also @ TechSpot: Asus' new lineup of Z87 Haswell motherboards revealed

Valve Cracks Down

By Derek Sooman

On November 23, 2004, 4:01 PM

"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."

Causing a wave of people to allege that they are unable to play Half Life 2, with many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason, Valve have disabled 20,000 steam user accounts associated with illegal copies of HL2. I think we all saw this coming: Valve have really pushed the whole copy protection thing this time, and somehow it sounds like the beginning of a new trend. Will lots of future game titles be subject to such harsh monitoring?

"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." - Valve spokesman.

No tags on this story

User Comments: 3

Got something to say? Post a comment
  1. why not just pay for the game? i have pirated many titles before but they were crap games. this game deserved to be bought. i give this game 11/10 and well frankly i have two steam accounts one with a legal key which contains Half-Life2 and Condition Zero and the other with my original Half-Life key. the only complaint i had was that i signed up for the counter-strike 1.6 beta and steam didn't let me register that key for the full version. if steam wants to play hard they should expect more extreme ways of people lashing out and pirating their games. the steam guys should be sacked and a replaced with real gamers who understand what other gamers want. screw steam!! if there was another way to play the best game ever made i would. just got me suckered in for now. oh well thats just my $0.02
  2. This game DOES deserve to be bought, and you should buy it. Its blindingly obvious from word go that an astonishing amount of work has gone into the game.
  3. The steam guys went a bit far with half life one though because I still havent been able to play my completly legal copy of hl on steam and the friggen box, manual and cd key are in front of me some annoying people with a key gen got there before hand!

Recently commented stories

Post a new comment

Social Login & Guest Posting TechSpot Members
Login here or sign up for free,
it takes about a minute.
Get complete access to the TechSpot community. Join thousands of technology enthusiasts that contribute and share knowledge in our forum. Get a private inbox, upload your own photo gallery and more.
TechSpot on:

Subscribe to TechSpot

Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.