Valve - money grabbing gits!

[autopilot]

I can't believe valve. I finished Half Life 2 a couple of weeks ago and now I want to sell my retail copy of game on eBay. It's pefectlly legal and something most of us like to do. It also means other people who can't afford new games get a chance. Anyway, I realised striaght away that I would have to somehow remove the key from my Steam account. No problem, I will check thier FAQ I thought...

Guess what? To reset a HL2 retail CD Key I have to post my printed CD key from the box to an address in the USA... PLUS pay them $10 to reset the Key. This is priracy protection gone too far in my opinion and it is totally unfair. If I had know this before I probably would not have bought this otherwise awsome game.
Why can't they do this online and for free? I see no reason why a key can't just be deactivated from my account and reactivated on another account so that you could only have one cd key active anyway? It's just to make them more dollar and difficult for us to sell HL2 and therefore more people will have to by new copies. This stinks and it's the last game I by from valve!

Go on then Valve fanboy's, tell me why I am an idiot and why this is progress...

[Swafe]

sounds a bit out of order to be fair, i always play games complete them, then sell them on...games devalue A LOT, so i like to sell them on so i dont loose all that much cash, thus i can buy new games that i like too, and just keep the real classics

try emailing valve and see what theyve got to say on the matter, i think they can get away with charging you 10$, as there giving you a service and they can get money out of you, but it certainly in my mind isnt right either

not got it so i dont know, but cant u just email the key details (i take it, its a email and password??) to the new user on ebay?

[Allen]

not got it so i dont know, but cant u just email the key details (i take it, its a email and password??) to the new user on ebay?

Nope, once the key is registered to your email, it can't be transferred. So if you lose your Steam login details, you'll have to buy a new version of HL2 IIRC...

[Allen]

Go on then Valve fanboy's, tell me why I am an idiot and why this is progress...

Unfortunately, it's what piracy will force companies to do... put up thier prices and/or make it more difficult to copy. Yet again it's the paying customer who suffers!

[Swafe]

cant u just tell the person who buys it off you what your email and password are ? just so they can log into steam?

[yamangman]

I think it's nonsense that pirates have made valve do this. An online based system would be incredibly easy for valve to set up. Either they didn't have the forethought for this, it's blatent moneygrabbing, or dissuading people from selling their game. I'll let the audience decide.

Email valve and perhaps ask them how they propose you sell on the game.

[yamangman]

What Swafeman said is they way we perhaps should have done it, but I think most people have just the one account where we have registered all our games. In future maybe we should have a different account for every game.

[Marcos]

cant u just tell the person who buys it off you what your email and password are ? just so they can log into steam?

Thats one way, the other thing is that HL2 is quite a classic itself, and wont you need it in order to play all the brilliant upcoming mods?

[autopilot]

Thats one way, the other thing is that HL2 is quite a classic itself, and wont you need it in order to play all the brilliant upcoming mods?

That completely besides the point. Anyway, I don't play online.

[directhex]

Email valve and perhaps ask them how they propose you sell on the game.

hate to say it, but why should they care? they get 0 money from you reselling the game, infact they loose money as they need to dole out more & more bandwidth for each user who is essentially a freeloader after the original purchaser.

yes it's mean & nasty & horrible, but why exactly, from their perspective, should they care?

[Rcb]

It is unfair but it stops piracy which is their main concern.

[yamangman]

hate to say it, but why should they care? they get 0 money from you reselling the game, infact they loose money as they need to dole out more & more bandwidth for each user who is essentially a freeloader after the original purchaser.

yes it's mean & nasty & horrible, but why exactly, from their perspective, should they care?

They care as much as I need to be told the verities of such corporate nature?

[utdmleach]

hate to say it, but why should they care? they get 0 money from you reselling the game, infact they loose money as they need to dole out more & more bandwidth for each user who is essentially a freeloader after the original purchaser.

yes it's mean & nasty & horrible, but why exactly, from their perspective, should they care?

Spot on there. I once had problems with Battlefiled 1942, bought 2nd hand off a mate, first email EA responded to promptly, giving sugestiosn that didn't work but were useful. In my second e-mail I made the mistake of mentioning that it was 2nd hand and they reffused to help after that. Why should they care about something that hasn't or won't proffit them in the first place?

[yamangman]

It is unfair but it stops piracy which is their main concern.

That's precisely what it dosn't do. The whole registration-over-the-net thing stops piracy, sending them money to unregister the game dosn't.

[Rave]

Well, because if people know they can't easily sell the game on secondhand, then perhaps they won't buy it in the first place. I'm too poor to buy new games at full price so if I can't buy them secondhand I'll just wait until they're £15 or less. I'm sure the games companies make more from people paying full price then selling the game on.

Rich :¬)

[autopilot]

yes it's mean & nasty & horrible, but why exactly, from their perspective, should they care?

Beacuse there is a little thing called the FREE MARKET which all businesses should respect. Corporations like this should care because some day this will come back and bite tham on thier arse.

Forcing people pay $10 for a right which should be thiers anyway will only encurage futher piracy. Many people don't pirate games because they can buy them second hand cheaply. I wonder how many more people may now be tempted?

Also, as for the point about people free loading bandwith - I don't think thats the case. Only one copy of the game can used per account. If Valve produce a game they should provide bandwith for that copy no mather whos hands it's in. Anyway, it was valves choice to produce a game that relied so heavily on thier servers. They have got thier money from the sale of the game, they should honour that. But again, this is besides the point.

Valve are the first company I know of to do this and it's such a new game that many people did not realise what they were doing until now. I think this will become a bigger issuse of the coming months and when peope begin to realise this it can only hurt thier future sales. One of the anti-piracy groups slogans was "Fair Play". If Valve won't play fair then they are asking for trouble. It's only us paying customers that seem to be playing fair here now. Shame on Valve.