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Wednesday, November 24 2004

Valve Axes 20,000 Steam Accounts  by Craig D at 00:48

PC
It' seems valve has removed 20,000 steam accounts from people who had tried to get Half-Life 2 without paying.

Yesterday, Valve disabled approximately 20,000 Steam accounts which had been used to try to access Half-Life 2 without purchasing it. The method used was extremely easy for Valve to trace and confirm, and so there is no question that the accounts disabled were used to try and illegally obtain Half-Life 2. Accounts also may be closed due to fraudulent activity in an attempt to obtain additional products for your Steam Account. This includes Credit Card fraud, theft of accounts you do not own and using cracked versions of Valve games. If you violate the Steam Subscriber agreement your account can be permanently disabled and you will lose any products registered to those accounts.

Also, a few myths floating around out there that need to be cleared up.

First, Valve did not put out any kind of fake key or fake warez or hack instructions to trap people. The hack came from the "community" as do they all. Second, 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.

Hardly suprising really, well, perhaps that the number is so small is the only suprise.
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Comments
Scrappy
Posts: 1185
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24 November 2004 09:39
My flatmate (Devi) had his account disabled overnight. He'd put in an invalid key, and has purchased the game. Now he can't play it cause the key was registered on that account, and he can't reinstall under a new account as that key has been registered already.
Tricky
Posts: 1655
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24 November 2004 10:41
do you mean he used a valid key and they banned him or he didnt use the key that came with the game?
Mani
Posts: 6957
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24 November 2004 11:00
He means, devi was stupid. No change there then
Scrappy
Posts: 1185
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24 November 2004 11:14
Not quite sure what he was doing, he was messing around with it cause his DVD drive was broken so he was trying tog et it to run without the disc. So now even though he has a legit copy he's going to have to run the crack on it.
Mani
Posts: 6957
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24 November 2004 11:26
If he mails valve nad tellls them what he was doing, exactly, they might let him off
KendoMonkey
Posts: 420
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24 November 2004 13:22
From what I gather, Valve are hard as ****ing nails about this, and it takes a lot of time, trouble and (in some cases) cost just to get them to reinitialise an account. I don't dislike Steam as a content delivery system, but some of the practices Valve have implemented because of it are so harsh I can't help but feel sorry for anyone who "crosses" them.


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