Valve bans 'Half Life 2' players

Game developer Valve is reporting that it has banned more than 20,000 accounts from its Steam online gaming service after detecting attempts to register illegally obtained copies of its hit PC game "Half Life 2."

A Valve representative posting at the company's user forums site said the accounts were scrapped because users either tried to register the game with a pirated CD activation key or open an account with a stolen credit card.

Valve launched the Steam service two years ago to distribute game updates and other content. With "Half Life 2," Valve used the service to distribute early chunks of game code and to register copies of the game via a product activation process, an increasingly common way for software makers to fight piracy.

In a separate posting, the Valve representative advised against buying Steam accounts on eBay, saying most accounts for sale there were stolen or otherwise illegitimate.

[Christopher Hall]

Good

I like to see companies take the hard line on this issue. I applauded Blizzard when they did something similar on Battle.Net and also cheer Microsoft for their Xbox Live policies towards piracy. My only request is that Valve release the names and addresses of those who are pirating so that we may all enact vigilante justice.

[Fray9]

A little extreme?

The problem with fighting piracy is that too many companies dont know where to stop. They keep pushing harder and harder trying to get 0% piracy without realizing the laws of diminishing returns. The more they squeeze the more innocent people get hurt.

"My only request is that Valve release the names and addresses of those who are pirating so that we may all enact vigilante justice."

And if an unruly mob shows up at your grandmothers house, wanting to lynch her because the guy who sold her her computer neglected to mention the copy of Windows he installed was pirated, you wouldnt mind?

[mortis9]

programmers don't make enough money

to see 20,000 pirating attempts so soon after release: sad. very sad. a game as good as this should be paid for. so many people spent year after year making a great game, and some idiot thinks they'll be able to get it for free. get a job, or if you still can't afford it, don't play! video games aren't a right, they need to be earned.

have some appreciation for the folks who create such great content for you, don't shaft them!

[baggyguy1218]

huh?

Huh? You be speakin' wierd yo. Did you learn english from a tibetan goat farmer?

play the game - pay the price

they all knew they were taking a chance using a cracked copy of the game, they lost, deal with it...

[mwa423]

You presume they are doing it on purpose....

Everybody who has posted here presumes that all 20,000 people who have been banned were all software pirates who are basically out to cheat the software developers. I would call this ignorance, while I'm quite sure the majority are software pirates, or idiots who found a key on google at jimmy's house of warez hosted on geocities, there are probably at least a few hundred people who bought (what they thought) were "legit" copies off of ebay with an "unused cd code" etc, and opened the envelope they got in the mail and tried to play it. Verve isn't responsible, and the person had absolutely no intention of being involved in piracy, it's called fraud people, and it's the one hard part of anti-piracy, because you have to be willing to screw a percentage of people who get screwed themselves, or screw legitmate customers with painful registration processes (cough, xp activation, cough)