Dunno what to make of this, but it seems that Valve has released a 'warez' version themselves through Bittorent of HL2. When a user uses it it'll contact Valve, and Valve is keeping track of IPs and God knows what else. Now warez is of course bad stuff, but what Valve is doing there is breaking a privacy rule or ten also. Or could this be a good bluf ?
Let me show you the complete post as found on halflife2.filefront.com :
Recently, one of the HL2Files.com members here, alerted me of a pirated warez version of Half-Life 2, apparently released via the Bittorent network. I immediately, forwarded this to Gabe Newell of VALVe Software.
A couple of hours later, Gabe replied with the following:
Quote: We're running a bit of an experiment. We're keeping track of the accounts that do this and will be shutting them off.
So, as you can see, VALVe Software have released a test "warez" version aimed at catching people out. These people will have their accounts deleted and will be banned from Steam.