is a poetic justice for what they done to me.
Which according to you is worthless and thus demeaning to me. The assumption is that only Valve's time counts, mine does not.
Firstly, your claims that you deserve to play the game even after you have gotten your money back make you sound like a whiney, self-centered brat.
I sure desrve something from them, the pirated copy seemed like poetic justice to me.
I was going to try and be polite at this point, but considering you have no problem throwing insults at people, I don't think that you're due the courtesy.
Not to worry, "people" are not holding anything back.
I lost all respect for your argument after you started spewing idiocy about how you deserved a pirated copy of the game
I surely deserve something, and I admit I picked the pirated copy as my favourite compensation. It might not work out though, seems that the bittorrent thing is having trouble.
Hell, maybe I should send Valve a bill of $50 since I got my copy through the promotional tie-in with my ATI Graphics card.
That is your decision. I fail to see how it has bearing on any of the argumnts here.
Regardless of your informed opinion of me, it is Valve's fault that their servers crashed, corrupted their databases and rendered the game unplayable since the decryption/activation process depends on that information, following which their tech support failed to respond. But I guess to the likes of you nothing is ever Valve's fault. They are perfect and infallable. Maybe they will hire you, it seems a natural fit.
Oh yes and that is why the game industry overtook the movie industry in profits. Words fail me. Poor starving game makers. At $59.99 a pop. And we are to worship them and allow them to get away with anything. Scorn? Ridicule? From the likes of you it is a compliment!
You are absolutely right, but it is a question of degrees. If I go to court with them, it will cause me way more grief and frustration yet. Even if I win, it will be years in coming. I simply decided that such battle is not worth it... yet. Valve is the first bunch of scumbags trying this... if they fail, the point is mute. Should they succeed and be followed by others. I will end up in court, hopefully with other Canadians to back me up.
For the many hours of grief I spent trying to get it to work, of course. Or are you suggesting that my time is worthless and only Valve's counts? I do not consider myself worthless and neither is my time.
The "prompt and full" refund does not take into account many hours of grief and frustration with the non-working non-product. That is the part that I am getting a remedy for. Alternatively I will settle for a payment from Valve based on an industry-wide hourly charge for similiar trouble-shooting activities I get paid for when solving computer problems for my clients. In absence of such compensation, I will take a one-time payment in the form of software worth $59.99 retail, which is far below the previous amount.
If we let software makers get away with this crap, pretty soon you will be expected to spend 4 weeks taking your computer to pieces and putting it back together each time you need to install some piece of software because your time is absolutely worthless. Well you might think yourself worthless but I do not.
Could you elaborate on this wisdom? The way I see it you are in the "The world revolves around Valve" camp which makes it hardly possible to level criticisms at others.
Maybe so, because I decided that this battle is not worth fighting full scale through the courts. I still retain high moral ground no matter what Valve (and by extension all corporate) appologists say.
Go ahead, take a software vendor to court over some imagined violation of consumer rights laws. See what happens, I dare you.
If this shit keeps on happening, I assure you I will, hopefully with a group of other similiarly-inclined Canadians. We might see what happens indeed.
You already do. Although it is not my day job, I take part in many GPLed projects and people use the software I contributed to all over. I consider it my small contribution to the human race and expect no pay for it. And I would never bitch about you "stealing" my ideas as it is not possible to do so. Regardless of my personal view on "intellectual property", for all these years I did play by the rules. Valve is the first company that pissed me off enough to go the trouble of dealing with "pirated" software. I will simply not roll over and let them walk all over me.
As I said, this is the first time I felt pissed off enough to be doing this. I bought a lot of games before and have stacks of CDs to prove it. I was a faithful supporter of the industry. Since it is the very copy "protection" that drove me to "piracy", I fail to see the reasoning in your argument. As to RCMP? As soon as you explain to me how it is that I am abusing Valve after all I went through because of them and not the other way around, I will give you my name and you can start calling.
Since when other manufacturers of old came up with similiar "ideas". They used to be called "Snake oil salesmen" and a whole slew of laws dealing with things like "false advertising" and "consumer fraud" were enacted in civilized countries. They are still valid here in Canada, although in US they were probably abolished in favour of "industrialist rights" and "robber-barron protection from whiney single-mothers".
It simply astonishes me that people here are willing to uncritically take side of a manufacturer whose product does not perform as advertised and contains grave. unexpected and unadvertised flaws in addition to attempting to take control of your computer. By your reckoning, no manufacturer should be ever held liable for the flaws of their products, regardless of the harm they cause. The "consumers" (or more likely "slaves") in your way of thinking are reduced to throwing the product they bought away or maybe getting a pittance refund after being abused by the maker. Good gref! You must be a Republican and dream of owning a slave-labour run plant somewhere in China.
Sorry, that wasnt my intention. I simply used the same term that the software companies are using to describe "thieves" of their "intellectual property". I simply took the easisest and most logical remedy I could think of after being wronged by Valve and I believe they would have called it "piracy".
I replied to the previous post, assuming that you were trying to make an argument. Now you are just trolling. Be gone.