Valve Sorry, Gives Away L4D2

Valve's anti-cheat software know as VAC, recently banned over 12,000 users(mostly Modern Warfare 2 users) due to a false positive. Now, instead of sweeping the fiasco under the rug, company big chin Gabe Newell personally wrote a letter of apology to all affected by the bug. He also decided to give each affected user a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2. Kudos to Valve and Newell for owning up to the mistake and compensating everyone involved. Here's the letter, in case you weren't lucky enough to get your own.

Hello,

Recently, your Steam account was erroneously banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.

The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. 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).

We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. 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.

To share your extra copy of Left 4 Dead 2 with a friend, you can ‘Manage Gifts and Guest Passes’ from the ‘Games’ Menu in Steam, or visit this article on the Steam Support site for detailed instructions: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4502-TPJL-2656.

To access your own copy of Left 4 Dead 2, visit your library of games in Steam. If you didn’t already own the game, it will now be listed among your others there, and is available for download immediately.

Regards,
Gabe Newell
President, Valve