Valve apologizes for mass bannings, gives gifts

Not long ago, we ran a story about Valve’s Anti-Cheat system causing mass bans on users in the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 whether a person had knowingly cheated or not. Valve took a harsh stance of zero tolerance to anyone who complained about the ban being unfair.

Valve’s decision caused affected users to form groups (one particular group reaching 500 members) in protest of the decision.

Enter Valve president Gabe Newell.

Users affected by the ban received an email from Newell explaining why the bans happened, an apology for the misunderstanding and a gift in the form of free copies of Left 4 Dead 2 with an additional license to give to friends.

In the email, Newell explain the ban was caused to a glitch in a programming check:

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).

One thing to keep in mind is that, while this is said to not be “a game-specific mistake”, the complaints have only come from Modern Warfare 2 players.

Either way, players who were wrongfully banned at least get a free game out of the flub.