Hl2 And Consumer Rights

[sparhawk]

http://www.golem.de/0411/34861.html

 

For thos of you who don't understand german. It's basically what I already said why I don't want to buy HL2 because of it's shamless steam hand-cuffing.

 

Consumers are quite angry because some of them can not play anymore because Valve decided to deactivate their accounts. Of course they can always create a new one, but that's not reall the issue. Imagine buying a car and each day you have to go to your dealer asking for a new key.

 

Also they are quite angry because they are forced to go online all the time. And another issue, which is IMO one of the more important aspects: The consumers can not sell their game once they played it through, despite this being a perfectly legal action.

Valve even contacted Ebay to disallow selling of HL2 accounts (which is also perfeclty legal here). They based their claim on these sells are done with faked credit cards. Sure. Every single one of them has been done with a faked credit card. Who would believe that? If you also tried to sell your used copy on ebay beware. Now you know that YOU also used a faked credit card.

 

It's not that Valve is doing this alone. I have seen this also by other companies. In case of NuMega regarding SoftICE they were doing the same strategy.

 

I hope you enjoy HL2 putting your consumer rights in chains in exhcange for pretty graphics and physics. Of course we all know it IS neccessary. Pirates and all that excuses. And it's not THAT inconvenient after all, Is it?

[SneaksieDave]

The sorta ironic thing is (w/r/t me at least), I was originally going to buy the game and play it. That is, put money in their hands for the game. As a result of all of this ongoing crap, I won't be doing so. I'll either A.) play it on my brother's machine (I did it with part one, so why not? This one's shorter), B.) play it "another" way, or C.) not play it at all.

 

Without Steam, they'd have my money.

 

Edit: smiley smash!

Edited December 8, 2004 by SneaksieDave