According to some sources there are quite a few customers finding that their “Orange Box” games have been deactivated by Valve because they bought them from a seller that wasn’t authorized to do business with US customers. The seller made the mistake, but the gamers are paying the price at the moment.

Quote from a person named Todd:
“This complaint is about Valve, a PC video game company which makes games like Half-Life 2.

This effects many thousands of customers.

They recently released a product called the “Orange Box”, which is a bunch of games. All their products are activated online via unique serial numbers through the Steam service.

Many of us bought the product (and hence, the serial numbers) legitimately online via well known international game stores, as they sell them significantly cheaper than American stores.

We were able to activate the products without a problem. One week later, Valve, via the Steam program, inactivated all Orange Box games (after they had already been active for some time), stating that they are in the “incorrect territory.” There was no warning or anything, just completely inactivated.

The thread that was started on www.valve.com has been removed by the operators there.

I think this is absolutely reprehensible customer care. We paid for our products, and they just go and remove it without warning from our computers.

Thanks

-Todd “

Here’s a thread of irritated Valve customers like Todd who are trying to get refunds from their international vendors (with varying levels of success.) Customers who have purchased the game a second time from a US vendor and are having difficulty adding it to their accounts are having trouble communicating with Valve’s customer service.

Again this is about the DVD Box only!

Source: Consumerist