Will using WTFast get me banned?

[Nekomancer]

Because they are not an authorised reseller and Valve simply refuses to accept such keys if you want support.

[schoerg]

Originally Posted by Nekomancer

Because they are not an authorised reseller and Valve simply refuses to accept such keys if you want support.

It's a normal retail store cd-key. It's like when I go to russia and buy a game there. No support for those? Yeah right...

[Satoru]

There was nothing wrong with my argument. cdkey shop Facebook sites were inundated with people complaining about English French etc not being available. Just because you didnt care does not invalidate the fact that it was an issue. The fact that English was 'added later' does not help French or German language speakers. Nor does it invalidate issues like BF3 has with updates constantly breaking the language hack.

As I indicated you have to somehow trust the minimum wage workers not to simply not email themselves the same key and sell I use that. That's something I don't have to potentially deal with buying it legitimately.

And as I tried to make clear the point WAS NOT that the DI key was exploited. The point was Steam wanted the cd key for proof of purchase. This could happen in any number of scenarios duh as a hijack, payment problem, etc. if steam wants that cd key as proof of purchase for ANY reason you are SOL.

If you want to assume those risks thats fine. But dont pretend they are not there.

[schoerg]

Originally Posted by Satoru

There was nothing wrong with my argument. cdkey shop Facebook sites were inundated with people complaining about English French etc not being available. Just because you didnt care does not invalidate the fact that it was an issue. The fact that English was 'added later' does not help French or German language speakers. Nor does it invalidate issues like BF3 has with updates constantly breaking the language hack.

Of course it helps French and German people. They can play the game in English, which they should understand better then Russian. If you play MW3 in any other language then English (German native btw) you're a fool (imho, the translations suck!). In Multiplayer you'll understand everything.
I don't have BF3, can't say anything to it. From what I've heared is that the EA support can change your version into a German retail etc.

Originally Posted by Satoru

As I indicated you have to somehow trust the minimum wage workers not to simply not email themselves the same key and sell I use that. That's something I don't have to potentially deal with buying it legitimately.

This is the concern of the key shops. If my key was somehow removed from my account I would make them responsible for getting me a new one. (After all the company is located in german, so german law applies here)

Originally Posted by Satoru

And as I tried to make clear the point WAS NOT that the DI key was exploited. The point was Steam wanted the cd key for proof of purchase. This could happen in any number of scenarios duh as a hijack, payment problem, etc. if steam wants that cd key as proof of purchase for ANY reason you are SOL.

If you want to assume those risks thats fine. But dont pretend they are not there.

The cd key shop usually sends you the key via scan of the retail page where the key is printed on. Should be enough for proof.
Hijacks, payment problems, yeah well, I could use the scan the shop provided to me, or the other like 10 games I have here at home to verify I am the owner of the account.

What if your local game store vendor sells you the game, but opened the game before and copied the cd-key? Putting a seal on the game again is not that hard.
Same risk.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally Posted by schoerg

Why should they get picky? I print I write I scan. Hows that different then a retail box?

Because a scan of the retail box is not the same than a scan of a printed retail box.

A photo of the retail box means a photo of something physical, analogic, real. A thing the user can put their dirty hands (and write with a permanent pen) on it. A photo of a printed retail box means you have a printer.

Support article doesn't state they need a 'photo or scan' of the retail box (not a facsimile of it) just because they felt like writing it that way. They wrote it because they exactly want that.

And what you can provide, is not exactly that.

[schoerg]

Originally Posted by Tito Shivan

Because a scan of the retail box is not the same than a scan of a printed retail box.

A photo of the retail box means a photo of something physical, analogic, real. A thing the user can put their dirty hands (and write with a permanent pen) on it. A photo of a printed retail box means you have a printer.

Support article doesn't state they need a 'photo or scan' of the retail box (not a facsimile of it) just because they felt like writing it that way. They wrote it because they exactly want that.

And what you can provide, is not exactly that.

A little misunderstand in here.

When the shop sends me the cd key page I can print it out, write the support number on it, scan it again and no one would notice the difference. Now clear?

If Steam Support needs a retail box I can use any DVD hull and put my cd key in there. Or simply tell them I lost my box or borrow one from a friend etc. etc.

[Silicon Vampire]

Originally Posted by schoerg

A little misunderstand in here.

When the shop sends me the cd key page I can print it out, write the support number on it, scan it again and no one would notice the difference. Now clear?

If Steam Support needs a retail box I can use any DVD hull and put my cd key in there. Or simply tell them I lost my box or borrow one from a friend etc. etc.

You are incorrect. They will know the difference and they do not allow a scan of printout.

It must be the original, printed retail key with writing on it in pen, then scanned.

[schoerg]

So I make a picture of my printout. If I want it to, then nobody will notice the difference.

[Satoru]

As I said you assume all risk in this situation. I've outlined the technical and account issues that can happen and that they are in no way theoretical as they have happened. If you feel these are worth the few measly bucks and the inconvenience then that's you're choice.

I personally do not feel they are worth it and I always strongly urge others to avoid dealing with grey market cd-keys.

Though I think we've gone far astray from the original topic.

I'm still very sketpical as to how WTFast is supposed to help... Network latency would really seem to be a last mile issue and proxying that doesn't seem to be useful.

[damaged]

Originally Posted by Satoru

As I said you assume all risk in this situation. I've outlined the technical and account issues that can happen and that they are in no way theoretical as they have happened. If you feel these are worth the few measly bucks and the inconvenience then that's you're choice.

I personally do not feel they are worth it and I always strongly urge others to avoid dealing with grey market cd-keys.

Though I think we've gone far astray from the original topic.

I'm still very sketpical as to how WTFast is supposed to help... Network latency would really seem to be a last mile issue and proxying that doesn't seem to be useful.

I think there are too many people in this thread commenting on something they don't really understand.

It's not a proxy, it's not a vpn, it does not change your IP, it uses rerouting, and it will not help everyone, but if you have many hops to a target, and you use them and they have better peers lessening the hops it does work, but if you have an ISP that already has a good ping and the least amount of hops, the service won't do much if anything.

It is how gamerail worked, plenty of sites explain how this works.

[Satoru]

It is a proxy. You're proxying your traffic through this hub in an attempt to improve network latency. Again maybe this made sense when you'd have specific nodes in your hop that were so bad they needed to be avoided. But given that most of the Internet backbone now is basically peered out and all on connections so fast with almost no latency. This means that today in general most latency issues are going to be much closer to the end points, rather than being somewhere in between.

In the old days of the internet maybe this would have been an issue, since the backbone was pretty junky at certain points. Today? Unless you're on satellite latency simply isn't an issue on the backbone, in which case any proxying would appear to have very limited benefit.

[damaged]

Originally Posted by Satoru

It is a proxy. You're proxying your traffic through this hub in an attempt to improve network latency. Again maybe this made sense when you'd have specific nodes in your hop that were so bad they needed to be avoided. But given that most of the Internet backbone now is basically peered out and all on connections so fast with almost no latency. This means that today in general most latency issues are going to be much closer to the end points, rather than being somewhere in between.

In the old days of the internet maybe this would have been an issue, since the backbone was pretty junky at certain points. Today? Unless you're on satellite latency simply isn't an issue on the backbone, in which case any proxying would appear to have very limited benefit.

I'm sorry but you are wrong, you could not be more wrong if you tried, please look up and study on BGP, and routing, then come back and tell me it's a proxy, and I will tell you to study up on it more.

[Satoru]

Originally Posted by damaged

I'm sorry but you are wrong, you could not be more wrong if you tried, please look up and study on BGP, and routing, then come back and tell me it's a proxy, and I will tell you to study up on it more.

Ok perhaps a proxy wasn't the best 'technical' term. The thing is the application itself isn't actually performing any of the BGP. Its simply routing all the relevant traffic to that node in some hope that it's going to improve latency by bypassing a node that is somehow causing issues. It's a VPN of sorts I suppose.

Still whatever you want to call it is not really that relevant. I could see maybe if you were in some horrible back water country where the backbone is powered by hamsters on wheels, where bypassing specific hops would be useful. But given that in most 1st world countries, the internet backbone is figuratively and literally the backbone of commerce, I'd think that most latency driven issues would be much more closer to the the endpoints, which can't really be mitigated by doing this.

[damaged]

Originally Posted by Satoru

Ok perhaps a proxy wasn't the best 'technical' term. The thing is the application itself isn't actually performing any of the BGP. Its simply routing all the relevant traffic to that node in some hope that it's going to improve latency by bypassing a node that is somehow causing issues. It's a VPN of sorts I suppose.

Still whatever you want to call it is not really that relevant. I could see maybe if you were in some horrible back water country where the backbone is powered by hamsters on wheels, where bypassing specific hops would be useful. But given that in most 1st world countries, the internet backbone is figuratively and literally the backbone of commerce, I'd think that most latency driven issues would be much more closer to the the endpoints, which can't really be mitigated by doing this.

A swing and a miss.

Then you haven't a complete understanding of routing, peering, and what can be done with them.

Maybe if I put it simpler, every hop adds latency (regardless of distance), the amount of hops is determined by the routes the BGP tables use, the route it can take is limited to the peers available to a particular provider and what the routers are announcing, if you use your own peers and use less hops to get to the same point, you reduce latency, again, if your path is already optimized, then a service like this will not do anything for you, but if the path you normally would take without the service forces you to go through 10 hops, using this service which has made arrangements to get to the same point in, say, 3 hops, latency is reduced, not necessarily because the distance is shorter, but because there are 7 less ingress and egress points and that many less routers processing the packets, there is also a good chance the service is less congested during peak hours when compared to normal routes, possibly reducing latency more.

It's not a 'sorta' proxy, nor is it a 'sorta' vpn, it is rerouting.

Got it? Maybe? Oh well, I tried.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally Posted by Silicon Vampire

You are incorrect. They will know the difference and they do not allow a scan of printout.

It must be the original, printed retail key with writing on it in pen, then scanned.

In my own personal experience, i've seen computers (valued in the thousands) guarantees being negated because the customer ofered a faxed invoice instead of a scan of it. When i said that when support asks that is because they exactly want that i was talking from experience. Legal jargon is there for a reason.

Originally Posted by Satoru

Ok perhaps a proxy wasn't the best 'technical' term. The thing is the application itself isn't actually performing any of the BGP. Its simply routing all the relevant traffic to that node in some hope that it's going to improve latency by bypassing a node that is somehow causing issues. It's a VPN of sorts I suppose.

Damaged got it better than i could explain. Consider than this sort of 'traffic reruting' doesn't only help on cases of bad network infrastucture.
Any ISP will choose the cheapest way of directing your data, that solution is not always the optimal (Here we had to suffer an ISP throttling their whole traffic throug a single proxy-cache. Making everybody go 'out' through the same adress... Just before it was.cheaper for them)
These kind of rerouting happen all the time at ISP level (To reduce high end traffic hopping on all the network. So Youtube requests may take a faster lane than web traffic) WTFast works that way on a third party level. It's more a 'middleman ISP' than a proxy.

Still i share your gut feeling on it. And personally it's a.service i won't be using and/or reccomending.