So OK. To start off with, I am no lawyer. Nor do I have any legal formal training to speak of. And I absolutely don’t work for Valve or any other gaming or game distribution company. However, I do have some background which I think might be relevant here. Let me be clear that what follows is merely my speculation and not supported by any insider information on Valve’s inner workings.
After reading the Rock, Paper, Shotgun article, it got me to thinking about a former life in which I worked for the fraud department of a bank. Understand that people are always finding ways “Around” the rules and laws and are always trying to undermine security procedures in order to commit fraud against banking and steal money. The same probably exists for the Software and gaming arenas.
In defense against this, most banks implement ‘fraud detection’ protocols which are intended to detect this type of activity. Usually these protocols are modeled on previous proven fraudulent activity and used as a predictive model to identify potential ‘would be’ fraud perpetrators. One pattern that was proven to be a good indicator of potential fraud is that someone attempts to purchases $1 of gas on a credit card is usually trying to prove that their stolen account is active before going to town on it. How many people do you know that buy $1 dollar in gas? Probably none. And so it is one factor (among many) that the fraud unit looks at as part of their predictive model. It is by no means the only factor as it is possible to be legitimate, and so they look at that AND other factors to make a profile. It doesn’t always catch the bad guys, but it works in pointing the way to looking for other activity, which might lead to catching some.
So how is any of this relevant? In reading the RPS article, we have several facts. The first is that ‘the impacted user purchases a lot of games. This is not a bad thing and most gaming companies may enjoy this as it puts profit into their hands. Additionally s/he, by their own admission, ‘Gifts’ games to other people. The RPS article states that this cannot be known by Valve, yet it can. Digital rights management has existed for a long time and when a license key is activated at a different IP address than it was initially issued, this is seen and monitored by Valve, particularly on games and software that requires an active online connection. Activating on a different IP isn’t ‘illegal’ per say and so doing once or twice is not really that big a deal. However, considering the volume of games that are indicated in the article, we can surmise that that user did this more than once or twice.
So now we have a pattern. High purchases and a significant number of those purchases are spread across multiple IP addresses. This isn’t conclusive proof of anything in and of itself, but I could absolutely see Valve being interested in this behavior. I would bet that, considering the geographic location involved (Russia) is an area of depressed economy where games are routinely sold for lower price than other markets, and is therefore ripe for resale at a profit on the internet and into markets not intended for those lower prices, Valve has every right to be more than a little concerned. Given just this information, I could easily see them choosing to investigate further. Not take action, but investigate.
Now here is where the black box exists. We don’t know for sure what additional information was uncovered in the investigation, and Valve isn’t going to tell. But what if they uncovered the fact that “Most” or all of the games purchased by this user were showing up on other IP addresses. And that several of the “Gifted” license keys were from far across the globe? Ok, again not concrete proof of wrong doing but it would be some additional factors. Now let’s suppose that one or more of the license keys showed up on an IP address where several other “Gifted” license keys from completely separate sources were also showing up. After all, someone who is in the habit of purchasing “cheaper” games on the internet isn’t going to be loyal to one distributor. We don’t have proof here, but there is beginning to be a picture here that any reasonable fraud detection unit might be very uncomfortable with. Now let’s suppose that one of these “Other distributors” was in fact a confirmed fraudulent distributor. So we have a gifted license showing up being used by someone who has a habit of buying from fraudulent sources. This is all speculation, but if anything like it is true can you see how it is reasonable to assume the worst?
I would guess that Value has yet more information that they are not disclosing. And I would also guess that they have reasonable suspicion as to what this user is either doing or considering doing and that Valve’s actions are an attempt to keep the user legal.
I also note that the user didn't bring legal action against Valve. could it be that they know they are doing wrong and are trying to sway things through public opinion, that a court of law wouldn't find favorable? We don't know. Maybe not, but then again, maybe. Certainly if I felt I was robbed of the kind of money the user was claiming they lost out on, I would at least try the legal recourse.
As for Valve’s silence on the matter, I can see how they may not wish to go into detail on how they “Caught” the activity. Would you want to publish all of your secrets on how you catch fraud? I can also see them not wanting to give out anything more than “The company line” in an email, quite probably on advice from the Valve legal team. Why run the risk of opening themselves up to a law suit through loose wording in a publishable document?
And I can see them, when pushed into a corner by public opinion, restoring some functionality to the impacted customer. After all, their message got across.
Point is, crucifying Valve based only some of the facts, and primarily on the information provided by the potentially guilty party member is not really any better than the very attitudes that Valve is being accused of. We don’t know all of the facts. And the facts that we do know, ‘COULD’ paint just as bad a picture for the ‘Offended’ user.
Again, this is merely supposition based on what was presented in the article. I have no knowledge if any of it is fact, and have tried to keep my suppositions within the realm of reason based on facts presented by RPS.
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