Wow, what a selfish forum.

[Champion]

You mean to help, have to "buy" a ******* game? And no help without having this ******* hell? And I will say more, I can not banish care, everyone will take in the ass.

They can ban me.

BYE BYE ****ERS.

 

[Mkilbride]

Yes, how absurd of them.

Requiring you own the game to offer help for it.

How selfish and crazy.

 

[Skyrider]

Gosh, it's so terrible to use a little bit of your precious money to buy a game which is relative cheap in order to play awesome mods such as ESF. And it's so "selfish" of us to not support people who expect help/support to those who downloaded the game illegally.

Ghee. I'm shocked. We really should do something about this guys.. I mean seriously, look how upset he is. I do believe I see a tear.

 

[dutchmeat]

MKilbride, young friend, do not encourage these kids, leave them be, the admins can have him.

 

[Damaera]

Yes, how absurd of them.

Requiring you own the game to offer help for it.

How selfish and crazy.

Gosh, it's so terrible to use a little bit of your precious money to buy a game which is relative cheap in order to play awesome mods such as ESF. And it's so "selfish" of us to not support people who expect help/support to those who downloaded the game illegally.

Ghee. I'm shocked. We really should do something about this guys.. I mean seriously, look how upset he is. I do believe I see a tear.

You are both adults and should know that you're seeping down to his level by egging him on with sarcasm. Act like proper members of the community instead of making the situation worse.

You can continue to post on the forums, but if you want support for playing ESF then you need to buy Half-Life. I personally think it sucks that you need to be validated for support because people who use pirated versions will find a way to play anyways, but whatever. Half-Life is about $5 so it's really not that big of a deal. And not only are you able to play ESF by buying Half-Life, but you are also able to play other great mods made by other developers.

I would also like to point out that there are some situations where people think they need to be validated for a certain question to be answered when they really don't. So to try to help you out, what is your problem exactly?

 

[sub]

To be fair, I do think it's absurd to have someone validate their game before we help them. The goal should be to get people to play ESF, we should have as few barriers as possible to get in the way of that, even if it is more annoying for those helping.

Also, I find myself agreeing with Damaera.

 

[fuzzy]

Well, since we have nothing to gain from people buying Half-Life, we can't really be selfish, now can we?

 

[Shadi]

I second Dam and Sub, great opinions.

I know some stuff CAN'T be helped before you have a real version but some questions are very simple and I try hard not to answer even though I really wanna answer "press z to transform"

@Fuzzy

Well partially true, but it's 95% of the time not needed to have HL verified in order to answer them, you have yourself chosen to have this on.. some people don't even want to verify and we know they have it .. Sub etc.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

I kinda agree on the absurdity of having an authentication process for Half-life. Personally, I don't care how they get the game, as long as they give me someone to play with. Piracy is valves problem, not that I condone it.

But from the teams/forums perspective, it makes us look very elitist when we deny someone a simple answer because they don't have a game validated on a forum. On that point, I agree with Dam.

 

[Hawkman]

I know some stuff CAN'T be helped before you have a real version but some questions are very simple and I try hard not to answer even though I really wanna answer "press z to transform"

I think they don't answer questions like "why the game doesnt work?".

Now about the op's rage quit post, it just makes himself look bad.

 

[Skyrider]

You are both adults and should know that you're seeping down to his level by egging him on with sarcasm. Act like proper members of the community instead of making the situation worse.

Perhaps the "tear" part was a bit too sarcastic but the fact remains that I find it ironic that he thinks we are selfish while he's selfish enough not the buy a cheap game which he'll be able to download and play a lot of great mods.

Now as for the rest of the posts. While I can understand that not everyone agrees with the validation system, I'd like to point out a few things.

First, when someone will register on the forums. They'll see this:

Second of all. When you have registered on the forums, you'll be forwarded to this:
http://forum.esforces.com/threads/78304-Half-Life-Steam-Verification-Required-for-Official-Support

Which clearly shares the information regarding the validation system.

Third. When you register you also get a welcome private message with this being part of the message:

Verifying your steam account is only required if you wish to request support within the help section. But is not required when you only wish to post on the forums outside the help sections. The verification has been added to prevent people who are using non-steam (downloaded half-life illegally) from asking for help.

With that, he has been notified about the validation beforehand and he can't say he never knew about it. Piracy users should be well aware that they are on their own and do not gain any support from the official forums. It's also been done to save us time to support someone that in the end he can't get the mod/game to work because he has a pirated copy of the game. I mean, why should we support someone officially when they think they can just get the game the easy way?

And you can't say that validating is difficult. It's only a 1 time process which only takes less than 30 seconds.

You can also say it's valves problem regarding the pirated users. But that's like saying we shouldn't help someone when he is getting beat up while it's the cops job to solve the problem. With the cops being valve in this case. We merely have good intentions to help people but they need to have good intentions as well.

They download a pirated copy of the game and expect us to help them.. Why? Should I download a pirated copy now and go to the retail shop and say the game doesn't work I want some help? Regardless of this being "the Internet", many forums has some rules and validation is one of them. Even when some people don't agree with it.

The validation system as I mentioned above is a quick and painless method to prove your worth of gaining official support on the forums.

And by all means, as a non-validated user you can post outside the help sections freely without problems and even chat in the chat-box. You are merely limited to the ESF support section, which isn't so bad at all.