Steam Banning Innocent MW2 Players, Maybe

Sounds like a plan by Activision to make more money.

Jeez, either a bug or a P.I.T.A. new marketing scheme...
I'm glad I stuck with MW1, it works fine, even with 3 people playing online together with one cd-code. ^^^

Good to know though, because a friend of mine plays it.

There might be a problem, but then again there is so many damn hackers on MW2

Happened to me awhile back, not sure why. I never played the game in the public, I only bought it to play private with some friends. I always wondered if it was because I changed it to a windowed game instead of full screen once because my PC was pumping out the music and MW2 wont allow you to minimize in a game lobby or game. Well if so, that's not against their policy, I checked.

When it happened I just kind of laughed, I wasn't a big fan anyway. I liked the damage modifiers better than BFBC2, but the fact that every gun had absolutely no sway kind of pissed me off. Then again putting half a light machine gun magazine in someone charging at you only to die first by a rifle grenade in BFBC2 pisses me off too.

glad i uninstalled the game from my system. got sick and tired of playing with cheaters and getting thrown into server with weird hosts, weird mods (not sure how they get on there). I'm wondering if that is partially to blame.

As for me, I'm done with that game and I'd wager its more MW2 than it is Valve... least i hope.

Looks like there's good news too though...

http://forums.steampowered.com/for [...] &t=1380672

(A thread showing that they have been unbanning people and giving them free copies of L4D2 for the troubles caused by the ban)

with a quick glance at the steam forums apperantly the vac bans have been lifted?

This is Activision/Valve/Infinity Ward's way of saying "We are now charging (innocent legitimate players) for online multiplayer!" without them actually saying it in words.

What did they say last time? "We are not charging for online multiplayer!" Yah right!

R.I.P. Old IW. Call of duty games died with your dismissal.

its been fixed already. update your article.

Had this happen to me. Received this email:

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/7 [...] 171624.png

It appears that Valve did right by their customers, which does not surprise me in the least. I still bet that Kotick is pissed right now that he isn't going to be getting another $60 from MW2 players.

Um VALVe cannot charge for the online part of MW2. Only Activision/IW can.

If anything the issue is on MW2s end. They probably didn't code it properly with VAC that causes a glitch to ban people for non hacking reasons. I have never seen anyone get VAC banned in any other game when not hacking.

L4D2 for you and to gift as a gift after their mistake....now thats why steam has my business

According to retrac1324s email that he posted, it does appear that the problem was on Valves end honestly. It says that there was an issue with the updating of the ROM image which cause a mismatch with a DLL and the latent memory. Of course it could have still be a problem with IWs update, but Valve seems to be taking full responsibility based on that email. Either way, Valve comes in as very stand up and fair. I doubt, if left in Activisions court, it would have been handled the same.

this is an issue with all anti-cheat systems on the PC. i was permanently banned from BF2142 because they said I was "attempting to use a program that disables punkbuster." I resorted to everything i could do get unbanned, even threatened to sue them, as I was completely jipped of my $60. Ended up buying a new BF2142 and making a new account anyways..Pssh, punkbuster is worthless. if Valve wants to learn anything from that kind of mistake, they will uplift the bans and start fresh.

Because there is a LARGE amount of people that cheat on MW2. Almost every match has one. That not alot of people considering how many copies they sold. G;ad the Hackers get the shitty end. They new better. I got the last crap in. (I don't cheat) lol

who plays mw2 anymore? it's a mediocre shooter at best, and the online is rubbish... who cares...

Good on Valve to issue a free copy of L4D2 to those affected, now that's classy.

I doubt that most of these people are innocent players. Whenever I play MW2, I get r4ped by some wallhackers, aimbotters, anti-killstreak nukers every other effing game. So, in my opinion, good riddance.

So anyone wanna gift me their free LFD2 copy?

Companies like EA and Activision deserve to be ripped off after clearly screwing over paying customers. And they actually wonder why people pirate the games they make.

Of course they will spin that into a reason for them to need to make money by doing this.. because every person that plays a cracked version would have boughten the game if it couldnt be cracked.. you know what I mean, in the imaginary world they live in.

Compiling a list of cheaters over an extended period of time, then banning them all? Seriously.... The entire problem was from stream doing nothing for so long. Hacking ran rampant, because no one did shit. Dollar short and a day late.

I'm glad steam is getting their act together. I hope in future games they don't let it get this bad.

there is so many damn cheaters in that game i would not be surprised at all to hear of mass bannings and people trying to claim fowl.

Kotaku's running the story. Turns out it was a software error. They've got a message from Gabe Newell, Valve's President. They're giving everyone affected and one of his or her friends' a copy of Left for Dead 2.

"The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks)."

Bunch of crying cheaters.

Giving a free copy of L4D 2 while a good gesture does not really earn forgiveness of what happened. It's not even the false ban itself I would have been mad about but more of being called a cheater. So not only did they ban many people for no reason but they slandered them too.

Another reason why Steam and Valve blows massive cock. We ran an experiment with a friend where he ran 0 programs besides steam and the game and he got banned. Stupid imo but hey, thats what happens when a company is ruling the digital distribution

I think a free copy of L4D2 is a good compromise. They could have given you a free rubber bumper for your mouse instead =)

Please wake up. 2 FREE copies are not enough, what more do you want? They admit they made a mistake, get over with it. L4D2 is so much better than that crappy game anyway.

MW2 was never good on the PC anyway, it belongs on consoles.

I WAS BANNED AND MY MW2 IS STILL DOWNLOADING PATCHES :