Valve removes 30,000 more pirates from Steam

Half-Life 2 developer Valve has disabled a further 30,000 accounts on its Steam digital distribution system for attempted piracy, bringing the total number of disabled accounts since the game launched to over 50,000.

The account deactivations, which occurred just before Christmas, will disable any Valve games on the systems associated with the accounts - and any paid-for software on the account will have to be re-purchased.

Valve's Erik Johnson announced the new crackdown in a terse statement on the Steam forums late last month.

"Today Valve disabled more than 30,000 Steam accounts which had been used to try to illegally gain access to Valve games without a valid purchase," he said. "Valve takes such activities seriously and reserves the right to disable Steam accounts engaging in piracy, cheating, illegal activities, or any other activity in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. The accounts that are disabled today will not be reactivated."

The company deactivated around 20,000 pirate accounts shortly after the launch of Half-Life 2, a move which was met with a mixed reaction - with industry commentators praising the strong blow which it dealt to internet piracy (although pirate versions of Half-Life 2 which don't require Steam at all continue to circulate), while some users complained that their accounts had been disabled without good cause.