The ONLY Half-Life 2 Thread. Do Not Create New Threads

[craycrone]

Well, iam not a ValveMan so my opinion on this might be wrong, but this NoCD Patch replaces the ORIGINAL (non-cracked) hl2.exe with that one from the Puplisher (that one with securerom, needing the dvd/cd in drive before the original hl2.exe can be executed). So not the actually the Game was cracked, rather the door to that game has been removed.
But there is also a Post by Waldo, Level Designer / Day of Defeat co-developer on Valve who posted:

Just to make things clear...

First, Valve didn't put out any kind of fake key or fake warez to trap people.

Second, the people that had their accounts disabled had attempted to steal an item worth about $50. 20,000 accounts times $50 - that's about a million dollars worth of illegal attempts. That's hard to ignore.

Third, the number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it.

source: SteamForum

Even he is only speaking about the illegal "CD key" and not any NoCD Patch. I really dont know but it really looks Valve is tolerating this Patch until they release a solution by themself.