Valve apologizes to Banned 'Modern Warfare 2' Players

^{by Brian Warmoth}

As many as 12,000 "CoD Modern Warfare 2" players found themselves on the wrong end of a ban hammer recently via Steam.

Unlike Blizzard's 320,000-account Battle.net ban spree in April, however, Valve's software targeted "MW2" players wrongly, which the company freely admits. In fact, they're restoring the banned accounts and even offering complimentary copies of "Left 4 Dead 2" as tokens of their regret.

"The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version," Valve president Gabe Newell wrote in an email that was sent out to users in response. "This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks)."

If those who were banned are willing to come back to Steam, Valve hopes they will accept "Left 4 Dead 2" copies and even give some to their friends.

"We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game," he stated in the email. "In addition, we have given you a free copy of 'Left 4 Dead 2' to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn’t already own the game."

Valve may have lost the software glitch battle that allowed this whole scenario to occur, but they may at least win the PR war in the end thanks their action.