The stigma of HL verification and why it's not a good idea.

Eon

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Hay

So my stupid self was thinking about the whole HL verification. Yes it's under the pretense that you need to verify your Half-Life to get support, which is understandable considering we used to have a flood of people asking for support on old WON versions. I understand that it helped weed out a lot of that BS, but honestly, I never thought it was too big of a deal to tell a guy to buy half-life then just close their thread. Also, as Damaera has pointed out before, people would be ostracized for not verifying their HL even when they didn't ask for support.

Oh, and the big thing:

By verifying your HL, you are giving the developers easy access to your steamid. God forbid any dev goes crazy and gets pissed off, but they do have the means to use that against you (IE, banning you from ingame servers). Yeah, it's their game and whatnot but keep in mind if you get on the badside of someone with that access, you may be out $10 and having to get another copy of Half-Life to play the game. My suggestion? If you're savvy enough to troubleshoot things yourself, don't verify your half-life.



I totally don't mind if anyone wants to say anything to the contrary, I've just wanted to have this discussion for a bit and see what you guys think.



Example, our local dipshit Mkilbride leaked stuff from the forcepit, he's banned from the forums. Force pit leaking is bad yes, but he leaked a video a few hours early ( a shitty thing to do) but he didn't leak a beta or anything. Then I see in chatbox a dev was entertaining the idea of nuking his steamid. If the devs were in a collective shitty mood, this could've been a possibility.


I'm not saying it's something the devs will abuse, I'm just saying it CAN be abused.
 
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I'm against the validation system because our goal should be to have as many people as possible playing ESF. If someone wants help troubleshooting their game, they have to not only register an account, which is already a huge barrier in itself (I often won't bother with it on other forums), but now they have to find their SteamID and register that too. Not worth losing any players over what little benefit it provides.

And yeah, the potential for abuse is unsettling. I trust the developers, but I don't think anyone should be banned from playing the game, and it provides an easy way for this to be done.
 
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Yeah I can see where your coming from with that but since that never happened, even in the case of the guy leaking stuff, there is a pretty low chance of that ever happening IMO. What I would want to know is if there would be any way of reversing the process in the unlikely event of an admin messing with someones account.
 

Eon

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Oh I agree, that was a flash in the pan at the time, but the potential is still there.


And on top of that, I just think it's an extra hassle, like Sub mentioned. Honestly, the verification isn't going to stop people from pirating Half-Life and trying to play it on WON (I'm pretty sure ESFF won't even run on it), it's not hard to just close the thread, that's why there are moderators. I dunno, with the game having a DBZ base and a young demographic, I can see how the verification can discourage users.
 
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I always have been against it. Only verified because i hated the "You are not verified" notification.
 
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I think the esf dev team is mature enough to behave. *cough*

Anyways hl verification isn't a big deal at all.
If you can't be bothered with the won/illegal server thingy it's the best thing to do.
And apperantly theres still a load of ppl who play it illegaly.

And those who do play it illegal have no right on support imo.
You're playing a paid game for free.
I'm not expecting any support when i'm playing a downloaded game myself...
Just common sense tbh.

It's like complaining to a car owner that his car wouldn't start after trying to steal it >.>
 
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We are more like the driver of a company owned cab ^^
 
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I agree with Eon, I never thought it was a good idea, but at the time it was pretty much forced down the team's throat by our former website owner skizer and, to a lesser extend, by a forum feature happy Skyrider. The original idea was to also have game statistics attached to your account, but currently not having the HL verified button kinda turned into a paria sign.
(see http://forum.esforces.com/threads/7...s-in-the-esf-community?highlight=verification for the old discussion)

Now that skizer no longer owns the website, perhaps the team would like to reconsider?
 
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Verification doesn't doesn't affect me either way, so its a non-issue for me.

On the topic of MK, had he been IP banned from the game, I wouldn't have shed a tear. When you're given access to the force pit, we're telling you we trust you. By accepting access, and partaking of the information found therein, you're accepting a responsibility to the community, the section and the dev team and you are agreeing to adhere to the rules of that section. When you break those rules, you are telling us that our trust in you was misplaced, and so was our judgment of our character. It then becomes imperative to take corrective measures as it has suddenly become clear you do not deserve the honor of being part of this community. As such, excommunication from the forum, the game and all things related to the game isn't a matter of going too far, but of acknowledging that person's crime and taking action. Does it go too far? I don't think so. I am a firm believer in what I call the "American Defense System". Attack us if you will, but know that in doing so, we are going to overreact to such an extent that we'll probably end up destroying ourselves, with nary a second's hesitation, just to make sure you pay the piper. This makes others think twice about behaving in a similar manner, and acts more as a preventative measure than a reactionary one. Like nukes.
 
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If your willing to put in the effort to get the game, a little more to varify it isn't such a bad thing. It should be encouraging given the benefits of doing so as everyone at some point seems to have at least a few problems at some point. I chalk it up to entropy. A growing majority of people now-a-days seem to think allot of things aren't worth the effort, and just whine and complain when their lives aren't getting catered to. But the way I've always seen it is 'if something can be attained easily; it probably isn't worth having in the first place' After all in this game, perseverance breeds excellence, and if you aren't aiming for that, at least for the simple joy of just playing the game, don't bother getting so involved at all.

On a second note:: I don't know why someone would abuse such an opportunity after being given such a privilege, but it sounds to me like they just wanted to be the jewel in someones eyes. Stealing of course, is no excuse. But as the old saying goes: "Beautiful words, are not sincere, and sincere words are not beautiful" People take advantage of others all the time, they have since the dawn of civilized humanity(probably before). But I don't think you guys should let that be the cause of hardening your shells. You put trust in them, and they broke it for selfish purposes; and you cant go blaming yourselves for wanting to be hopeful. Stay calm, stay cautious, and I think you'll all do just fine the whole way through.
 
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Technically leaking isnt stealing. Basically we wanted to put the trailer to view for the force pitters half a day early or so. Basically as long as dalte needed to get the OK post it from masta. So the trailer would have been force pit only untill dalte talked to masta. Now MK leaked it, and we were kind of forced to put it up ourselves, since he downloaded it and reuploaded it after dalte took down the private link. Trouth is he would have been unbanned and back on the forums, had he taken down that video and at least apologized. Instead he blatantly refused to do so claiming it was his right to show it to everyone. Thats the only reason why he is permabanned on the forums.
 
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Eh, he was always kind of a douchebag anyway, so I'm not really worried hung up about it. I remember him giving everyone problems in-game, as well.
 

Eon

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I forgot to mention, I'm not sure if the steaminfo is encrypted or not when you verify, but on the offchance the forum gets compromised (again)...
 
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The Steam ID is public information anyway. Whenever you link to your Steam Community profile in any way, you expose it. The Steam ID, the (long) Community ID and your Community Name are all interchangeable.
 

Eon

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Is the steam password encrypted and stored by valve upon validation? Or is it stored here in any way? Pardon my ignorance, I've just never even clicked the validation thing.

e: Just read the thing, it's stored by valve.
 
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The forum pretty much gets an OK from steampowered.com and it uses that. When you sign in through STEAM the forum database gets a correct sign in response from valve and that steam ID is linked to the account.

So you are logging in directly to steampowered.com
 
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If we so much as though about saving any passwords or even the username, they'd probably send us so many C&Ds we'd drown in 'em. :D
 

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