Valve Takes the Offensive on Warez Users? 1127
Drull writes "It's claimed by a poster on filefront.com that Valve might have released a "Warez" version of Half-Life 2 to monitor and ban those who attempt to use it. This is the news from some guy with a filefront account, so take it with a grain of salt.
Re:Just asking for trouble (Score:1, Informative)
Though any false positives that may occur do suck.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but you're wrong here. That time is spent loading the game. Want proof? Exit Steam. Disconnect from the internet, and restart Steam. This will start steam in offline mode (it can't talk to Valve - you have no internet connection). Now launch HL2. I bet you won't notice a difference in load times. Why? Logging into steam authenticates you. It may check for updates when you first try to start HL2 (I'm not sure if it does this when you launch Steam, or at regular intervals whenever Steam is running), but there is very little network activity from Steam when launching the game.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:4, Informative)
On Tuesday morning I started up my PC and Steam before I went into the shower. 12 minutes later, when I got back, everything was done and Half-Life 2 was ready. I even played a little bit before heading to the office.
I realize some people had major problems; and while it sounds like a LOT of people, I don't know how high the percentage is.
Steam was a success in MY view, but I'm sure others disagree. Personally, I think Steam's a great idea so long as it's not a springboard to something sinister; like mandatory "renting" of the game.
There was talk on a forum about perhaps they'd offer the ability to rent the game for a month or 2 if you want for dirt cheap (after all, how often do you just play a game for a few weeks and forget about it), but it would be optional and you could still fully buy the game. But I don't know if this was just shooting the breeze or something that Valve touched on.
My Steam experience was quite positive, I'd use it again to buy software if the situation arises.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:4, Informative)
He wasn't suggesting that you turn steam off, disconnect from the internet, and start up again to save time.
What he said was: Do that and the time to load will BE THE SAME.
His point being, quite obviously stated as well, that it is NOT steam that is slowing you down. His point is that it is the game itself that is taking time to load.
Um, Firewalls anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
In related news... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Or better yet. did the right thing and bought the game in advance over steam
Buying over steam had many advantages:
- You instantly got to play CS:S
- You saved a buck or two in some cases
- You money went to valve instead of Vivendi
- You had HL2 preloaded on your harddrive (no cds)
- You could start playing 10 minutes after the game was released
For me Steam was a huge success. Its just stupid to distribute digital data over physical mediums like CDS when there is a boardband internet connection available. After purchasing steam stays incredibly useful. You will never have to search for your f$%^& cds and put them in your drive. If you want to play hl2 online in two years all you need to do is double click the game. You deleted the game ? NO PROBLEM. Steam downloads it for you. You are not up to date ? NO PROBLEM. steam updates you. You don't have the map / mod / whatever ? NO PROBLEM. People need to get used to the idea of steam. yes it might have caused some problems but that was to be expected.Re:Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Argh, this was posted on Neowin too (Score:5, Informative)
End of story, IMHO.
This is the official word:
"We're running a bit of an experiment. We're keeping track of the accounts that do this and will be shutting them off."
Then it's assumed the "experiment" was to release a warez version. The "experiment" can of course be anything, like leaking an invalid key to some IRC channel. But that would be nowhere near spreading a warez version. It could probably mean something else too as "keeping track" is quite ambiguous.
The FileFront guy goes on with
"Therefore, I strongly suggest that you DO NOT participate in these illegal activities as it would only lead to your own harm."
Why, the most common cracked version doesn't even connect to Steam. How would they be able to do anyhting? And if you loose your account, you're free to make a new one. Maybe they ban by IP ranges, but that's risky for dynamic IP's and nothing like that is even mentioned.
Re:I would laugh (Score:5, Informative)
Not new. Worse has been done before. (Score:5, Informative)
If "Valve" releases a bad CD crack, so be it. It's not really from Valve so there's no recourse. If that's what they're doing, I don't see a problem with it. Makes the pirate's job that much harder.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:4, Informative)
That's too bad. When HL2 started preloading I ran out of room on the partition I had it installed on. So I moved steam and all the games/mods I had installed to another partition without reinstalling anything. How, I exited steam, moved the steam folder, updated my shortcut. Not sure why you can't do that.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:3, Informative)
These same server problems affect every MMORPG on day 1
That's funny. I have bought a number of Blizzard games and I have never, ever, had a problem playing the LAN or single-player components immediately, without having internet access.
What valve did was inconvenience their user's without effecting piracy at all. There are already hacked copies that play without an internet connection floating around. Valve just made the official version (in addition the unavoidably costing money) less functional, and harder to use than the hacked version. And you know what, I'm not buying the game...or pirating it. I'll buy from someone who does not automatically assume I'm a criminal. They won't know or care, but maybe, in time, developers will realize that treating their customers like crap is not OK.
Re:Take a lesson... From Microsoft? (Score:3, Informative)
Hasn't pissed off who? (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone cries about Circuit City and their failed Divx initive. Steam cries of the same thing. It's an advertisement and upsell delivery system.
After suffering thru Steam, I would chuckle if people cracked the Steam software delivery system, or reverse engineered the Steam authentication system so rouge servers could auth clients on private networks.
I am proud to admit that Steam/DOD/HL started working just in time to deliver ads for HL2.
Warez puppies dissapointed me, they didn't manage to unlock the preload of HL2 or crack the authentication garbage.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just asking for trouble (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that: If you buy Half-life 2 over Steam, there's no CD check. Further, the store-bought version comes with fewer features than two of the Steam variants, and if you're not into collecting PC game boxes, all you get is 5 CDs in paper sleeves. Further, Steam allows you to make CD-based backups.
In addition, Valve makes an exponentially higher margin on the Steam-based distro, and by buying via Steam you fuck Vivendi in the ass. This feels especially good to me, as Vivendi is directly responsible for gutting Papyrus, Sierra, & Dynamix, three of my favorite developers. So really, it's the best of all worlds.
I had a great experience purchasing via Steam. I pre-ordered the game, and pre-loaded the encrypted data. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, the game started decrypting, and by 12:10am I was playing.
I still have my reservations re: Steam. Giving the publisher centralized control over whether I can use their software after I've paid for it makes me very uncomfortable, but the black market appears to be taking care of this issue for me already, and buying the CD-based distro of HL2 doesn't alleviate this problem, so I still recommend going with Steam.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:2, Informative)
Tuesday night at 8 PM EST, smack in the middle of prime internet time, I clicked purchase, entered my info, waited about 2 minutes for the purchase validation, was greeted by a thank you.
Started the downloads of the files at about 8:10.
Went to the gym. came back to watch the download finish up at an average 1.9 Mbps. Closed my email and chat windows, and started it right up.
Loaded, played for about half an hour and went to bed. No problems at all.
And based on the response on a gaming forum I run, out of all our active users, roughly 100, there were 3, that's THREE, that reported problems with STEAM on the first night.
Re:Even though... (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure you didn't start playing the game before it had completely downloaded? You can start playing at about 40%.
600M is a LOT of traffic and data. I don't see them even wanting anywhere near that much data just for normal gameplay, not to mention the degredation in the multiplayer experience and making it pointless to even try on a modem.
I'd be surprised if even 6 MB were transferred the entire time you were playing single player (that wasn't related to updates or initial content downloading).
Re:Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:3, Informative)
Quite honestly, the amount of money it would cost them to support that initial influx of traffic (which would then be wasted 3 days later when normal traffic resumed) was not justifiable by the few people that would be a lost sale. Most people will grumble a little, then play the game happily.
Valve has supported a no-cost-per-play system for years that hundreds of thousands of people have been playing, they are a great company IMNSHO and they did a good job with the release of HL2.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:2, Informative)
And yeah, I had access problems, too. I was able to play directly after release (which was cool), but the whole day after that, access to steam was erratic at best. Not cool.
The point stands: There's no need for a single player game to connect to its maker every damn time it is played. It's a measure of control, and the objective is to get the unwashed masses used to it. That's evil.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:3, Informative)
In a microcosm shielded from laws (and supposing moral relativism), the agreement for a person to not steal another's car just becomes a "gentleman's agreement", too.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:5, Informative)
This allows you to run hl2 without going through steam at all.
Worked real well.... (Score:4, Informative)
2 minutes to download the crack.
2 minutes to install.
Total time saved from not using steam. 3 hrs. 52 minutes.
You feel better whether you bought it or not.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Take a lesson (Score:4, Informative)
The 9th District Appeals Court (They are based in WA, which is in the 9th district) decided way back in 2001 that software sales are that, SALES, and not LICENSES. (See this court decision [uscourts.gov].)
This is an issue that is discussed very often inside the industry, and I was shocked when I heard Valve was going to do it. Required unlocking With a major title, it isn't quite as big of a concern since they'll probably have their servers up for 5 or 8 years.
When smaller companies start doing it (which more will decide to do), and they either fail or have their domain name expire or get hijacked, you can bet there'll be lawsuits following. Especially if the game is considered a sale, since the registration would effectivly block access to an object that the individual owns.
I think the parts of the court decision most applicable is:
Of course, I'm not a laywer so maybe that means something else; It sure seems obviously bad or maybe illegal to me, and the other game developers I have talked to since Valve announced their decision a while back. IANAL,YMMV,ETC.
Re:I would laugh (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know what the problem is (Score:3, Informative)
Now, I don't know what the big deal is but I personally applaud Valve for going this route. They have created an efficient, effective and protected method for digital content delivery. I think Valve is one of the few game studios out there that deserve my money and it really annoys me to to see complaint after complaint about a company taking steps to ensure its success.
Steam has worked flawlessly for me since installing it in april when I got the HL2 coupon with my videocard. In fact I feel that valve is so deserving of my money that I purchased the collectors edition even though I had the game for free. They put alot of work into producing what I feel is one of the best games ever produced if not THE best. If they want to track the pirates, so be it. If they want to mangle the stolen copies so that all the weapons turn into fuzzy bunnies, who cares. Honestly, anyone who has ever downloaded warez(you know who you are) knows that its illegal...PERIOD. Any judge that would allow a lawsuit from a scorned pirate should be disbarred. *whine* I stole the game and they broke it. Whatever....cry me a river.
As for the whining about a slow connection, thats what the retail outlets are for. I may not be able to play a multiplayer game via a 33.6, but I can sure as heck log onto steam long enough to validate my copy.
Complaining about Steam is like complaining about HD content providers that aren't providing an SD equivalent. Steam isn't for everyone. This is the future and as broadband becomes more ubiquitous in the world, Steam and steamlike distribution channels will be more common.
Re:Take a lesson (Score:3, Informative)
Acclaim is actually doing well? You must be talking about a different Acclaim, but not the one that publishes shit title after shit title.
Because This Acclaim [bizjournals.com] has financial troubles. Or were you being sarcastic?
Sorry if I misunderstood.
Wait, you must've been sarcastic, because Virgin/Vivendi/Fox may very well end up selling their software subsidaries.
I don't know anything about the state of Argonaut.
Re: Myth-TFL online play ceased to exist.. (Score:3, Informative)
You could play online on Bungie.net, and it was damn fun!
But guess what? the Myth:TFL bungie.net server died in some big crash. They didn't replace it (they essentially said they didn't feel like it). So now you can't play the game online anymore!
Of course it says right on the box you can play online on bungie.net
So, for some reason it's okay for me to not get the functionality I paid for? I really question the legality of that, and the moral 'okay-ness' of it at the very least...
Sure the game is old, but I've still wanted to play it numerous times (along with a bunch of friends) back on good ol' bungie.net in a big 16 player game or whatever, but no.... *sigh*
Re:HL2 release details (Score:4, Informative)
That's completely incorrect. You have to connect once, to unlock it. That's it. I'm not saying I agree, just that you're arguing against fiction.
Re:Avoiding to piss off their consumer base? (Score:3, Informative)
This allows you to run hl2 without going through steam at all.
Not here it won't. First of all there isn't a hl2.exe in the install path.
If you have been through all the download and decrypt stuff, there is an hl2.exe file in an obscure folder within the steamapps directory, but if you run that you get an error message:
"This application has failed to start because Steam.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."
So it doesn't work...
Re:Or turning customers into pirates... (Score:2, Informative)