Half-Life 2 team takes crowbar to cyber thieves
Summary
Developer Valve, maker of PC hit Half-Life 2, has disabled 20,000 accounts belonging to users of its Steam online service on account of credit card fraud, theft of accounts and using cracked versions of Valve games.
Gamestar Spin
Seems simple enough: Take what isn't yours, and they'll take back what's theirs. Problem is, some straight-laced, law-abiding PC aficionados who coughed up their cash at the retail counter, and presumably wanted to play without having a disc in the drive downloaded the CD cheat. Call them collateral damage in the campaign against piracy, but who's to blame, Valve or the nogoodnicks whose something-for-nothing mentality inspired the Seattle-based developer's draconian countermeasures? -- Shawn Elliott
