Before two-factor authentication came into play, Valve relied on a special system for Steam that saved a user’s account twice.
The cover image is a symbolic image by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels,
What is the game about? On Reddit, the user “d20g” showed his copy of Half-Life – in the Special Edition including Team Fortress – along with his Steam account, which carries the badge for “19 Years of Service” on October 15.
The gamer reports that he bought the game in January 2006, as he needed a CD key and a Steam account to play Counter-Strike 1.6 online. Later, it saved his Steam account, and not just once, as the colleagues from 3D Juegos report.
Just don’t throw it away
How did the game save the Steam account? As d20g explains, his Steam account was hacked twice over the past 20 years. This happened before two-factor authentication (2FA) became a big deal.
The key that was included in this edition of Half-Life allowed the gamer to prove his identity and get his account back. As he explains in a comment, it is almost a miracle that the game still exists, as he moved out of his mother’s house 11 years ago, and found it there.
This makes it significantly more difficult for cybercriminals to access your accounts – but also for you when you don’t have your phone handy or have forgotten the password to the email address to which the rescue code was sent.
And what if I no longer have the 20-year-old game? Then it can indeed look bad. Former e-sport player Bradley “Android” Fodor lost access to his Steam account in 2023 after changing his phone number without removing the linked authentication first.
Since his account was “valuable”, support demanded a photo of the key with which he had created his account at the time. Android had earned about $84,000 with CS:GO and Valorant, and his account contained stickers and emblems that can generate a lot of money in Counter-Strike.
You can read the full story here on MeinMMO.
Since it can be quite complicated to recover your Steam account, it is only logical that you cannot easily get rid of the account – at least not according to the usage policies: A user asks Valve if he can bequeath his many games on Steam – They respond
