Valve offers free game after 12,000 false Steam bans
"This was our mistake" says Newell to players accused of MW2 cheating
Valve Software is offering two free copies of its game Left 4 Dead 2 to the 12,000 players it erroneously banned from playing Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 via Steam.
A bug in Valve's digital distribution platform caused the company's proprietary VAC anti-cheat tech to believe thousands of Modern Warfare 2 players had hacked their games.
Instant bans from playing the Call of Duty title followed, which resulted in an outpouring of forum posts and messages to gaming sites. Valve support staff had reportedly told players that they were unable to help.
Valve has now admitted that the error was its fault, and as well as lifting the bans has gifted the accounts of those affected with two complimentary copies of Left 4 Dead 2.
The company's boss Gabe Newell last night sent out an apologetic message to the accounts concerned:
"This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you," he said.
"The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game.
"This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks).
"We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn't already own the game."
The outrage does not appear to have greatly affected the Activision-published title's fortunes on Steam, however. Modern Warfare 2 remains the third-best seller on the service, with its DLC the Resurgence Pack taking the top-spot.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Terence Gage on 27th July 2010 11:50am
This is the way to do business!
EDIT: And you too, Apple. You guys take your popularity for granted.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Christopher Bowen on 27th July 2010 2:28pm
Not to mention that Steam support is still slow and unwieldly - this is not the way to manage your systems/customers.
When ATI paid for the launch party of Half Life 2 at Alcatraz Gabe reassured them the game would be ready. Gabe flew out, gave a speech about Steam then flew away without saying anything else.
The rants he would make to people on his forum, the luring of the Modder who got a copy of the Source engine to come to America to arrest him.
For a while Gabe Newell was the John Romero of the industry. Its amazing how history is written by the winners and since he not only delivered but exceeded expectations for Half Life 2 consumers in general have completely forgot his psychotic aggressive behaviour and reputation that plagued the games development.
Makes me think what would of happend if Daikatana had delivered as well as Half Life 2 did.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Shane Sweeney on 28th July 2010 5:31am
If he failed to deal with this issue wearing kid gloves then the media would (Most likely) put him through a typical make over and he would step out from the smoke saying "Matthew, tonight I will be....Bobby Kotick!".
This is nice to hear though, a refreshing story of a man doing the correct and decent thing.