Tom's Hardware

For all you guys panicking about your dirt 3 keys. You are accounts are probably safe. A lot of the stolen keys were also given out legit from amd. IMO, They can not ban your account for having activated a key because they can not tell which ones are were legally acquired and which ones were not. It also does not matter if your key starts with F. If it was a redeemable key for steam from amd it has most likely been compromised. Looks like they will just silently remove dirt3 from everyone's account. "AMD will continue to honor all valid game vouchers" It also was not codemasters or amd that was hacked but a third party site amd outsourced the promo to.

EDIT: However I would not try to redeem one of these keys from now on as it is now considered stolen and steam does reserved the right to suspend your account for redeeming a stolen key.

1 decade ago*

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If they can't say which ones were legally and which ones were not, how can they delete dirt3 from everyone's account ?!!!!!! That's unfair and bullshit.

1 decade ago
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"That said, Codemasters will likely send over the entire list to Valve so that the numbers can be blacklisted and the games quietly removed from user accounts. It's assumed that DiRT 3 keys already associated with registered AMD graphics cards via the promotion will not be affected."

Read it ='(

1 decade ago
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Mhmhm... I don't feel...
EDIT: I also read this " A lot of the stolen keys were also given out legit from amd. IMO, They can not ban your account for having activated a key because they can not tell which ones are were legally acquired and which ones were not."

1 decade ago
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what you quoted was more or less my opinion which really don't matter. Thats why I posted the article. It is nice to hear from a legit source once in a while and not just random opinions from forums. People forget that forums are full of people who don't know what they are talking about. read the article and see what you think.

1 decade ago
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I have a different view on the situation. AMD used the Dirt3 as a promo for their products, so most likely they've signed a contract, where AMD has already paid Codemasters their benefits. Considering it was the recieving side that failed to manage the keys (Thought eventually they wanted to give them away anyway), Codemasters take no responsibility for it, and don't have to take any actions about it. They've got their revenue already.
So, i believe, nothing will be done about the keys. (Besides the leak occured back in june)

1 decade ago
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hmm that's a good point. except I believe companies don't think like that. They usually see it as the games were redeemed buy otherwise paying customers. Which we both know that is wrong because they weren't going to pay for it anyway if they are willing to steal it.

1 decade ago
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To get a key from AMD you had to fill in fields which populated their database. All they need to do is flag any key that doesn't have the required fields as invalid, thereby jamming a ban-filled thermos up your rectal region.

1 decade ago
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Thats a good point. Probably alot easier to figure out which keys are legit and which are not. But how hard would it be to go through a couple million keys. and would it even be worth it? They have to honor the ones that were claimed legit though.

1 decade ago
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It would one SQL statement, like SELECT from KEYDB where NAME = ""; to isolate the keys, and then you use another statement to flag them. Done.
Distributing the flag list to places like steam could take a little bit of time, but when they're looking at the potential marketing costs they've associated with it putting one guy on the task would be trivial.
I'd be curious to know if they write off the value of the keys or receive a small kickback from AMD for each registration, since the dev house would really only see a small fragment of the retail value if those keys went to stores.

Edit: It all might be already written off as an expense, in which case this is all just great advertising for how much people want Dirt3 anyway. Heh. Even though I'm hearing some complaints about the way the game content is balanced in regard to racing content versus gymkhana.

1 decade ago
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Closed 1 decade ago by Wedge.