Our Lord and Savior GabeN responds to the VAC updates

[beebskadoo]

That you are a very enthusiastic homosexual who cares not if everybody knows. :lol:

haha it's all in good fun. At least I'm intellectual about some things :-p

I try to make people laugh. I hope I am successful

[squirtlesoup]

I trust Gabe, I just don't trust secret courts with gag orders and unlimited, unconstitutional power. 

^ brings up a good point. would you want your information stored with valve, if that means the american government will probably have access to it. it seems as tho having any sort of information stored in U.S. servers isnt private

[Askew]

haha it's all in good fun. At least I'm intellectual about some things :-p

I try to make people laugh. I hope I am successful

 

You are entertaining I like reading your posts, the avatar completes the package though if you change it you're dead to me.

[beebskadoo]

You are entertaining I like reading your posts, the avatar completes the package though if you change it you're dead to me.

lol, it will always remain John Barrowman, it's part of the Beebskadoo brand imagery. :-D

[jscho]

I'd trust Valve and Gaben with anything.

 

trust ?

why should i trust them

they shoudnt do this in the first place

 

You don't have to trust them. But they're trying to earn your trust. They're doing this because Gabe hates cheaters. Cheaters don't deserve to use Steam and it's games. Cheaters ruin games. I trust that Valve will use this information as they claim because they've earned it. Valve damn deserves every bit of trust people give them. As said by Gabe himself, they don't care what sites you visit, it's simply to catch the authentification packets that large, paid cheats send to the DRM servers when they are launched. This is not the same as the NSA's shenanigans.

 

[EDIT] Corrected some acronyms

[beebskadoo]

Valve is making all the right moves. They are one of the only tech companies that actually seem to give a shit about their customers.

[onlylogic]

[TechSilver13]

I wonder if Sony or Microsoft did something similar to this on the consoles if the reaction would be the same. Taking data period is bad...if not now, later.

[old reece frost]

This didn't really bother me anyway, I have nothing to hide.

[Kamina]

I trust no one.

 

And I never use hacks... so meh. Like who uses hacks in a competitive FPS game? You're not playing at that point.

[Joshua Ondangan]

I'm good with it specially they won't bother me on my porn watch fest.

[lhikary]

In response to the recent updates to Valve's anti-cheat program (VAC), Gabe Newell has created a post in the r/gaming subreddit of reddit.com

 

Gabe begins with some rationale in regards to trust. 

 

 

 

Our Lord and Savior then continues on to explain how cheats are negative to the overall gameplay experience and how many different individuals try to sell their cheats and hacks to the community. 

 

He also explains in layman's terms how VAC works and how the "raging war" in terms of cheats goes on between hackers and Valve. 

 

To conclude the article, Gabe answers three questions that everybody is asking. 

 

 

The reasoning behind this update to VAC seems to make more sense now, and I'm glad our Lord and Valve are being transparent about this. Steam is still a fantastic platform for distributing games and I will continue to trust it, at least, until another potential security issue arises.

 

What do you think about this new update and Gabe's response? I'm just glad only the NSA has a complete history of my web browsing. 

 

Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_trust/

its like NSA saying we will stop

OR

NSA says ofourse we wont store your something data!

the bs ppl believe these days

[LAwLz]

Going to quote myself from the previous thread:

So they admit that they can, and have looked through the DNS cache of several people. I don't cheat so I except them to not check me, but I don't want them to even have the ability to check which websites I visit. I think people are being way to generous just because it is Valve.

They could use this for horrible things, such as checking if you use competing services like Origin and then maybe punish you if you do. I don't think Valve would do such a thing as they are today, but I don't want them to even be able to do it. Power almost always end up being misused sooner or later

Summary: Fuck you Valve. People, don't just be fanboys that forgive Valve when they do terrible crap like this. Valve won't stay the good guys if they realize they can get away with crap like this.

The "I got nothing to hide" argument is really stupid. You don't think you are doing anything wrong, but what is considered wrong is very subjective and can change in the future as well. For example they could in theory punish you if you use competing services. That's one example of when "doing something wrong" have two different meanings.

By the way, Gaben is lying. They are looking through the browsing history of some people. His answer to question number 1 is a big fat lie and contradicts the things he said previously in the post.

I highly disagree with his third point as well. If he tries to gain trust then he shouldn't lie, or keep things like the ability to look through the customers browsing history hidden.

I still like Valve a lot, but a few more things like this and that opinion will change. You shouldn't forgive them because they are Valve. If anything you should expect more from them because they have been so good in the past.

[DeViLzzz]

I got caught up in the whole privacy bs with MS and Xbox One but really only took it real far cuz it was great trolling material to use on GameSpot.  Next gen console war conversation was fun.  Quite honestly many people have too many bad things to hide and I would like to see more openness and full disclosure by people in everything done in this world.  Heck I would agree to fingerprinting every human being so it is easy to catch criminals.  I would also agree to everyone having to give up their DNA too so again it would be easier to catch criminals.  The right to privacy and all this other bs actually holds up the world from getting to a point where we can get rid of people doing the wrong things.  As for Valve in all this I believe they have been sharing information well before this like so many other companies do with the government.  Valve ... NSA ... and more I don't give a crap.  I have nothing to hide and for the ones that do need to hide things well we need to get rid of them anyway so Valve ... NSA .. and whoever use whatever means to get rid of the trash in our society.

[BrightCandle]

Trust is built by never crossing the line, not crossing it and then backing off and apologising. Trust is something you start with and it only goes downwards with each episode when giving your customers reason to distrust you. Valve pushes a very particular bad version of DRM, they are an effective monopoly on games sales for the PC and they are searching through your DNS cache looking at every website you have gone to, something incognito mode won't protect against. You want trust, stop doing distrustful things, I don't trust Valve, they have given me too many reasons not to.

[GimmeGaming]

I didnt like this when I first heard of it and removed steam off all machines bar my main gaming rig.

After reading Gabes reddit post, I would have a bit more trust in it that he is only checking for specific sites (this means all other sites in the cache are ignored) and only these sites are hashed and passed back to the vac servers. As he said less that 1/10th of 1% of users are affected by having these hashed values passed on.

This piece of information would give me trust in valve again and I will install steam again on my machines but will monitor for it just in case.

[jukki]

Honestly. I think this is great. This shouldhave happend earlier. You have my full trust valve. Why?

Because i belive that what valve does with the info is ok. This should be happening all orr. As the guy who posted before me was saying that this trus issue is holding us back. What is the issue? Valve knows what porn you look? Valve punishes you for buyig a game from origin? What are the odds for that?

I still belive thag if you have nothing to hide, then there is no problem. All the talk abou the negativity is just speculating what could happen. Do you hate airfield security? You have nothing to hide, yet they scan thrught your personal items. Why cant we have same thin for internet activity then?

[Ethnod]

Not sure I trust corporations that much tbh but as corporations go, Valve is pretty awesome. And I mean Gabe is our Lord and Savoir so there has to be some trust there

[Jrjy3]

Going to quote myself from the previous thread:

Summary: Fuck you Valve. People, don't just be fanboys that forgive Valve when they do terrible crap like this. Valve won't stay the good guys if they realize they can get away with crap like this.

The "I got nothing to hide" argument is really stupid. You don't think you are doing anything wrong, but what is considered wrong is very subjective and can change in the future as well. For example they could in theory punish you if you use competing services. That's one example of when "doing something wrong" have two different meanings.

By the way, Gaben is lying. They are looking through the browsing history of some people. His answer to question number 1 is a big fat lie and contradicts the things he said previously in the post.

I highly disagree with his third point as well. If he tries to gain trust then he shouldn't lie, or keep things like the ability to look through the customers browsing history hidden.

I still like Valve a lot, but a few more things like this and that opinion will change. You shouldn't forgive them because they are Valve. If anything you should expect more from them because they have been so good in the past.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but where's your proof that valve has done this? How I understand it is that they will use an automated system to match to a "blacklist" and then ban the player if the history matches. 

[neision]

<3 me some Gabian :'')

[Fred Castellum]

The GabeN has spoken. May his words be law. 

Gaben is love, Gaben is life.

[Onizuka2297]

I think this is how it worked.

1. They gather user's URL and encrypted it.

+ The reason they encrypted the URL is to prevent other programs used information gathered locally by Steam to harm user.

2. They research URL of hack sites themselves and also encrypted it.

3. Every time user connect to steam will be check through hack sites URL database from Valve.

4. If some thing matched, the user will be put in black list or something.

[LAwLz]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but where's your proof that valve has done this? How I understand it is that they will use an automated system to match to a "blacklist" and then ban the player if the history matches.

Yes, and they have to look through your history to check if you have been to these sites. Sure they are only looking for specific sites, but they still look through your entire cache. Gabe first say they do it, and then he says they don't. He must be lying at least once in that post. It's just damage control.

This doesn't even prove anything. OK so someone visited a website about cheats... That does not prove they are actually using it. They shouldn't look through the DNS cache period. Especially not now that cheats could just clear it before launching.

I think this is how it worked.

1. They gather user's URL and encrypted it.

+ The reason they encrypted the URL is to prevent other programs used information gathered locally by Steam to harm user.

2. They research URL of hack sites themselves and also encrypted it.

3. Every time user connect to steam will be check through hack sites URL database from Valve.

4. If some thing matched, the user will be put in black list or something.

The websites are hashed, not encrypted. There is a big difference. Hashing does not prevent anyone from seeing the info.

[Guest]

Oh my GabeN.... HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!!!!!

The napkin religion has spoken, three scriptures from the promised shall bring fourth the third

[kuddlesworth9419]

Well there you have it. Looks like it was a big misunderstanding. You have to trust what he says as fact. Besides why would Valve take you browser history without your permission anyway. They ask for your hardware specs up front so why not this.