Valve Apologizes For 12,000 Erroneous Anti-Cheating Bans 202
Earlier this week, there were reports that large numbers of Modern Warfare 2 players on Steam were getting erroneously banned by Valve's Anti-Cheat software. While such claims are usually best taken with a grain of salt, the quantity and suddenness caused speculation that Valve's software wasn't operating correctly. A few days later, Valve president Gabe Newell sent out an email acknowledging that roughly 12,000 players had been inappropriately banned over the preceding two weeks. "The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game." Valve reversed the bans and gave free copies of Left 4 Dead 2 to everyone who was affected.
Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Funny)
And gave them all a competing multiplayer game.... /tinfoilhat
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Now if Valve wanted to steal customers they would have given them Team Fortress 2. At which point they wouldn't have needed to reverse the bans since the players would be too busy collecting hats to notice.
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The entire game is based around the idea of other humans playing with you, not some bot. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I would be very surprised if there were anywhere near the number of people playing single player that would qualify the statement of it having "strong single player". In fact I'd say its probably got one of the weakest single player modes of any single player games out there. Neither I, nor any of my friends h
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Who honestly plays the single player version of L4D or L4D2?
I do. I have a sucky internet connection, and most of the people I want to play with are on the other side of the planet, so unless we get a time with low traffic and find a decent server somewhere in the middle, someone gets stuck with 400ms pings, which make L4D(2) worthless.
However, as a somewhat mindless zombie killing bit of stress relief, it is fine on the single player mode, and the characters can be quite amusing. Plus, they never shoot you in the face. ;)
I like L4D(2) very much for both the multiplayer and the single player. Sometimes you don't want to deal with other people and just want to kill zombies. Sometimes you like the challenge of trying to get through a level on your own on Expert difficulty. Sometimes you don't want to deal with the idiots in pub games while your friends are all offline. While I agree that it doesn't really have a "strong" single player, it can still be quite an enjoyable single player experience. They actually did a good job of balancing that, rather than making it one of those games that is impossible or exceptionally boring to play on single player.
Re:Customer service (Score:4, Informative)
Three options:
-Own server(Either paid for dedicated, or just host it while you play). It'll help a bit, one less middleman, but only if the person hosting it has a good connection.
-Console command to open the server browser, and just find a good low ping one, no hoping and praying involved. "openserverbrowser"
-Force it to only choose servers below a set max ping. Use "mm_dedicated_search_maxping 150".
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I have only ever played L4D in single player mode. I haven't played L4D2 yet.
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Actually one of my buddies as his internet connection is crap.
When he's online we easily blow through Expert difficulty. Offline, he likes the challenge of trying to succesfully complete the game with Artifical Idiots.
The single player experience would be greatly more satisfying if the you could give just one command to the bots: STAY HERE.
Starcraft analogy (Score:2)
When I spent a lot of time playing Starcraft 1, I liked the single-player mode as much as Battle.net multiplayer.
Single-player campaigns or custom scenarios were a totally different game.
And I admit that I was bad enough that I was often challenged enough by the AI, and too rushed by good multiplayer people.
Not to mention the join-and-drop people and the extra-resource maps and assorted other little issues
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>but quickly realised how bad the AI is compared to human counterparts
No really, it's the other way around in most cases :-P
The bots don't shoot you, don't run off on their own, etc. Coop multiplayer is much more challenging.
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The big problem is that Valve didn't make too many changes to the AI between L4D and L4D2, so the bots can't really “deal” with some of the new things (melee weapons especially). IIRC (I only played the game briefly on a friend's account), the original L4D bots were much more useful.
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You can play Counter strike with bots, but I don't think you'll see many people playing it that way. I still think it will be firmly in the minority.
I actually know of a lot of adults who do exactly this. They cant be bothered playing online due to all the people who have too much time to dedicate to being FPS ninjas. I have always found that if you are not willing to dedicate an hour per day to playing online games you will probably not get that much enjoyment out of it due to the insane amount of dieing you do for very little killing.
An hour per day might not sound like much, but with a full time job, travelling to work, family, sleep and other commit
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I've been buying a few games from Amazon, where they're often cheaper if Valve isn't having some ridiculous sale. That way I still have things to do if my son is tying up my Steam account on World of Goo or Civ.
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my physical copy of GTA IV somewhere around the house... grrr.
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To Valve's credit, they have ridiculous sales quite often.
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Exactly. LAN with intelligent players>bots>random pubbies.
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Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Gift it.
Preferably in exchange for sex. Beer is good too. Cheetos will work in a pinch.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Funny)
Who said anything about women?
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Uh, you gift it to a couple you like, and make out with his chick while he's playing.
Though I think I have run into women in L4D once or twice in cooperative mode. There are also a few girls I know IRL who play, but usually only a closed LAN.
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Maybe a WoW expansion on release day? Those can be exceptionally hard to find and I'm sure there are female WoW addicts out there...
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i'm having a hard time picturing a credible scenario where a woman would be prepared to have sex in exchange for a copy of a video game.
Sure, she limps when she walks, and she is gap toothed enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, but in the dark, all women look like sisters. Then again, if you are trying to trade a game for sex, you probably don't look much better either, so maybe it will be a match made in heaven.
That said, this is one of the reasons I have been pro-steam for years. They m
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Let her choose the cheetos or beer then.
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You just get two gift copies that you can send to other people.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Informative)
Summary's incorrect, as usual. Valve gave everyone affected a free copy of the game to gift to someone else, and a copy for themselves if they didn't already have L4D2. Essentially, Valve gave out 24,000 copies of L4D2.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Also some good spin work.
They took something about them screwing up in a moderately serious way while doing something people tend to get upset about them doing, and turned it into being about the quality of their customer service while incidentally advertising a rather expensive game. Since it's over Steam, net cost to Valve is some time by their database people fixing the thing they're probably legally liable to fix plus some bandwidth. Damage contained, plus nearly free marketing which would have cost quite a bit through traditional methods.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
And did all that without even having to resort to pointing at other networks and say they have the same problem.
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Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Had this happened in a previous Call of Duty game, PunkBuster wouldn't have done a damn thing about it other than releasing a patch. If anyone cries foul at Valve's generous solution, they need to take off the tinfoil hat and also realize that not playing Modern Warfare 2 for a weekend isn't so bad.
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So if enough people are harmed by the flaws in VAC and enough people complain loudly they will fix the issue?
And in any other case where they incorrectly banned people they will simply ignore them.
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So if enough people are harmed by the flaws in VAC and enough people complain loudly they will fix the issue?
And in any other case where they incorrectly banned people they will simply ignore them.
And that makes them vastly better than most companies I have to deal with. They can be made to care.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Also some good spin work.
They took something about them screwing up in a moderately serious way while doing something people tend to get upset about them doing, and turned it into being about the quality of their customer service while incidentally advertising a rather expensive game.
There's an old saying that it's not the fact that a company screws up that generates ill will, it's the response from the company to rectify the problem.
This is a company that has heard that saying and has taken it to heart. Bravo.
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I don't know that I'd call it serious (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean sure, people got banned but that would only be serious if the bans couldn't be undone or something. They got banned, they got unbanned. No problem. Same basic effect as if the servers had crashed or their net connection had died.
It wasn't a serious problem because they dealt with it. The free game (two actually, they gave it to the people and gave them a copy to gift to a friend) is good PR, and should help smooth everything over.
I don't mind that companies make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Anyone who demands perfection all the time is a moron. All I ask is that they acknowledge and fix their mistakes, which was done here. The free game was a good call, to settle people down, especially since many gamers act like an interruption of their gaming is the end of the world.
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That means that with your account, you can no longer play on VAC-secured servers on any game
Not true. You get banned for the single game and any other games that rely on the game engine. For example, I have two Steam accounts. Both have Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike : Source. One has been VAC banned for CS 1.6. Because of this, every 1.6 engine game is also VAC banned (Half Life, Team Fortress, The Specialist). On the second account, I have CS:S VAC banned. I can't play Garry's Mod, TF2, or any other Source engine game online on that account.
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Expensive? I bought it for less then $10 two weeks ago on sale in their store.
Also the customer service is only good when it comes to Valves games. Buy a third party game that doesn't even load? Too bad because you're using a "service" not 'buying a product". This kind of behaviour rewards companies for not even making their games work. There's no reason they couldn't offer refunds. They know how long people play the games, offering a refund to a person that has bought the game for less then a week and hasn
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They admitted there was an error and as an apology gave them all a rather expensive game. That's pretty good customer service.
Yup, not bad at all.
Far too many companies these days would have insisted it wasn't their fault.
And I don't think anyone really would have expected much more than simply getting their account re-activated.
Valve could have given away pretty much anything... A copy of Portal or Half-Life or something else that's been around for a while. They certainly didn't need to give out a copy of a newer title like Left 4 Dead 2.
Good job guys! I wish more companies behaved this way...
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How many people get banned just here and there that are never given the time of day however? They've lost all those games they've bought because of a little software glitch red-flagging them.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes I do want to play games through a service that notices there errors, fesses up to them, and compensates the users for the error. It is rare enough to find a company that acknowledges there own errors let alone go out of there way to make it right.
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Would Valve have admitted their mistake if it erroneously banned 12 people instead of 12,000?
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and now the market decides: do i want to pay to play games through a service that is capable of making such "errors"
...Or should I go for the other options like...
Please clarify if you're suggesting:
- buying boxed games.
- buying the decent DRM free games that happen about once every six months.
- just not buying games at all.
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Yeah, because that's reasonable. Valve has been in the industry for 12 years and they've established the biggest digital game distribution platform. You're saying he should consider starting his own service to compete (and do better at making anti-cheat software) because some people couldn't play MW2 for a weekend?
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What's the cost to them got to do with anything? Apologising is about making the victim feel better, not the perpetrator feel worse. It's a good apology because they actually gave people something they may appreciate, even if there's little cost to them.
Oh, and if you're truly that vindictive, you may take comfort in know
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They actually seem to have handed out two copies to every affected account, i.e. 24'000 copies total. If even half of the gift ones end up with people who'll play them, Valve gets an 18'000 player boost to their L4D2 community and 18'000 people who might potentially mention L4D2 to their friends and invite them for a round of play.
Valve gets goodwill by the truckload, a large expansion of their player base and tons of inexp
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The way I read it, you only got two copies if you didn't already have the game. If you did, you only get one to gift to someone else. So, the number is likely less than 24,000... but we don't know by how much.
Re:Customer service (Score:5, Informative)
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Anti-cheating software is the same thing as DRM.
It's managing your digital right to play the game by the rules.
Not true - VAC doesn't disable the game entirely, it only stops you from connecting to servers that check VAC. Even if you're branded a cheater, you can still run a private server or play on non-VAC public servers.
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doesn't mean that Ford will come and take the vehicle away without a refund.
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Likewise, Valve does not come and take your game away without a refund. You can still play it in single-player mode. You can still set up a private server and play with your friends. You can even still connect to public servers that don't use VAC.
VAC is a tool that server operators -- third parties as well as Valve -- can use to block players who have a history of cheating. You aren't entitled to use their servers; server operators have always been able to ban problem users individually. VAC is just a ban l
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So you're saying any DRM that does not shut down the software 100% and stop any and all use of it. Is not DRM?
No. I'm saying a system that the server uses to decide to reject your connection is not DRM. DRM is a client-side limitation.
The acceptance problems of widespread iron clad DRM is not a technical, legal, or moral issue as many make it out to be.
There is, in fact, a significant technical difference between DRM and anti-cheating.
DRM is where you give someone a key and a lock and expect them not to put the key in the lock except under circumstances you've chosen to allow. Since this is technically infeasible when they have control of their own computers, it leads to all sorts of draconian laws and "trusted computing" measures.
A
Actual email from Gabe (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the actual email from Gabe that was sent out:
--
Hello,
Recently, your Steam account was erroneously banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.
The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks).
We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn't already own the game.
To share your extra copy of Left 4 Dead 2 with a friend, you can 'Manage Gifts and Guest Passes' from the 'Games' Menu in Steam, or visit this article on the Steam Support site for detailed instructions: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4502-TPJL-2656 [steampowered.com].
To access your own copy of Left 4 Dead 2, visit your library of games in Steam. If you didn't already own the game, it will now be listed among your others there, and is available for download immediately.
Regards,
Gabe Newell
President, Valve
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Sadly I cannot show the exact code since pre does not work.
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FYI, you can use the blockquote html element on slashdot,
Sadly I cannot show the exact code since pre does not work.
<blockquote>some stuff</blockquote>
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<quote>Like thus</quote>
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You mean something like this? <quote>Like thus</quote>
No, that's wrong. You need <pre> to do it!
Re:Actual email from Gabe (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would like the L4D2 gift. (Score:2)
If anyone doesn't want it or already have the game. :)
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I Love Valve. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not sure what that has to do with this situation. Unless you're talking about some unrelated situation that I haven't heard about.
cheating (Score:3, Funny)
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That good (Score:5, Funny)
"VAC is infallible" (Score:5, Insightful)
As good a move as this I can't help but wonder about the comments made by volunteers moderators on the SPUFs (Steam Powered User Forum) about how "VAC doesn't make mistakes", how bans were permanent and indisputable, etc.
I wasn't on the receiving end of one of these bans myself but if I had been I would've felt pretty aggreived to be tacitly labelled a cheater and that my account "was gone", with moderators talking about a computerised system being impossible to fool and never wrong, etc.
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As good a move as this I can't help but wonder about the comments made by volunteers moderators on the SPUFs (Steam Powered User Forum) about how "VAC doesn't make mistakes", how bans were permanent and indisputable, etc.
It's not a conundrum, it's just hypocrisy: Valve doesn't really believe VAC is perfect, as demonstrated here, but people don't really care until they get thrown under the bus. It's the same reason the US has 5% of the worlds population and 25% of the worlds prisoners.
Re-buyers (Score:2)
and what will valve do for MW2 players who have already gone out and bought a new copy to continue playing? That is, after all, the only option that valve says is open to people who get banned by VAC.
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yeah. right.
Valve has been pretty clear on this, VAC bans are permanent and unappealable. You get banned, you have to buy a new copy, says it in their documentation.
If this has taken a few days to sort out, SOME people (out of 12,000) will have gone out and bought new copies. It's one thing for Valve to give out some of their own product (marginal cost: negligible), I'll believe that they truly care when I hear about them refunding the costs of peoples redundant second copies. Not just allowing them to gift
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If this has taken a few days to sort out, SOME people (out of 12,000) will have gone out and bought new copies.
And if they weren't Steam-powered games, then they could now resell those copies as is explicitly protected in the USA anyway by First Sale law.
I would very much like to join a class-action lawsuit against Valve for preventing my exercise of First Sale rights as I cannot resell my copy of Half-Life 2, a short and somewhat boring game which I beat on day one. I probably should have just taken it back to the store and claimed it was defective. If I had known that Steam doesn't even make playable backups at th
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Valve gives away 12000 copies of a 4GB game (Score:2)
4GB, originally $50 (now $30 I think) game.
And yet I'm supposed to believe there's a massive production cost on digital downloads particularly when it comes to selling a 5MB ePub or 5MB song (that I am not allowed to download again if I lose the song).
I originally did not agree with Valve's tactics but the reality is they're becoming benevolent and good with their business. I just wish the versions of games they sold did not have the same anti privacy measures built into the games as the hard copy versions
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should have been "anti-piracy" ...
And now I find out they're giving out 2 copies. That just amazes me and glad to see Valve making up for such a big folly.
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How the fuck is file-size relevant? At all?
Are you saying that if the ebooks were stored as 1200 DPI scanned images (totalling up to 4 GB or more) than suddenly they'd be justified in charging $50?
What's an anti-privacy measure? Like, it forces you at gunpoint to enter your real name and address or something?
Blizzard, take note. (Score:2)
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Bad RAM? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds to me like this could also give a ban to someone who had bad RAM. One bit wrong in an area that gets a signature check and you're gone. Doesn't even have to be bad RAM, if a cosmic ray flips a bit.
Better run that memtest86 NOW.
VAC not so perfect after all, huh Valve? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my gripes with Valve is they have always claimed that VAC *never makes mistakes* and that VAC bans are absolutely permanent with no chance of appeal.
I'm glad they were able to admit that yes, VAC can make mistakes and nothing is perfect. Maybe they will re-think their uppity "VAC is flawless. Bans are forever. Sorry." policy now.
Heck, they won't even reverse VAC bans for people who get their accounts hacked. How wrong is that?
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Well yes, but what I mean is that I hope in the future that they will look into people who say their account was hacked (fairly easy to prove with IP logs) or that they were banned unfairly.
Not surprised (Score:2)
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Are you actually trying to make a living out of this "game journalist" gig? Is it working?
It's not working very well because I read about this a couple of days ago. Then again online journalism does seem to be all about rehashing something someone else wrote about last week.
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I'm slightly confused as to how being banned from online servers has anything to do with DRM, given that a game with no DRM could still implement a similar anti cheat system to Valve's VAC.
Assuming MW2 works anything like the Valve games with VAC (I'm thinking this may be unlikely as it has no dedicated servers), when you get VAC banned your account is prevented from playing on VAC secured servers (although the unsecured servers tend to be crap and full of people using cheats).
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Aah VAC is not DRM, my ignorance got ahead of me!
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You make it sound like the block is a personal favour, and that giving you a game is useless, since you have no qualms about picking it up for free. Put short, you don't sound like you're owed an apology or restitution.
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1) You should challenge it, and ask for evidence, dates, times.
2) You could easily have had your password sniffed, possibly even from an uninstalled version of Steam, if you got a virus/spyware in the meantime - many of them lift your details right out of the registry/filesystem because a Steam account is a very valuable commodity. They don't need to "crack" anything - if they have read-access on your computer, they can lift your username/password if you got Steam to memorise it. Once they got banned on y
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RTFM: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138233 [steampowered.com]
1) Bans cannot EVER be appealed.
2) Getting hacked is not a defense.
The only reason Valve took action at all in this case was because being iron-fisted and letting the bans stand would have been a PR catastrophe.
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Party A accuses party B of breaching contract
Party A uses this to activate penalty terms
Party B requests proof of breach from party A
Party A refuses to provide proof.
I wonder how often Valve defaults on, or quietly settles, lawsuits.
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