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

[dhcpp]

about the Steam kills accounts - news:

Why am i reading everywhere bout steam hunting for nocd-crack users?
That's damned ****ing not true! Nonono!

for example /. says: "caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection found on the retail version of the game."

Any word about cd crack? Dont think so!
On steampowered board again not a single word about the cd crack.
Its all about those fake cdkeys used to play pirated versions of hl2 which are spread around p2p filesharing etc these days.

Or am i'm just silly? Didnt find anything about nocd-"crack" related to steam account shut downs..

btw: @hijack: great work. thank u very much!

[Dimensio]

I don't know what the latest crack on the torrent is, but I snagged it last night in the mid-afternoon (EST) and it worked on my WinXP machine then. Since it works, I won't be switching to a new one until the first patch is out and a new one is needed.

Also, I just checked and my account is still active. No bannination here.

I'm really wondering what kind of idiot warez freaks are playing a bootleg copy of the game via Steam, when the only warez release that I've seen bypasses Steam entirely anyway.

[JoyBoy]

Forum Rules

[sabbey]

On a related topic, has anyone tried any of the trainers for this game? If so, which is the most recommended and stable one to use? Thanks!

[goddamn]

Wasn't this locked?

Anyway, I foudn this: LINK

Valve announced today in their official forums that they eliminated roughly 20,000 Steam accounts yesterday which were found to be attempting to pirate Half-Life 2 in a variety of ways. Defending this rather aggressive anti-piracy decision, Valve adamantly stated in their post that the method by which they were able to trace and catch would-be pirates was a simple procedure, which should eliminate any ambiguity surrounding this mass culling of Steam users.

Similarly, Valve also commented on rumors alleging "fake key or fake warez or hack instructions to trap people" into pirating the game only to find it was a anti-piracy ploy to prevent and perhaps even sue pirates. According to Valve, the hack came from the "community" as one might expect, and the company stated that Steam the accounts that were closed were not related to this untrue rumor, but instead that reasons for account cancellation "includes Credit Card fraud, theft of accounts you do not own and using cracked versions of Valve games."

---

Piracy is illegal, "not a good thing" and people who are willing to commit credit card fraud to get a game are just bizarre, but...

I'm a bit concerned about the last reason for deleting accounts; "using cracked versions of Valve games". Does that include the good ol' No-CD patch?

[JoyBoy]

Originally Posted by goddamn

Wasn't this locked?

The original thread was, for reasons I wont go into here.

Anyways, concerning this stuff about Valve shutting down "20000" accounts (its there own figures, remember), I'm of the opinion that Valve are basically 'scaremongering' at the moment. From what I have read, theres a Serial doing the rounds that people have found in certain areas of the interweb, which they are then using to register on Steam in order to get access to Generic-Shooter 2. Valve has banned those peoples accounts. Its not even a hard ban, although if Valve wanted to, I'm sure they could carry out a hard ban if they choose. I want Gabe Newell to register on here and tell me he wants my babies. Yeah, I know you are reading this. Thank You Please

[goddamn]

Babies... lol!

Okay, so right now only idiots who have tried to use a shared key have been banned? Heh...

And what "other reasons"? Now I'm curious...

[Dimensio]

Originally Posted by goddamn

Wasn't this locked?
I'm a bit concerned about the last reason for deleting accounts; "using cracked versions of Valve games". Does that include the good ol' No-CD patch?

I've not heard about anyone complaining that they were banned simply for using hijack's noCD fix.

I looked through Half-Life 2's EULA, and I could not find any statement that would seem to prohibit circumvention of the SecuROM protection. Moreover, the hijack fix isn't actually a "cracked" version of Half-Life 2. It's more of a wrapper for Steam that drops in a different hl2.exe (but not a cracked one, because it's still authored by Valve, it's just for the Steam download version of the game) when Half-Life 2 is launched, so technically they couldn't claim that we're using a "crack".

I play in Steam Offline mode, but thus far I'm not terribly concerned.

[Stephan S.]

Sadly enough i think i've ran into every single problem listed in this forum pertaining to the use of the no/cd program. My latest is the unknown creativeA thing. Any clues? I would appreciate anything.

[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.

[uka]

Wen i start hijack_hl2 i recive unable so start steam.exe and then unable to injeckt hijack_hl2.dll it worket yestorday ..

[TRICHOMEZ]

Originally Posted by dhcpp

about the Steam kills accounts - news:

Why am i reading everywhere bout steam hunting for nocd-crack users?
That's damned ****ing not true! Nonono!

for example /. says: "caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection found on the retail version of the game."

Any word about cd crack? Dont think so!
On steampowered board again not a single word about the cd crack.
Its all about those fake cdkeys used to play pirated versions of hl2 which are spread around p2p filesharing etc these days.

Or am i'm just silly? Didnt find anything about nocd-"crack" related to steam account shut downs..

btw: @hijack: great work. thank u very much!

"This includes Credit Card fraud, theft of accounts you do not own and using cracked versions of Valve games." THE LETTER DOES POINT OUT USING CRACKS.....BUT FOR ME, I DON'T GIVE A !@#$....because I don't want to play cs......once this crap of a game is finished....it's un-installed and finished.
ok...it's only physically crap.....the game itself is cool though.....but it's still finished......why the loads still.....a far-cry from far-cry......play it again!

[veithflo]

Originally Posted by hijack

I've had the same problem and couldn't find the cause. The only workaround I've found yet is to unpack the localized GCF file. To do that:
* Download and install GCFScape
* Open <steam directory>/steamapps/half-life 2_<language>.gcf
* Extract hl2 to <steam directory>/steamapps/<your account>/half-life 2
* Close GCFScape

OK, i have done it. But now HL² doesn't start. After preparing the gamefiles, a errormessage appears but it disapears so fast i'm not able to read it. Do i have made something wrong? Is this happend because, the NoCD dont work with the new Steam version (Steam have updated itselfe)?

[Ramona]

As per my last post,

XP is patched to SP2,
W2k is patched to SP4

I bought the game Monday, DLd nocd from GCW ( marked up as 1.0 ) this would not work with W2K kept getting the ' Games currently not available ' for HL2 and for CS ' Server unavailable '

Tuesday I DLd 1.4 from here via torrent, this worked straight off with w2k,

Then I installed on my XP machine ( Win2k PC dual boots with SuSE did want to reboot just to play a game) anyway the same 1.4 nocd would not work so tried the ver 1.0 this worked.

I did notice this in my trail if Steam was running ( autoloads on reboot ) on the XP machine so it could be the same for w2k you got the error ' CreateProcessA error ' exit from steam and retried and it would load.

Ram

[ILLUMINATOR23]

for me the no CD (first hijack Release) is working 100%..with the German Retail DVD Version..

But actually i use the orig Exe of Steam again until i dont know for sure whats up with Valve/Steam and the "Account Sabotage"...

I think with this "crack" we're changing the Retail DVD Version Account into a Steam Download Account..maybe Valve is not amused about that..
Otherwise both Versions are legal and this NoCD only modifiy the Retail DVD Version EXE File into a Download Version Exe...wheres the Problem ?!
So far i know, Valve is only killing fake Accounts with multiple Keys!

But you can never know 100% what is coming up next with Steam..When i go online with Steam to play CSS, Steam can update or kill my Account!
dont want to lose my HL2 Account/Licence ....

We will see....