STEAM: You are Dead to Me:(

Again, these should be two separate items. One is a game that violated their "Agreement". The other is all your other games that have no reason to be considered illegal or apprehended.

So by requesting a refund on all games considered legal purchases, would have nothing to do with the one game they deleted, other than using that as an excuse to steal his money for the games he's played.

 

Sikyon,

The auctions are legitimate on eBay and even Paypal Protected..so there is not a snowballs chance in hell an end user who in good faith is buying a product through legitimate channels could ever be implicated in any wrongdoing in which the sellers of the items are perpetrating .

 

If you tried to buy a nuclear weapon, or controlled substances, through ebay, or known stolen goods, I'm pretty sure the fuzz could get you.

The key is that you signed a contract acknowledging that you knew it was prohibited to buy and sell steam access, but you tried to do so anyways, which means that you knew what you were doing was wrong, and therefore you are guilty.

At least that's the way I'd spin it if I was the prosecutor. Ignorance is not a defense, only an excuse (mitigating factor).

No they are not connected, but it's the process of retaliation here.

 

It is not illegal. It is against their Terms Of Service (TOS). People throw the word illegal around way too much these days...

Edit: Looks like this might have already been said, but still, it's worth repeating.

 

Actually, I don't see anything in that contract that makes it illegal to buy Steam games on E-Bay. Can you point out the specific section? As I said, if they tried to say that, the contract would quite likely be illegal in the US.

 

It does not mention each and every possible place one could purchase because that would not make sense. But they do say that you can not pay for a gifted item - which this was. But what i really think was happening hear was someone had gotten a key generator to sell the games with - meaning they were stolen.

 

I agree, but I question the legality of Steam's practice with regards to account deactivation.

 

Yes, well Nuclear weapons and controlled substances are completely different in nature, and intent of the buyer.. Do not think you can make a fair comparison there...In either case if the end user is liable, so is eBay, so is PayPal...

And why is Valve not policing these auctions, or in the very least informing their users explicitly, with big huge warnings, on say when you receive a gift, that your entire account and collection can be confiscated if you purchased this on Ebay...or wherever...

My guess is after thinking about it for a long time, there are only two possibilities if these games are being sold with impropriety, either they are using stolen credit cards to purchase the gifts to resell, or they are using the charge back technique, either way I truly believe valve does not care 1 bit about the Ebay auctions or the sales of these gifts, they care because they are losing money on charge backs, and are taking out on the end users (the only people they can get to and hurt), who actually are the victims out of ignorance -who get screwed on both ends.

 

This argument would not work at all in a court of law unless they could prove that the buyer knew the items were gifted or stolen or made with a key generator or whatever before Valve point this out. For example, buying stolen goods is illegal in most places, but the government is not absurd enough to file charges against people who unknowingly purchase stolen goods because then people would be afraid to buy stuff.

What would typically happen is that the goods in question (i.e. that one game bought from E-Bay) would have to be returned to the proper owner. Valve went way, way beyond this because, of course, they are not a government, they're just acting as one (probably illegally). It is actually in their interest that their games be bought from them and only from them; that's a major benefit of Steam and other online activation schemes (for the publishers, not the consumers).

 

Why don't you link this thread to them and show them your position and how other people in this thread have replied about legal actions and such.

 

I'd start contacting credit card agencies and see if you can get your money back . Of course, I'm just mean.

This is why DRM, in all its forms including STEAM, is a bad thing.

 

This issue is not that you bought a game on ebay. The issue is that you either bought an account or digital gift, both of which are digital goods. Accounts on ebay are typically stolen and gifts sold on ebay are typically purchased with a stolen credit card. Regardless of any EULA/TOS, receiving stolen property is typically against the law. For all Valve knows, you stole some guys account, etc. hence your account being disabled.

Looking at such sellers on ebay, it is pretty clear that they are not legitimate. When something is too good to be true, it usually is. Additionally, buying digital products on ebay is incredibly risky. Ebay and Paypal offer little to no support for such items and there is a significant chance that the seller will not deliver the goods or that the actual owner might take action.

I think that purchasing software, physical or digital, on Ebay is incredibly risky and I can't advise that anyone do it. That being said, if you must do it then make sure you are buying a physical product (and not just a CD Key; Box+CD+Manual+CD Key).

This is slightly out of date but here is some information on various Steam scams to watch out for:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=470929

 

So its just best to get games from gamestop or walmarts and get original dvds rather than downloading.

 

DRM is not going anywhere until pirating is stopped which will never happen. Therefore either adapt and live with the DRM or don't buy DRM laced games.

 

Or join the fight against DRM, which a handful of developers are doing. Stardock is one. They are a good example. They make good games, and sell lots of games, and has NO DRM whatsoever. Just install and play.

Somehow these big companies need to realize that DRM doesn't stop anything from being pirated, period. I don't believe there are any games that weren't pirated, hacked, or whatever, within a few days of being released. Frequently only several days after a game has gone gold, which tells me there's definite leaks at the developer, publisher, or duplication house.

Even store bought games aren't immune. They use intrusive services the likes of Starforce, and some DVD drives aren't recognized by these DRM methods making the game unable to play on those machines. Heck several games now REQUIRE Steam anyhow just to activate and play (FEAR 2, Empire Total War).

The best way to send a message is with your almighty dollar in a few different ways:

(1) Don't buy a DRM game, and send an email or snail mail to the publisher and developer telling them that you are interested in the game but don't want to buy it because of DRM.

(2) BUY the game, and send it back to the publisher asking for a return since you do not agree with the EULA or TOS indicating use of said DRM. (You risk losing the game and your money, but it sends a message).

(3) BUY games that comes WITHOUT DRM, and send them a note that you appreciate them not using DRM and send a copy of your receipt thanking them and validating your purchase.

 

Correct. As long as you have the physical media, the effort required for them to take your games from you is immensely greater than if you're reliant on downloads and constant authentication. It's the difference between changing one variable in their database (Account #: Valid to Account #: Invalid) and obtaining a court order for the police to enter your home. Even in the case of games that require online activation, they can only disable one key at a time.

Steam games are cheap because you're not really buying them -- you're just licensing a copy in a contract that says you're basically subject to Valve's whims -- quite literally! Here's the text from page 9 of this thread:

Loss of of goodwill?! Are they serious? :laugh: I think somebody should try to put "If you agree to this, we will own your soul" in the middle of one of these idiotic agreements.

It would not stop even then. It's not just about piracy, it's about control: about restricting second-hand sales, about preventing people from buying things outside of their geographical area to maintain huge price differences (Steam price of Mass Effect in the US: $19.99; Steam price of Mass Effect in Europe: 44,99€) and so on and so forth.

I fully agree with this statement. I myself have adapted a long time ago.

 

for the OP try this:

write a letter (no email use snail mail) to the CEO and don't start with your service sucks, say that you are disappointing and make him/her feel sorry for you, even if this is only read by his/her secretary, that secretary has a lot of power and my (if you are nice and make them free sorry for you) they will reactivate your account, i have seen this work many times with my friends when they got a bad product and tried to return it but hated the support and could not fight the current that the companies put up to stop returns.

hope this helps

oh i love the idea of steam but steam itself needs to change a lot to make it anything worth wild.

Edit: i understand DRMs but ya they need to go, they do nothing.

 

I saw this topic and wot steam are doing is wrong imo fair enough they remove that 1 game that is illegal but ban his whole account? This is outrageous. This is also one of the many reasons I by my games from the shop you don't have any problems like this and you own it. They are claiming you own the software but you give it to some or you buy second hand this is a problem? What this shows is your paying for something which you don't technically fully own and they have complete control over it, and this is what i don't like.

 

I love steam, but this thread is making me think twice about ever purchasing another game off of steam. I have 20 or so games linked to my steam account (I only buy my games from steam). If I lost my steam account, I would lose every PC game purchase from the past 2 years .

 

I only have Steam because I have to based on certain games I want to play. Otherwise I buy all my games thru Impulse which is a better and less intrusive service, imo. I have never bought a game via Steam. Ever since recieved a Steam message about an attempt to breach my account. Makes me wonder...

 

I haven't had any problems with Steam.

 

Wish I had've come into this earlier...

I may be wrong here, and feel free to tell me if I am, but am I the only one here to notice that when you buy a PC game, or any piece of software for that matter, YOU DON'T OWN THE GAME, ONLY THE RIGHT TO PLAY IT. It's a subtle but distinct difference. I think it's been that way since the days of windows 3.1.

You don't own the code, and the disk you have is merely a delivery system. And you only have the legal right to use said software as long as you abide by the EULA.

For those who are up in arms about DRM, give this a skim:

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

^^It's the most informative and objective opinion on the subject I've found to date, and brings home a few embarrassing truths, if it's to be believed. For those who can't be bothered reading through it, here're a few salient points:

Companies don't spend vast sums of currency on DRM to screw with us, they do it because it gains them more in sales than it costs.

"The purpose of copy protection is not making the game uncrackable - it is impossible. The main purpose is to delay the release of the cracked version. Maximum sales rate usually takes place in the first month(s) after the game release. If the game is not cracked in that period of time, then the copy protection works well."

More later.

 

This is not exactly true. You have certain legal rights that cannot be taken away by a EULA -- if the EULA itself is illegal, you are not obligated to abide by it (at least not by the portions that are illegal; that's why they always put that little disclaimer about parts of it being illegal not rendering the whole thing illegal at the end).

This is technically correct, but it's misleading. The reason it gains them more in sales than it costs is not because of solely because of piracy (that is merely one of the factors), but because it allows them to take away our rights by technical means in situations where they couldn't do so by legal means.

 

True, sections of a EULA that conflict with local/state/federal laws are invalid, but (if you're referring to steam locking you out of all your games illegal) it could be argued that the games are modules within the greater service of steam, and that the EULA applies to the use of steam itself rather than the games.

If that's true, then it doesn't matter that you've paid to "upgrade" steam's functionality with other games, because you've breached the terms of service, and your steam account is lawfully disabled. The loss of your ability to play games through the steam service is purely incidental.

(Not saying I think it's right, just that that's what would be argued in court).

If you're referring to steam's right to preclude you from onselling steam games you've purchased, you could well be right, I just don't have any knowledge of consumer law, so I'll leave that to those who do.

As to them taking our rights away, I've really gotta play the naive devil's advocate and ask - why would they bother? Once they've sold the game to the consumer, there's no financial benefit of stopping them playing it apart from the fraction of the total cost to run a server, which is negligible, considering how many users the cost is spread over.

Anyone who gets screwed over is gonna boycott steam, so it can hardly be argued that they'd make a profit off repurchasing.

I just don't think that companies are out to screw us when there's no financial motivation (if I've missed the motive entirely, I'd be glad to hear it).

I must admit at this point, my acceptance of DRM has as much to do with the current trend toward badly optimised PC ports (Read Saints Row 2, GTA4, Oblivion, to name my "favourites") and the problems small indy devs face (Like the creators of games like Crayon Physics Deluxe and World of Goo) as it does with stealing from big-name devs.

 

I know people who have bought games from STEAM again AFTER getting their accounts disabled. It's more sales, even if they aren't happy ones.

 

Seriously? That'd have to be the minority, surely...

I guess the solution would be to set up a new account for every game, Like Dragunov21-HL2, Dragunov21-WaW etc etc... That wouldn't be in contravention of the EULA, either, to my knowledge.

As far as the OP's case, I'd hope that he'd be able to talk to a real person and explain the situation, and while he should have read the EULA, I'd say they'd probably show a little mercy.

 

Not the right to play the game, the right to resell what you have legally bought. I see two main reasons for doing this:

1) It prevents people from selling games they're done playing. The publishers consider every game obtained from any source other than themselves to be a loss of revenue and this includes not only piracy, but also second-hand sales.

2) It allows them to maintain ridiculous price differentials between various regions. As I said before, Mass Effect costs $19.99 in the US and 44.99 Euro in Europe. This would not work if people could resell games because then some Americans would just buy a bunch of Mass Effect licenses and sell them to Europeans for $25 a piece (this is just an example -- in this case, it doesn't really matter because Amazon UK is selling the PC version for 15GBP which is basically $20-22 right now so you'd have to be pretty stupid to buy it from Steam).

 

And then why is it that 99% of games released are on the net the day before or within two days of release?

And if this is truly the case then why isn't a patch made available one or even two months after the game is released to remove the DRM?

The EULA also prevents buyers from returning their product even if it is a pile of dung. This is surely another way to ensure no loss of income.

 

I guess what's kinda confused me is the gifting system... I mean, I'm not too familiar with it, but it basically stops you playing the game, and gives someone else your license, yeah? While it's far more limiting than letting people sell to complete strangers, it still allows (for single player games, at least) for a group of friends to each buy a different game and rotate, which does a similar thing. I've never understood that much of it.

Are they though? I mean, even if I wanted to pirate games these days, high-speed internet connections with decent download limits are sell-your-daughter expensive, so I'm not too familiar with new-release pirating. Are zero-day cracks that common? (Serious question, I don't know).

As far as removing DRM, that's a question I've often asked, and I can only guess that the answer might be that it makes no sense for them to do it.

I would imagine that if anyone could come up with another idea for keeping legitimate sales up that didn't offend so many gamers, devs would be turning themselves insde out to hear it - the fact is that no-one's come up with one yet (publicly, at least).

Mind you, MMOs come tantalisingly close, but that's only because there's no offline play, so it might as wel be DRM.

I guess I changed my mind about DRM after the hating starforce for so long (despite never having used it), then being outraged that securom 7, which *everyone* knows is just as evil, was used in my most anticipated game ever, Fallout 3.

I installed it anyway, and had no problems. A little while later, I did a little research, and found out that the catchcries of anti-securomers like "ring-0 access" were just overhyped ___ for the slashdotters to rage about.

Nothing turns me against something like deliberate misinformation, so here I am lol...

It's just my opinion, and I don't expect to change your mind, but there you go.

I've probably derailed the thread enough already, so I'll leave it at that - apologies, OP =S hope you get your situation sorted.

 

I would say a pirated game becomes available, fully functional, in about two months after the release. This is mainly because the crackers care more about the challenge of cracking it than to play the game itself. So, they rarely crack the patches, which usually gives full functionality to the games (nowadays, most games are crap without the right patch).
But then, give it a couple of months and other crackers will hack the patch too.

 

Actually if you were to check any of the torrent sites, most games are cracked within a few days, many get released on there way before they are available in retail channels.

You can even find Valve Steam games, such as L4d, etc hacked/cracked into stand-alone versions..

All this piracy out there, and Steam decided to crack the whip on honest paying customers, who out of ignorance make an erred purchase...its stupid is what it is.

 

Not the patches though. That takes way longer. Stand alone versions come out about a couple of months after the release.

 

Not that expensive. You can get 3-6Mbps service from most DSL providers for $25-$30/month. You can download a 4.7GB DVD-size file overnight, not that big of a deal. I typically don't download cracked games, but do keep up on what's out there, and I can tell you that most big budget PC games are out within a few days, or at worse a week from release. Heck, check now, The Last Remnant, Stormrise, and Dark Sector are already available, and aren't even in stores yet.

What will keep sales up are releasing quality games and not putting out shovelware, and offering an honest return policy like any other purchase you make. Many of the great games out there don't have DRM, like Sins of a Solar Empire, STALKER games, Company of Heroes to name a few. I'm ok with a CD-key type protection, though. That's been used for years before the internet became so commonplace in the last ten years. Also, despite Microsoft's monopolistic practices, they actually honor their return policy. If you don't like a game for any reason, you have to ship it to them with copy of receipt and they refund the price of the game, tax, and round trip shipping.

The problem with some of these protections are that some DVD drives are almost "blacklisted" and games will not install with certain DRM's. I am fine with DRM if it doesn't make the honest consumer jump through hoops. It should be 100% transparent to them. But only do it if it truly discourages pirating, but I don't see that.

 

See my previous post. Two months!? Try two days or less! Like I said, three games released this week were posted on the torrents in the last few days! This includes Stormrise, Dark Sector, and The Last Remnant. Not only for PC but also for X360 and PS3!

It's to the point that pirated games are available before you can spend your hard earned cash. This tells me there's an issue in the system of leaked code after it's gone gold. So either the developer, publisher, duplicating house, or big chain stores that get the first pre-orders like Amazon and Wal-mart are the culprits. So instead of addressing and fixing the issue, they just make it a pain in the butt for the paying end user.

 

Nope. You basically buy a game, but instead of giving it to yourself, you give it to a friend. Once it's activated, it can no longer change hands.

 

In Tassie, we're only just rolling out adsl2+ (about two exchanges offer it atm), and my current connection is $50 per month, with an average download speed of 20-120kbps... took a weekend to download a 3GB archive...

Didn't the Australia/Britain release of Stalker: Clear Sky have starforce on it?

That's fair enough... I guess they figure it's better for them financially than doing nothing. Theoretically, the solution would be hardware encoding of some kind, with games burned on proprietary media, but that would increase the cost of production, and gamers would complain that they had to buy a new drive, and I'm not even sure how effective that would be...

Ah, I see, that answers that question - thanks.

 

Or go back to a cartridge based, or even USB flash drive based system. Why not? If the publishers and developers are truly losing as much money as they say they are to piracy (in the billions of $$$), then wouldn't it be worth it to THEM to invest in a $5 cartridge system? But they don't so that should tell you something.

USB flash drives are cheap enough. Retail you can buy a 4GB for $5, so you know actual production costs are less than half that, and 4GB is close to a DVD size. Just include a dynamic hardware encryption chip that only decompresses what it needs on the fly, or that the key is required to play. Something to that extent.

 

You have to realize though, that bulk DVDs probably cost way lower then bulk 4GB USB drives. (Do games now days even fit on 4 GBs of storage? )
Plus it really wouldn't really matter, fact is USB/Cartridge would be cracked making the whole cause useless, and probably just more confusing to honest customers. If they REALLY are worried about losing money to pirates, they would just stop spending huge amounts of money with DRM. Realizing that the people who won't buy the game, just won't buy it no matter what they do. So they are just making the loss of profit huger with little to no prevail, at the same time ticking off honest buyers. Not good business strategy if you ask me....

 

I'm not saying I have the answer, if I did I'd be worth millions because I'd make it proprietary!

But my point is they keep using the same methods that have had recurring debates on ANY forum board regarding gaming, continued issues, yet the games are still pirated as quickly as they games are reproduced for mass sale. So they're annoying good customers for no apparent reason.

 

I completely agree.

Really the only way I ever see DRM stopping pirates, and keeping everything legal, is if it was ONE major business that handled everything. You can't have small sprouts popping up everywhere, then it just becomes a tangled mess. You would need one huge controller keeping everything in check, and aligned.

I can also be pretty sure that no sane person would ever want such a thing. For countless reasons...

 

I think the real technical problem is that, as far as I know, as long as the program is run on the consumer's system, any peripheral to that system can be emulated (hence why some DRM systems lock you out if you're using drive mounting software).

For a DRM system to be truly effective, you would need to build proprietary protection into the physical components required to run the game (GPU, CPU, RAM)... This would be almost unbreakable, and if broken would still most likely be inaccessible to the general public.

But the implementation would be an absolute nightmare... The games would be incompatible with non-compliant or old hardware, so you'd need an additional alternate DRM release until the hardware hit mainstream, and I don't know what sort of load it would put on system resources.

Forgive my half-baked theory, but I'm tired as hell lol...

 

nothing is perfect and people will hack it those are facts of life

 

As long as there's EA in Steam there will be problems.

 

Steam always pulls me back in with all of the game specials!!

 

im getting pretty angry with allways getting errors when i try to start in off line mode. it will say could not connect try off line mode so i click on it and it say error could not connect to steam application exiting:Eek:
i connect every day apps are up to date etc its really stupid

 

Necro, I am SO nicking your avatar! (Ha!)

 

It's all about money. Always has been, always will be, and it'll never stop. Steam is, apparently, of no different mindset.

 

"Sure, the boys in Steam's lab can make it hack-proof. But that don't mean we ain't gonna hack it"

- Pablo Navarro - Bioshock

 

World of Warcraft recently implemented account authenticaters that use SecureID (I believe). You press a button and a remote transmitter sends you a random keycode.

If there was a way to implement a similar system without requiring the computer be online -- or, hell, have it be a one-time thing since you can get almost any computer online for a short amount of time -- that would be a great system. Tie the authenticator to an account with the main company (EA, Blizzard, Valve, Ubisoft, etc) to be able to use it on multiple games.


As it stands, there was a recent article in MaximumPC that basically said "bring back the code wheel." The state of current DRM is so overboard, I would much rather have to type in the "second word of the first sentence in the third paragraph on page 7."


Or, how about software that ties into a fingerprint? Use one of various biometric scanners to link the game to your fingerprint, then require a swipe every time you play. Overboard? Yes. Still an option.

 

Good concept, but horrible in real life, just imagine all of the privacy advocates, and what not. Furthermore, I would have to purchase a finger print scanner since my laptop doesn't come with one; plus, just imagine troubleshooting the device when it doesn't work, oh the frustration! If it ever comes down to swiping my finger to play my games, I would not be buying/playing another video game.