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Square-Enix Asks For Valve’s Hacker-Catching Help

Square-Enix Asks For Valve’s Hacker-Catching Help

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New developments have cropped up in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution leak story. It turns out that the preview build that was leaked was a copy that they had hosted on Valve’s Steam service.

For those who don’t know, Steam routinely hosts preview builds of upcoming games for game journalists to play around with. It’s an easy way to distribute data without anything physical passing between hands. All a reviewer has to do is put in a code, and they will have access to the same build you might see at events such as E3. In this case, hackers obtained an Italian writer’s login details and managed to not only download the preview build but distribute it to the internet at large.



Valve says that it actually has quite a bit of information on those responsible (as all the information was pushed through their servers) but that they are also unable to give that information to Square-Enix unless they are presented with a subpoena. It doesn’t matter how much Valve may want to help; giving away customer details would be against their privacy policy. So Square-Enix is now asking a Washington court for permission to get the subpoena in question. If they succeed, they will be privy to far more information than they have at this point, which will aid them in tracking down the criminals. It’s just a shame that Valve is caught in the middle of it all.

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