HL2 - 20,000 Pirates BANNED!

[Null]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4041289.stm

Ban hits Half-Life 2 pirates hard
About 20,000 people have been banned from playing the Half-Life 2 game.

Game maker Valve shut down the online accounts of the players because it had evidence that their copy of the game had been obtained illegally.

Copies of Half-Life 2 had been circulating on file-sharing systems soon after it was officially released.

Experts said the success of the Half-Life 2 anti-piracy system might tempt other game makers into creating their own version.

gotta love it man, Great thing is, many of thoes people were members of steam to play half life and its mods. they downloaded a version of HL2 that valve purposely put out, and now they're banned of steam and cant even play thier original half life or its mods. HA!

go valve

[KillerGremlin]

I don't blame people for trying to pirate valve games. The way Valve has been approaching their games lately has been very unfair for some gamers.

[Null]

inconvenient to some gamers, i wouldnt say entirely unfair. But this is what pirates force game makers to do at this time, then so be it. more power to em.

im sure as i've said in other threads that the real 'hackers' will still get around it or find away, but the sheer number of stupid annoying wanna be kids this kicks off that will never know another way to get around its great, and perhaps it prevents some from pirating games in the future.

honestly, most everyone who has a computer able to run HL2 should be able to find a way to connect to the internet to install it. inconvenient as i said, but they should be able to find a way.

[KillerGremlin]

That is a valid point, and I won't go over my position on STEAM again.

I hate annoying kid hackers too. I was playing just yesterday, and some little ass came in the server, and he was trying to get his aimbot to work. He was kicked from the server pretty fast, but he still was an annoyance for about 20 minutes.

There was a good hacker that took down this old server I used to play on. It was a 24/7 Siege server, and it was my favorite server by far. Unfortunatelly, we had a hacker that came in daily, changed the server name, banned all the admins, and began screwing with all the server settings. We tried banning the guy, almost daily, but it never helped.

Online computer games are hubs for hackers, and that's just the sad reality of the situation. And I do give Valve credit for tricking the people stupid enough to fall into their trap, but at the same time, I think Valve is pushing what they have just a little bit.

[Jonbo298]

Banning 20,000 dumbasses and having 1 guy who has a workaround is better then nothing. At least the people banned will learn not to try stupid methods to get HL2 to work.

[Seth]

How exactly did valve know who was pirating the game and who was not? Is it possible that they made a mistake in some cases?

[Jonbo298]

Well, the pirated copy isn't 100% the same for the legit version. I've heard of a bug in the pirated version where the color of the flashlight battery is always red no matter what. That you can spot and ban people with that pretty easily

[Canyarion]

Hehe, that's cool.
Hack the banners!!!! I mean ban the hackers!

[Null]

Originally Posted by Seth

How exactly did valve know who was pirating the game and who was not? Is it possible that they made a mistake in some cases?

for pretty much most of em. They know the fake CD Key, and everytime someone tries to register online with that cd key, they know its a pirated version.


They know every CD written out on the games they've made and shiped out. they're all logged on the computer. so when someone tries to register with a key they've never made, then its pretty simple to tell really.

[Jason1]

Its good to see people finally being punished for this kind of thing.

[Blackmane]

Although I have my problems with Steam and Valve, you can't argue with it's effectiveness compared to other forms of hacker deterrents.