Orange Box games bricked by Valve

I remember when half life 2 came out, and there were horrible "verification" problems and it was taking people untold hours just to get their games unlocked by Steam. People were pirating the entire game, after they had bought it, and playing it before Valve fixed their crap

This is awful, but now the all powerful valve is moving away from support and is just reaping the rewards.

I am "commenting" on this article because its about valve but I wondered if perhaps you might investigate a problem which no one seems to want to own up to?

Basically up until about 6 weeks ago I could play just about any steam based multiplayer game there was.
Then, all of a sudden everytime I connect I get "warning: connection problem.

So I start this thread on steam forums to get help:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=598697

To my immediate surprise I found out that I wasn't alone.

Someone in the thread pointed me in the direction of some posible solutions posted in a similar thread:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=598697

Literally hundreds of people are having the same problem?

It turns out that anyone with a Speedtouch Modem was affected and a smaller number of people with other modems. I'm with BT so i've got their HomeHub which is basically a rebranded speed touch 780.

So I tried everything in the thread and nothing seems to work. I tried a spare router i've got lying around, everything works. It just seems to be the BT home hub.

So it would seem that a steam update caused the initial problem and now there is no way of rolling back. It can't be the firemware for the hub because that wasn't updated recently enough.

Its brilliant to actually have a copy of the Orange box whats not so brilliant is not being able to play TF2.

Valve don't seem to want to know and I spent 1.5 hours on the phone to BT last night and they couldn't suggest anything except ask me to pay them 9.99 to subscribe to their premium support.

*Sigh* I was hoping as kind of a last straw that maybe you could turn some heads at either company to see if they can sort out the problem as no one seems to want to do anything about it.

Thanks in advance

Chris

Are these companies deliberately trying to convert their customers into pirates? First Bioshock, with its terrible/tight securom protection system which bugged customers but pirates didn't face any problem.

And now this. Again pirates must be enjoying the orange box to the fullest when poor customers are sitting in their home fuming over valve.

Is an man not entitled to the game he buys?
No! Says the man at valve.....

This never ending greed never seem to amaze me, but then again we talking about American based companies right?

Iv'e got all of the steam games ... the kids love em.

They should accept purchases from offshore ... why punish someone who hunts for a bargain anyway?

Sounds like a bad case of greed.

Anyone want to buy my Steam Games?

I'll go back to boxed software ... mongrel thing chews up my download quota anyway.

Add Valve to the following monopolists:

Microsoft
Apple
Intel
Blizzard

Sick Charlie D on em I say ... go on !!

Just go and download it through torrents, and you will get the game for which you have paid :-)

Valve will only contribute to piracy. The irony of it all...

Those are the risks you play when you buy from the grey market. 

People were doing this (and probably still are) for digital cameras and then they expect the US company to service the warranty only to get their britches in a twist when they are refused service. 

Their situation should not be pitied,

- Mr. F1y

I have never liked their online distribution, activation, monitoring, and invasion of privacy system called "Steam."

I have never purchased or played a game made by Valve, and never will as long as they continue to force unwanted software (Steam) and their authority on people who just want to play a stupid computer game.

The regionalisation is probably an attempt at piracy control.

As far as customer service goes, if they think you're a pirate trying to scam something from their customer service, they ignore you. But obviously for the legit folks, this needs to be fixed.

Maybe the next time all these media outlets decide to go "gaga" over anything that comes out of Gabe Newell's mouth, they should ask him what the *#!k is going on with censorship on pretty much any Valve website. 

As soon as people start complaining in the Steam forums, or in this case on Valve's site, the post gets locked down, deleted, and anybody who mentions the issue again is banned. WTF valve? You used to be cool...

quote:
"...It is handy for Valve, it makes money by selling software and refusing to let it work on punter's machines... "

This is pretty much like Microsoft's business model, is not it? XD

http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=forums

is Valve's site for Steam and their forums.

Cheers,
John

This is ridiculous to blame Valve.

Regional vendors/distributors that sell the game keys to overseas purchasers are knowingly violating their agreements with Valve. Thus they are selling illegal copies of the game. Blame the vendor, plain and simple.

If Valve does not shut down these copies, they are in violation of their contracts with the local vendor or distributor, and could easily be held liable in civil court.

If a person bought a boxed copy in person in another country I would expect Valve to honor that license as there are no license violations committed.

I would sue if possible.

1) Prior to release, customers were not warned through their web site.

2) A company/corporation has no right to limit execution rights of a product, simply because a customer did not buy it at a store that charges the most for it.

3) Many have legitimately purchased the product, and no warning is on the product itself. This is enough for a class action lawsuit.

This move makes VALVE like APPLE COMPUTERS...in which they LIMIT vendors arranged in a Cartel that has APPLEs proprietary code...and if one doesnt purchase through one of them, the product doesnt work...

This is a far worse than ANY monopoly because Marketting and User Choice is being controlled Internally. The user has NO RIGHTS and the developer actually has the ability to take the money from customers without even giving them anything.

I was going to buy the Orange Box, After reading this article, I will never buy any Valve game in existence.

I agree with clint, the censorship of the forums is a way over the top.
And I agree that steam's concept basically is taking control of games YOU bought away from you, and forcing updates that at any time might mess up the game, disable it, add ingame ads, etcetera.
So I also don't buy steam games anymore.

This is what happens when a developer becomes a distrubor. They slowly stop caring about their gamers and making the highest quality product, and start to think primarily of profits. They even rush to market games that are not finished. They then abandon their development. It was promised that dod:S would eventually include vehicle combat (which it doesn't years after it was released). TF2 lacks basic class limit cvars, which have been in pretty much all tf games, as well as all of valves' DoD offerings, and tf2 also lacks the old %h %l %i variables from tfc).


does that really surprise you?
valve has never been what people hype it to be. I have a 1.5 meg (1600/kbps) connection and when ever i have to d/l css my max d/l is usually around 180/kbps. That reminds me of the battlefield2 controversies over aimbot. Its your fault, you're the reason this companies do what they want. To be fair not all companies can turn evil, ID Software is a good example of how things should work. They're opengl compliant (linux anyone), require no activation, and of course have done way too much for the community by releasing source code. I owe too much to them for releasing ET

Companys want a world where they can do anything they want, anywhere, without restriction, but heaven help you should you, the consumer, want the same.

The article says nothing about a "grey" market. This is perfectly legitimate purchasing on the Internet within conditions given by the vendor.
If you're so rabid about buying "in the country", I hope you don't have any stuff made in China (or Taiwan). Kinda contradictory, wouldn't you think ?

I am frankly astounded that a company that sells on the Internet still tries to segment the market in geographically-bound regions.
Sorry Valve, it's the Internet. It's everywhere and for everyone.

Corporate dogs at work.

I love how companys do everything to explain why globalisation is good while outsourcing jobs to countrys whith lower wages, yet in the same second deny their customer the same right.

These companies seem able to spout globalization when there products are
being made cheap and people in there own countries are being laid off.

But cry foul if you source that product from any where else and you save 
money, these include software, hardware, DVD, Music, Clothes.

One rule for companies and another for us, it might be time to change 
instead of keep buying these products boycott them. The tide will only
change once we hit them where it hurt’s the most.