Valve shuts down 20,000 Half Life 2 accounts

VALVE SOFTWARE has disabled the Steam accounts of 20,000 people it has said were attempting to use pirated copies of Half-Life 2.

In a statement released to Shacknews, Valve said that reasons for closing the accounts included credit card fraud, theft of other people's accounts and using cracked versions of Valve games.

All these nefarious means, the Seattle-based company said, contradicted the Steam Subscriber agreement that players must sign up for.

It also denied reports that it had deliberately leaked out 'warez' copies of the game to entrap users.

Valve is facing renewed criticism from Half-Life 2 players this week, as more and more bugfixes are thought required. Problems with sound stuttering, incredibly long load times, and some physics problems are all on the list of issues reported by players.

Those who bought the game at retail are required to have the disc in the drive to play, a problem which doesn't plague Steam buyers. Attempts to circumnavigate this issue, however, will lead to account banning as a form of piracy, and has caused something of an outcry among hardcore gamers who are used to the 'buy it and crack it' mentality. They claim that legitimate users are being targetted as pirates without basis. µ

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