Valve bans 20,000 users from Steam [Archive]

Trotterwatch

November 23rd, 2004, 19:42

Reading Valve's forum is like a comedy goldmine. It seems that all the pirates are whinging about it in some wierd language; it doesn't appear to be English.

I admit that someone tryd the Pirat version of valve on my PC but didnt got it to work the noob that the kid is.

no files unlocked etc...

Since i'm a HL fan ( changing to "Was" tho) i went to Gamemania and got me a copy to unlock my files and played for some days

now my legit key is deleted in a ....very idiotic way,u people dont even Care.

U guys really let me down and i hope u all get sewed like hell!!

i hope your children will be sewed and so for many generations in the future.
My opinion is to fry u peoples small balls with a shocker like the lowlifes u are!

Yep, he wants them all to get sewed. Probably wants them to get knitted too ;)

2fast4u

November 23rd, 2004, 20:11

i would sew an object of free choice to the guys ass...

douchebags.

smcd

November 23rd, 2004, 20:18

Modem

November 23rd, 2004, 21:27

GO VALVE GO!
- Modem

Stalkid64

November 24th, 2004, 00:00

I heard rumor that valve intentionally released (bogus?) copies of hl2 onto the web to try and catch people like this, guess those rumors were true! Glad my ATi card came with a certificate to get it "free." :)
I believe the alleged "Valve release" was officially debunked or was misinterpreted. These people were using a known dodgy CD key, or no-cd crack that's all. There are copies referred to on various forums as allegedly `steam free`, which I'd guess most of the more savvy pirates are using. Now how could Valve ban copies that have nothing to do with Steam..?
They really have brought this on themselves. Valve and the pirates.

-Shadow-

November 24th, 2004, 00:06

Lalala... around 10000 of them were dummy accounts anyways...

AlphaWolf

November 24th, 2004, 06:12

Hmm...I wonder how valve would detect a pirated copy when it doesn't even touch steam?

-Shadow-

November 24th, 2004, 07:31

It does touch steam ;) The nuked version of Half-Life2, that has been seeded by valve has a "steam emulator" in it, which has to be fed with your account data, this version sends the data to valve and then... bye :bye: You should get a version without any need of account data, if your'e a hardcore warez monkey... I dunno if they already do something against people who use the cracked CSS from emporio. But i don't really have to care, i bought hl² anyways, that game is too good to be pirated!

ray16

November 24th, 2004, 08:06

Valve didn't release a trap version, and that steam emulator isn't made by Valve. People just totally misunderstood what gabe said and made it into something it's not. The only thing they are doing is monitoring the people stupid enough to try and do the CD-Key trick and banning them.

ScottJC

November 24th, 2004, 09:12

Oooh. valve banning users, so scary... woooo!

dukenukem

November 24th, 2004, 09:16

Hehe i have seen many posts on warez placers complaining they got banned by valve and want to know why they aren't allowed to play it.Poor piraters these days,looks like they will start losing against gaming companies now:).

Stalkid64

November 24th, 2004, 21:02

How have the pirates lost anything here..? If people are really that stupid as to think they could authenticate using a known dodgy cd key, they deserve to be banned. And mocked. Then mocked some more. A great deal. :P
There are versions out there that never go near Steam *at all*. So as those versions never touch Steam, the internet or Valve's increasingly pointless account system in any way whatsoever, Valve's "protection" system has ended up screwing only the legitimate users, be it with arcane CD-in-drive checks, the painfully long unlock-and-sign-your-soul-up proceedure, or the dramatically increased boot times. Now even legitimate users have been banned. That's crazy.
They can't touch people running those truly haXx0Red versions, because every shred of their control has been ripped out just like we all knew it would. Hard to believe you get a poorer experience by staying legitimate, but sadly very true in this case.

-Shadow-

November 24th, 2004, 22:12

Stalkid, one picture says more than thousand words...

Stalkid64

November 25th, 2004, 00:13

*Confused and moving swiftly along...*

A little tip for FX users lacking proper reflection effects even with reflect all enabled (from Steam forums, quite a common problem too supposedly);
Use the console commands "fog_enable_water_fog 0" and "mat_dxlevel 90" (without quotes), it looks better at least...
I still find it disturbing that I've spent more time hunting forums and looking for fixes than playing the game... :(

EDIT: This just popped up in the Steam forums. I 110% heartily endorse this product or service;

I'll tell you guys one thing, Half Life 2 really is the most anticipated game of all time. People that have had the game over a week are still anticipating to play it.

vampireuk

November 25th, 2004, 16:19

I agree with Trotter, the steam forums are so god damn funny to read at the moment :D

Stalkid64

November 25th, 2004, 20:38

They are absolutely hilarious... Addictively so in fact. There are a huge amount of people with a genuine issue with the game, and fortunately some of them are quite intelligently funny. The fact that Valve claimed to have released a "patch" though was extremely unfair and quite an insult on all the people who just want to get on and be able to play the game... Steam traffic monitoring soon proved it was myth, and their "advice" post was bordering on tech-support-line-insulting. I'm just waiting for them to start recommending reinstalling Windows next. ;)

EdgeBlade

November 26th, 2004, 07:14

Stalkid64

November 26th, 2004, 11:39

Yes, that was the fatal mistake for most people. Working for Valve's QA dept must be the easiest job in the world.;)
Does the game boot? Check.
Does the game have any other problems? If so, please blame the users hardware, recommend hilariously trivial `fixes`. and upgrade the games status to "Gone Gold".
Congratulations! Half Life 2 has passed Valve QA.

vampireuk

November 26th, 2004, 13:59

Someone sounds rather bitter ;)

Modem

November 27th, 2004, 01:19

Someone sounds rather bitter ;)

Yeah, he's all about bashging HL2, heh heh. Apparently, it doesn't run perfectly flawlessly on a athlon XP 1800, so he's a little bittter. ;)
- Modem

blizz

November 27th, 2004, 10:22

If you want to have any market penetration you need to develop for the average install base not for the high end geeks. It's simple economics that if valve want to make money they have to make sure that Joe Blogs who bought his Dell a few years ago can play it. It won't look fantastic but it'll run.

Yes this bug is bad. A few people I know who make games for a living/fun have started throwing around the phrase "Game-breaker" in reference to this and the Halo 2 flying bug.

This is why I don't buy PC games, normally you need to patch them to actually run, and then the graphics aren't as advertised because your PC is a year old....

AlphaWolf

November 28th, 2004, 02:59

You know, I am a bit dissappointed with the contents of the HL2 box. All it has is 5 CDs (sheesh, wasn't there this revolutionary technology invented seven years ago called a DVD?) and a little advertisement telling you to buy an ATI radeon x800. No manual or anything. Whats the point in giving you the CDs anyways? They may as well just leave a cdkey in the box and be done with it.

Stalkid64

November 28th, 2004, 12:05

We got the DVD over here in the good ol' UK. As for bitterness, not too sure where you're getting that. Mocking a test department that has obviously been fairly terrible? Well I can say for fact that whoever signed that game through QA wouldn't even be employed to make tea in the QA department I work in.

If they didn't test it enough that it slipped through completely, they're bad testers simple as that. If they did and knowingly signed off on it at gold, well... they have no pride at all in their work. I know testers who would rather shoot themselves than sign off on something of that `quality`.

The industry and progress within it depends on your reputation after a point. You have to be professional, not lazy. What do you think the reputation of those who let this through has become now, hmm..? Let's just say none too good.
(And FYI the problem is known - yet again I say it - to be completely 100% NOT dependant on spec, so that point is kind of redundant unless you just enjoy being a spec-whore.)

EDIT: You want bitterness? THIS is bitterness. Or possibly why American's are scary... ;)

http://www.audr77.dsl.pipex.com/brillsite/hl2opinion.wmv

Trotterwatch

November 28th, 2004, 13:06

The problem is Stalkid, this is a major release for the Xmas period that had already missed it's intended release date (due to 'the hack'). I am almost positive that the Q&A department would have noted these bugs; that may or may not have crept into the product at the last minute. The problem is, Vivendi and Valve are not going to hold the game back anymore, lest they miss the lucrative Xmas period yet again.

Games get released with major bugs all of the time nowadays - it's hard to believe that Q&A is responsible for all of them.

vampireuk

November 28th, 2004, 13:20

Yup pretty much every game released these days is shipped with plenty of bugs.

Modem

November 28th, 2004, 22:30

If they didn't test it enough that it slipped through completely, they're bad testers simple as that. If they did and knowingly signed off on it at gold, well... they have no pride at all in their work. I know testers who would rather shoot themselves than sign off on something of that `quality`.

To defend 'em a little, Vivendi was under MAJOR pressure by HL2 supporters ect. ect. to get the game out the door. The likely did notice this bug, yes, but a simple reload of the save fixes it, and it only seems to happen a part of the way through the game. When you're under pressure by millions of people to release the game, and with all of the "Vivendi will hold HL2 back more because Valve is suing them and they are suing Valve" issue. If they heald it back, you know Valve and Vivendi would lose MAJOR business by delaying the game even just once more.

Gorxon

November 29th, 2004, 00:11

but a simple reload of the save fixes it, and it only seems to happen a part of the way through the game.

No, no, no...that is only your experience of the problem. There are countless others as it varies from PC to PC. Some dont experience it at all. On my computer however, it makes the game more or less unplayable. It is playable, and runs at a smooth 50-70FPS when not stuttering, but occasionally it stops for 4-5 secs every 5-6 secs. It can be VERY annoying. I don't have time to play it though nowadays so it's no issue yet, but it will be. Keep in mind that there are people with 2GB Ram and 6800 cards who also experience this, but perhaps to a lesser degree than I do, as I got it very bad.

My problem with Valve is that they don't answer people and don't give people information on it. You get more info on what's going on to fix it on other sites than Steam's own, as the Valve employees rather goes there instead. What's up with that?

Modem

November 29th, 2004, 00:24

Well, since they finally admited that they have "issues" with the game with some people, they say they're working on it now, so hopefully it will be resolved pretty soon. That's quite the odd problem, though. Wonder what causes it? I'm just hoping whatever fixes that problem also gets rid of mine. Hmmm... they've probably been working on this for weeks now, so it should be soon... uhh... maybe, heh heh.
- Modem

Stalkid64

November 29th, 2004, 20:14

There's a 300+ page thread dedicated to people attempting to lock down the cause, completely without Valve's help now. Valve is blaming texture management issues, but more and more people believe it's one of the commonly known problems that the Miles audio system has, or is related to the positional audio `soundscape` information. A lot of testing and analysis has shown it is completely hardware independant and the system is often doing nothing at all to read from HD etc (i.e. the game can be proven to not be loading anything at all - you can stand still and just turn the mouse to make it occur) during the stutter phases which indicates a code bug; A bug which many Miles games also reproduce. It does get unbearable around coast/City 17. We've been trying to test it with the updated Miles DLL's but - pause for irony - Steam blocks you from replacing the files so we can't even test this possible fix! D'oh! ;)
Fun fact - this bug is actually visible in the official E3 2004 Half-Life 2 trailer at a few points, which suggests Valve were more than aware of it.

AlphaWolf

November 29th, 2004, 21:05

this bug is actually visible in the official E3 2004 Half-Life 2 trailer at a few points, which suggests Valve were more than aware of it.

Stalkid64

November 30th, 2004, 02:14

*Quietly suggests people may have been referring to 2K3 when they posted about the trailer...*
Curse my lack of verification.

mezkal

December 3rd, 2004, 15:26

No, no, no...that is only your experience of the problem. There are countless others as it varies from PC to PC. Some dont experience it at all. On my computer however, it makes the game more or less unplayable. It is playable, and runs at a smooth 50-70FPS when not stuttering, but occasionally it stops for 4-5 secs every 5-6 secs. It can be VERY annoying. I don't have time to play it though nowadays so it's no issue yet, but it will be. Keep in mind that there are people with 2GB Ram and 6800 cards who also experience this, but perhaps to a lesser degree than I do, as I got it very bad.

My problem with Valve is that they don't answer people and don't give people information on it. You get more info on what's going on to fix it on other sites than Steam's own, as the Valve employees rather goes there instead. What's up with that?

Tried the -heapsize X - where X is half your PC's physical RAM ?

That took ALL pauses out of my experience. The autosave stutters went with the later patches. HL2/HL:S/HL2DM/CS:S all run smooth is silk for me now.

Gorxon

December 3rd, 2004, 22:43

Tried the -heapsize X - where X is half your PC's physical RAM ?

That took ALL pauses out of my experience. The autosave stutters went with the later patches. HL2/HL:S/HL2DM/CS:S all run smooth is silk for me now.

Yup, it helped quite a bit, but then you can imagine how bad the problem originally was...

foogy

December 3rd, 2004, 23:11

well, the xbox version will be much easier to pirate....

mezkal

December 4th, 2004, 08:21

I doubt it will get released on XBOX now. The XBOX is right at the very end of it's product cycle, XBOX2 hits shelves next year. XBOX2 doesn't have a hard drive. :(

Modem

December 4th, 2004, 21:22

It's already been in development for a long while on X-Box, so don't be surprised to see it be released. It isn't out of VALVe's reach to delay it (go figure) and go for X-Box2, since it'll be so much more graphically able to play it. I think X-Box still stands a good chance, though.
- Modem