The great Grand Theft Auto Theft by Valve.

[Casper]

Recently, online distributors of digitally distributed (non retail) PC games, have removed Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from sale. Speculation is that it may have something to do with music licensing. Regardless, Steam, a digital distribution platform owned by Valve Corporation, was one such online storefront.

The issue at hand is that the Steam entertainment platform, as they want to be known of late, allows the storing of additional games into a user's Steam inventory. It's a really great and useful feature. For example, if you have a game already in your Steam inventory, that is later removed from sale on the Steam store, people who purchased additional copies of said game, retain said copy or copies. That's normal. They can trade these copies for other Steam games, or if they don't actually have the game themselves on their account, they could activate the game and add it to their library. Since we are talking about one specific game now, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, here's the issue. Valve is literally stealing people's legitimate and paid for copies of the game from their packs. Yes, really! Can you imagine? Not convinced? Look at the picture provided.

What you have to realize, is that this is a picture of the same Grand Theft Auto Complete pack from a Steam user's inventory. The picture on the left was taken shortly after the purchase. The picture on the right is the same inventory item, taken today. They removed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from the pack. That is outright theft. Has Valve not realized what they have done? Very unlikely. Obviously, any future GTA packs sold on Steam will look like the latter picture, though, maybe they will have new artwork as well.

In case you're wondering, single copies of Vice City, have not been stolen from people's Steam inventory. In case you're new to Steam, or don't even use it, this is normal. I'm not confused or asking questions. I'm telling you. I don't need you to assume or suggest that maybe once a game is removed from sale, they remove people's already purchased copies from their accounts, or any additional copies from their inventory. They do not do that. As far as I can tell, this is the first time such theft has happened.

Other Steam game packs or bundles that contain removed games, retain these games in the pack. Perfect case-in-point; another game removed from sale on the Steam storefront very recently was DOOM III and it's add-on, DOOM III: Resurrection of Evil. People who purchased the DOOM Pack for their inventory, before the release of the BFG edition of DOOM III, do have these two games - as they should. There are other packs or bundles that people still have sitting in their inventories that still contain removed games. Again, that's normal.

As it stands, people who have the Grand Theft Auto pack in their Steam inventory, no longer have Vice City in it. They did, and Valve removed it.

This has been a public service announcement. No, really! I'm not affected, and the thing is, people won't notice this until they are ready to trade or activate. Some, may not even be aware that the packs should, and did, contain Vice City. This has to be told, and Valve must add Vice City back to the pack.


If you think you have a suggestion or comment, feel free to make it. Having said that, there is nothing you can say that hasn't been said:

• Apart from fraud, Valve does not remove already activated games from people's Steam accounts because a game is discontinued from sale on Steam.
• Apart from fraud, Valve does not remove discontinued games from people's inventory.
• Until recently, Valve has never removed discontinued games that already exist in packs or bundles in customer's Steam inventories.

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