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Orange Box Keys Deactivated

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It seems that a number of Valve customers who bought the Orange Box for PC via retailers in Thailand are having their keys deactivated. I don’t know whether any Valve employees read my site but it seems to me that they occasionally treat their customers very badly.

I’m torn between loving their games and hating how they do business. I don’t know the full details of this story and to be honest I don’t want to but if I were a customer who bought a key from an online retailer only to find that Valve had deactivated my key I would be very upset.

You can read more about the details here: FatWallet and here: The Consumerist.

Zeroth404 25th October 2007 at 21:50 1

I’ve been completely disgusted by Valve for a long time.

They:

* release unfinished games, essentially treating paying customers like beta testers.
* charged 20 bucks for roughly 3 hours of gameplay on EP1. that’s more than a third of the price of a full game, with only 15% of the gametime of a full game.
* didn’t send me a hard copy for the gold package even though it costed me over a hundred dollars.
* force you to run Steam to play any of the games you’ve purchased.
* require you to have an internet connection to play *any* games they release.
* require you to first be online in order to activate offline mode. pretty useless if their servers crash or your net goes down for hours.

and now this.

Valve makes me sick.

though I’m sure those thai copies came from pirated hard copies. that’s the only thing that makes sense.
planetphillip 25th October 2007 at 22:01 2

planetphillip Said:

though I’m sure those thai copies came from pirated hard copies. that’s the only thing that makes sense.

From my understanding of the situation, they weren’t pirated copies.

Valve are saying that if you bought a copy in Thailand then you must use it in Thailand.

They set different prices for different countries.

It also seems that some customers in Australian bought their keys from an Australian company have also had their keys deactivated. It seems that this Australian company bought their stock from Thailand.

Not only that but when Vlave deactivates the Orange Box it also seems to put some sort of lock on the account making impossible to activate a normal Orange Box bought in the country of residence.
piledriver 25th October 2007 at 23:01 3

Strewth, I’m waiting for my O’box now. Just paid Amazon £25 for it. My bro has had a nightmare just being able to play his HL2. They change his username and password like I change my pants. he has constant email dialogue with Valve. What am I letting myself in for! When it works HL2 is great, that’s what I’m letting myself in for. Learning curve, here I come!
AI 26th October 2007 at 00:10 4

What games has Valve released “unfinished”?? While I don’t like Steam, I’ve never had any problem with them! I don’t play online games and any of the games in my list I play in “offline” mode — no problem — but I guess there is a first time for every thing. Maybe things are worked differently out of the U.S., I don’t know! Unless the keys are stolen/pirated then that’s a different story!
Jumbles 26th October 2007 at 00:59 5

These people bought software that wasn’t licensed for use in their territory and Valve isn’t letting them use it. OMG!!! People shouldn’t be blaming Valve for the mess they got themselves into as a result of their own greed and they definitely don’t deserve a refund from Valve. If anyone gives a refund it should be the online store which sold them the goods.

I do sympathize with the Australians who bought it from stores that had obtained supplies from dodgy sources. The store is almost certainly legally obliged to refund them.

I don’t think Valve is blocking new installs. It’s probably just Steam doesn’t know what to do in this situation and I don’t see why Valve should put itself out to fix it in a hurry.
Oopla 26th October 2007 at 04:43 6

This is just like the DVD region encoding BS. In today’s global economy there should be no reason to treat your customers so badly. The real question to me is, why should you trust Valve games? Valve can yank the rug out from under you at any time.

These people were not cheaters, they were importers.

I do see the market for people running proxy servers in America, so that foreign users can bypass this valve region encoding BS. I certainly hope that all the customers effected by this contact their state Attorney Generals and leave a formal complaint.
planetphillip 27th October 2007 at 10:58 7

planetphillip Said:

These people bought software that wasn’t licensed for use in their territory and Valve isn’t letting them use it. OMG!!!

It’s not that simple. How did the people who bought those licenses now they wouldn’t be allowed to use them?

Apparently some of them bought them from US retailers.

planetphillip Said:

People shouldn’t be blaming Valve for the mess they got themselves into as a result of their own greed and they definitely don’t deserve a refund from Valve

ARe you seriosuly telling me that if you find a product cheaper from another retialer you would always buy the most expensive version.

It’s not greed but human nature to try and find the best deal.

planetphillip Said:

This is just like the DVD region encoding

ALmost. but we are talking about an online transaction, so things are similar but not eactly the same.

Whilst I hate the DVD encoding situation at least consumers know about it!

I generally don’t have a problem with WHAT VAlve do but HOW they do it.

There was no warning, just the same as stopping support for Win98 users.

There is alos the issue of what happens when people move. Jumbles imagine you move to another country and found all your Steam games stopped working. I bet you would be saying “Oh well, I better repurchase all my games, no problem.”

I accept that it’s not exactly the same but if I buy onlinbe, surely I should be able to use the product where I like.

LAstly,m what happens if I am on holiday in, say the USA, and I see a game cheap. It now sounds like I would have to think twice about buying it. When I get it home it will have a different license code than my place of use.

Valve should simply have said, “Okay, some people got around out system. Let’s make a statement and stop all new purchases.”
Oopla 28th October 2007 at 02:39 8

I think Valve is at risk for some state attorney general looking at this and finding it as a deal done in bad faith, similar to fraud.

Valve had allowed you to purchese a copy of the game from outside of steam and activate it within steam. That is just like buying a voucher or a ticket from a third party.

They then allowed people to redeem those vouchers, for the games, with some people even finishing the game before they took action and started de-activating the copies of the game purchesed with Keys from foriegn stores.

Valve had implicitly confirmed those keys as genuine by giving the game to users who presented them. If they had a system that checked CD keys vs the user’s IP or some other geographical feature, then the first people who got the cheap copies would have come up against a perfectly legit response from valve.

They probably could have gotten away with deactivating the games, if they had been smart about it. Deactivate the game and say “game was sold to you fraudulently by resellerX. Please contact Steam support to upgrade your copy into a legit one.” for a fee of like half of the domestic orange box’s cost.

They didn’t do that however. I think that their actions put them at risk for legal actions against them by one or more state governments. I think that Valve’s heavy handedness may well come back to bite them in the kiester.
planetphillip 28th October 2007 at 09:58 9

planetphillip Said:

I think that their actions put them at risk for legal actions against them by one or more state governments.

I’ve seen it quoted that legal action has been suggested but there’s probably something in the EULA that allows tem to do this.

As you said, they should have done something similar to Microsoft regarding the pirate copies of Windows in various oreintal countries; offer to sell the user a copy for $1 and get lots of great pugblicity.

As it is they just seem like a bully and cry baby.
chuckanut 28th October 2007 at 19:47 10

I speny a good part of my career negotiating software licenses (U.S.) on behalf of a corporation and this is new to me. As far as I know, licenses fall into three catergories:
enterprise: - install on multiple computers
machine: - install on specific machine
personal: - licenses single copy to specific user regardless of machine (most common)

I’ve never heard of a “country of origin license” before. Doesn’t meen it doesn’t exist. However, in todays global economy/marketing I think it imperative that Valve clearly label such constraints, not just stick it deep in the EULA somewhere.

Regarding Valve in general and Steam specifically, I once detested having to go online and through steam. However, I since came to greatly appreciate it after losing numerous game discs during a move, only discovered after moving to a new PC. Thanks to Steam I was able to reinstall through Steam at no cost. When you think of it as a backup system, it’s invaluable.
planetphillip 28th October 2007 at 20:12 11

planetphillip Said:

after losing numerous game discs during a move, only discovered after moving to a new PC. Thanks to Steam I was able to reinstall through Steam at no cost. When you think of it as a backup system, it’s invaluable.

And if that move had been to another country?

I like the concept of Steam, but as you say rules like these need to be made very clear to purchases. As I said it’s generally not WHAT Valve do but HOW they do it.
andyb 28th October 2007 at 21:20 12

Some of the people that purchased them have had the keys restored but being the weekend not much is happening as some still are not working.Seems Doug V is the one reactivating the keys.
planetphillip 28th October 2007 at 21:42 13

planetphillip Said:

Some of the people that purchased them have had the keys restored but being the weekend not much is happening as some still are not working.Seems Doug V is the one reactivating the keys.

Interesting.
Animaga 28th November 2007 at 12:23 14

This is bad i went to thailand for a holiday and bought it the real copy with the box and every thing and now i can’t use it. im only a kid and i only get about 1 game a year and this is **** i looked forward at playing team fortress 2 and now i find out i can’t. I hate it
planetphillip 29th November 2007 at 16:15 15

planetphillip Said:

This is bad i went to thailand for a holiday and bought it the real copy with the box and every thing and now i can’t use it.

I strongly suggest you contact Valve and explain your situation.