Of course, I'm going to defend Valve, because I don't know their personality very well and I've never seen them lay the smackdown to internet gripes like Bungie can do... So I thought I'd try.

The complaint hitting the internet today is the fact that some people are having their Orange Box installations deactivated. Why? Well, it's because they found some awesome deal from a country across the world, imported the game, and then installed it. Now... I know people do this with PC games sometimes, but isn't this illegal? It shouldn't be illegal, no, but it doesn't change the fact that it is. Take a look at region locked DVDs and console games. They're locked because of all the country's different laws, right? One country has a slightly different law than in the United States, and you're going to have to release the game in that country differently, perhaps with a different price to cover working within those laws.

Well, these people bought their Orange Box from, say, Thailand, for 20 bucks. (Thailand for 20 bucks? If that doesn't throw up red flags right now, you're insane.) I'm sure that after the export/import fees, it's going to be around $40 like it would be if you bought it via Steam or in the United States, but that's beside the point, I guess. They said the store they bought the game from is legitimate and they were going to do it despite a few warnings from people.

They get their keys... They install their games... They play and... Games deactivated. Woah! Big surprise! Apparently, Valve says they're playing a game from one country on an account in another and it's a no-no. Gamers are, of course, in a major outrage and overreacting by stating that they'll never purchase a game from Valve again. Well, your loss, buddy!

Now, many people are getting refunds by the stores they got their international keys from and buying US boxes, and they're still having some difficulties. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is because they haven't properly cleared their Steam installation. As everyone knows, it's a wonderful service, but sometimes it just needs cleaned. In everyone's heightened state of insanity, they're blaming every little problem on Valve and not using a little bit of common sense.

I don't know... It just seems to me that if you're going to go buy a release of the game you want from another country because it's cheaper after all the currency exchange, one of the things you're naturally going to have to worry about with Steam is buying a game from another region and then activating that number on another region entirely. That just reeks of irresponsibility. You might have been used to doing something like this on games without Steam, because hey, it's a global economy, right? I can buy whatever I want from wherever I want! Well, yes, I'll be the first to agree that you should be able to, but also the first to notice that it's not. What happens when you buy an NTSC format DVD from another region and try to play it here? It doesn't work, does it? Not unless you crack the DVD player. Believe it or not, that's not to inconvenience you/ Piracy countermeasures do inconvenience everyone, yes, but region locking isn't a piracy countermeasure... It's so the publishers can actually release the DVD in the country of the region number, because they have different laws. It's complicated, and I probably don't even know exactly why they have regions, but that's what I've always thought and seen.

Moral of the story: Valve is NOT evil, they will NOT randomly lock your games because they know that's a bad thing to do. But they WILL lock your games if you've done something odd like buy an illegal key from another region and Digg can scream "bloody murder!!" about it all they want. They're just a bunch of sensitive little gamers who take offense at every tiny mishap. (Remember the Halo 3 resolution debacle? Haha, honestly, the uproar over a few missing lines of resolution. Ah, the level of intellect you get when you mash a bunch of angry techs together on a tech news site.) Even when Valve is doing everything they can do to fix it. (Basically, it's your own fault and the fault of who you bought the game from. Since you didn't buy it from Valve/Steam directly, it's not their problem. It's their game, but see, they would have sold it to you properly.)

Game Consumer Rule #1: Buy games from your own country, noob.