The Glory that is Steam Activation Codes

Only now do I realize the good deed that Valve has truly done giving the world Steam. I speak not of the community, as fabulous as that is, nor of the ability to buy and receive video games naked, though that's nice too. No, I speak of activation codes.

After reading through this thread on Half Life lore and listening to some people review Half Life 2 (Team Fremont Live's Podcast to be specific) I got the hankering for Half Life the first, to remember the good old days and curse at jumping puzzles. I don't feel like paying ten bucks for something I know I already own so I go busting through my CD spool to see if I can scrounge up the original Half Life.

After about ten minutes I finally find a Half Life CD. The first Disk of Half Life Game of the Year edition. Of course this is one disk of three so I go scrounging for the others, since I'm pretty sure Opposing Force and Blue Shift were in that package and those were kinda fun. After another ten minutes of looking though random CDs I'm about to open up Firefox and see what the bittorrent crowd has to offer when I remember: CD keys!

See I've always been annoyed by CD keys, and never remember to keep the original packaging, so I got into the habit of writing the CD key on the front of every first disk of a game I have. I check and there it is. And I have Steam too, don't I? So I pop in the activation code into Steam to see what happens.

Now I'm happily downloading Half Life, Blue Shift, Opposing Force, Counter Strike, and quite a few other mods. While I almost certainly won't be playing things like Team Fortress Classic any time soon the option to do so is simply wonderful. Say what you will about their lack of customer service, Steam just saved me a fair amount of time and/or money and lets me continue my tradition of ignoring my CDs after an install.

So have any of you had an experience with Steam's activation code service? Any downsides that I'm not seeing here? Because so far this seems to be awesome in a bottle.

The Glory that is Steam Activation Codes

Funnily enough, I throught you'd be linking to this.

Spunior wrote:
The Glory that is Steam Activation Codes

Funnily enough, I throught you'd be linking to this.

I get the whole "hate big corporation" attitude but reading that I cant help but think of the old saying "you get what you pay for"

I have a PGP encrypted Excel spreadsheet with every CD key I've ever purchased. Knowing that Steam lets you use them like that is awesome, as many of my discs have mysteriously disappeared shortly after the kids installed them on their PCs.

Is it only Valve games supported by this feature or could I take CDKeys for games I own (like Quake 3?) that are also on Steam and add them as well?

LockAndLoad wrote:

Is it only Valve games supported by this feature or could I take CDKeys for games I own (like Quake 3?) that are also on Steam and add them as well?

Only Valve games, sadly.

TheGameguru wrote:

I get the whole "hate big corporation" attitude but reading that I cant help but think of the old saying "you get what you pay for"

Yeah, I guess I would be pissed if I was in that position, but at the same time, you should know you're taking a risk if you're buying a game from Russia or Asia or something that requires some type of online activation and that you need to download from the site.

It's mostly the retailer's fault since most of those things have it printed right on the retail box saying if the game is purchased outside of the region, it's invalid and/or illegal. I know when I imported the Korean version of NWN Platinum Edition it had that on it but it was mostly because I had lost all the original disks when I bought the expansions seperately, so I didn't need the CD key anyways. If all they are sending is the activation key, then it's the online store that's dishonest, not Valve.

EDIT: Well, apparently some people got the boxed copies shipped to them too, so if that's the case I guess it would be a little annoying if there's no warning label. I still can't get worked up about this, though.

I get the whole "hate big corporation" attitude but reading that I cant help but think of the old saying "you get what you pay for"

And we all know, region coding will save PC gaming.

Serengeti wrote:

I have a PGP encrypted Excel spreadsheet with every CD key I've ever purchased. Knowing that Steam lets you use them like that is awesome, as many of my discs have mysteriously disappeared shortly after the kids installed them on their PCs.

That's an excellent idea! Thanks! I wish I had thought of doing something similar long ago.

I had an urge to re-play The Settlers 2 a few years back (just after Settlers 4 was released, I think). I found the CD, but the manual and CD key had gone missing. I did send an email over to Blue Byte's support address, but didn't hear anything back -- nor did I really expect to, considering that I was essentially asking them to send me a replacement CD key, with basically nothing to back up my legitimate purchase of the game.

Staats wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:

Is it only Valve games supported by this feature or could I take CDKeys for games I own (like Quake 3?) that are also on Steam and add them as well?

Only Valve games, sadly.

This is generally true, but there are a few exceptions. For example, my S.T.A.L.K.E.R. CD key won't register on Steam, but there are a few non-Valve games that will work. See this link for a list of keys and key ranges that will register on Steam.

Valve Support wrote:

CD Keys for Valve games will always be accepted on Steam. CD Keys for third party games are generally not accepted for Steam registration, unless they match the Valve CD Key format (or if they are listed below).

* Valve CD Keys in this format: ####-#####-####
* Valve CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* Dark Messiah CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* GTI Racing CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions CD-keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* Prey CD Keys in this format: AAB1BB2C345CDD6E E7
* RACE - the WTCC Game CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* RACE 07 CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* Ragdoll Kung Fu CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* Red Orchestra CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* SiN Episodes: Emergence CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q
* The Ship CD Keys in this format: 1AB2C-D3FGH-456I7-JK8LM-NOP9Q

Games which cannot be registered through Steam may still be added to your game list for easy access - please see the Guide: Adding non-Steam games to My games list topic for more information on this process.

That's awesome for sure. Same thing happened to me. When Steam Community beta started, I reinstalled Steam and I had no games registered there and I felt an urge to play TFC! So I looked for my old HL box and I found it. I register this single CDKEY and I'm not sure how, but I got HL, Blue Shift, Counter Strike, DMC, TFC, everything ready to download.

For now on, I'm buying games through Steam whenever I have that option.

The greatest part of Steam was, for me, when I registered my original Half-Life key.
The key I got when I got HL1 on release day. I was that sad...

It registered it as a Half Life Platinum Pack key. So I basically got.. well, everything. HL, OpFor, Blue Shift, CS, DoD, etc. etc. etc.
That was pretty cool.

I've tried numerous times to register my old copy of Half-Life with my Steam account but it always says it's already been registered. How can this be? I guess it's time to contact Valve customer support and figure out what's going on.

Looks like they only blocked Orange Box. My HL2 is Asian version but it still works.

After digging around all the Steam support pages I found out I can reset my KEY. All I have to do is mail in my actual printed KEY along with this form, and since I don't have a receipt less than 90 days old, $10 for a service charge. Only problem, I can buy Half-Life for $10 as it is. Of course none of this should matter since my KEY was never registered in the first place, so suck my (expletive) Valve! You screwed up!

Edit: I still love Valve.

Hrm, and now Steam community seems to be down. Can't log in, can't get achievements.

Azure Chicken wrote:

The greatest part of Steam was, for me, when I registered my original Half-Life key.
The key I got when I got HL1 on release day. I was that sad...

It registered it as a Half Life Platinum Pack key. So I basically got.. well, everything. HL, OpFor, Blue Shift, CS, DoD, etc. etc. etc.
That was pretty cool.

Yeah when Steam came out I was happy to know that I gained the expansion packs for free! I was also happy to find out that my copy of Dark Messiah that I picked up for a steal let me just input the key without even needing to put the DVD in the drive! I wish more non-valve games supported this, like my already purchased iD games library.

TheGameguru wrote:
Spunior wrote:
The Glory that is Steam Activation Codes

Funnily enough, I throught you'd be linking to this.

I get the whole "hate big corporation" attitude but reading that I cant help but think of the old saying "you get what you pay for"

Aye, I've got to agree with that. For the most part I find region-coding digital products to be an annoyance. Rather, I find that region-coded products that are difficult to circumvent annoying. (Like Apple building regions into their dvd drives, rather than their software.)

BUT, tiered pricing that allows folks outside of the world's top economies to play Valve games without paying two months' salary for the Orange Box makes sense, and that can only work if the lower-cost versions can't circulate back to other regions. I can't fault Valve for this. You *DO* get what you pay for, and they are under no responsibility to make sure that illicit attempts to avoid paying full price work.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hrm, and now Steam community seems to be down. Can't log in, can't get achievements.

It seems to go down around the same time every day.

Of course none of this should matter since my KEY was never registered in the first place, so suck my (expletive) Valve! You screwed up!

You snooze, you lose. Some kid probably registered your key. He only had four years to do it.

subaltern wrote:

After digging around all the Steam support pages I found out I can reset my KEY. All I have to do is mail in my actual printed KEY along with this form, and since I don't have a receipt less than 90 days old, $10 for a service charge. Only problem, I can buy Half-Life for $10 as it is. Of course none of this should matter since my KEY was never registered in the first place, so suck my (expletive) Valve! You screwed up!

Edit: I still love Valve.

Funny, I just tried putting in my HL key as well, and it said it's already registered. If I had just purchased a game and had this problem (and was therefore unable to play a game I payed for) I'd be pretty outraged. This is one of the problems with internet activation and DRM, and mailing them $10 isn't really an appropriate solution.

Spunior wrote:
The Glory that is Steam Activation Codes

Funnily enough, I throught you'd be linking to this.

Well I sorta did here:

bnpederson wrote:

Say what you will about their lack of customer service

But then it wasn't the trust of my post. I was too stoked that my key worked for easy downloads.

subaltern wrote:

I've tried numerous times to register my old copy of Half-Life with my Steam account but it always says it's already been registered. How can this be? I guess it's time to contact Valve customer support and figure out what's going on.

Yeah, sounds like someone with a keygen got "lucky" and pulled your key randomly. Which is a problem with this kind of system. Still, I've had that happen on games like Warcraft 3 which is, in many ways, more annoying for me. At least if my key was taken on this I could install the original game, though not the expansions. Warcraft 3 I'd still want to play online and someone taking my key prevents me from doing that. :-\

And as a side note I find it strange that this site converts my BBCode into HTML when I quote myself but I can't use HTML instead of BBCode. Wiggi.

bnpederson wrote:

And as a side note I find it strange that this site converts my BBCode into HTML when I quote myself but I can't use HTML instead of BBCode. Wiggi.

I'm pretty sure that is a drupal setting. I get all kinds of confused, since we use a similar-looking drupal site for internal communications at work, but that one only allows HTML formatting. I'm pretty consistent about formating in BBCode there and HTML here. Thank G*ddess for the edit button.

Oso wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

And as a side note I find it strange that this site converts my BBCode into HTML when I quote myself but I can't use HTML instead of BBCode. Wiggi.

I'm pretty sure that is a drupal setting. I get all kinds of confused, since we use a similar-looking drupal site for internal communications at work, but that one only allows HTML formatting. I'm pretty consistent about formating in BBCode there and HTML here. Thank G*ddess for the edit button.

It's a Drupal bug. Some posts just quote with HTML for some reason.

DrunkenSleipnir wrote:
subaltern wrote:

After digging around all the Steam support pages I found out I can reset my KEY. All I have to do is mail in my actual printed KEY along with this form, and since I don't have a receipt less than 90 days old, $10 for a service charge. Only problem, I can buy Half-Life for $10 as it is. Of course none of this should matter since my KEY was never registered in the first place, so suck my (expletive) Valve! You screwed up!

Edit: I still love Valve.

Funny, I just tried putting in my HL key as well, and it said it's already registered. If I had just purchased a game and had this problem (and was therefore unable to play a game I payed for) I'd be pretty outraged. This is one of the problems with internet activation and DRM, and mailing them $10 isn't really an appropriate solution.

Chances are this wont ever happen on a new game.. your taking a specific situation with a really old game that had a much simpler key to keygen and has been out for so long that it could be keygen'd.

These days buying a boxed copy and registering it on Steam your chances of having someone duplicate your key have to be what 1 in 1 million or more?