Oh DRM, how we love thee. Valve, the company responsible for the lifestyle game Modern Warfare 2, recently issued an apology to over 12,000 legitimate MW2 users who were accidentally banned from getting their first-person shooter on by the company’s DRM implementation. Valve’s president, Gabe Newell, wrote an email stating the the snafu occurred when an issue  with “a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version” occurred. We’re just going to go ahead and take Mr. Newell’s word for it. The email also promised affected users two copies of Left 4 Dead 2, one for them and one for a friend. Anyone out there get accidentally hammer banned by Valve over the last few weeks?

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Mac gamers got some much needed love from the gaming industry on Wednesday as Valve released its highly aniticipated Steam game distribution platform for the Mac. Steam jumped on board the Mac platform offering 64 titles at launch that include Sid Meiers Civilization IV (Colonization, Warlords, and Beyond the Sword editions), World of Goo, Bejeweled 2, and City of Heroes. As an added bonus, Portal is available for free until May 24th on both the Mac and PC. Folks coming from the PC platform will also be happy to know that many titles are branded “STEAMPLAY” and one purchase will let you play the game on all Steam-supported platforms. So stop reading this post, point you browser to Steam’s website, and get your gaming on.

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So much for that. According to MTV’s Multiplayer blog, this morning’s rumors regarding Google’s intentions to acquire video game company Valve are a “complete fabrication” according to a representative of Valve. Multiplayer sources Valve’s PR guy, Doug Lombardi, who reveals that the rumor has absolutely no truth behind it.

Just to make sure Lombardi wasn’t being cagey, I asked if [we would] be correct if we posted that (my words) “Valve says Google isn’t buying the company.” He said that would be correct. So… no sale!

There you have it people. Maybe the original “WELL PLACED SOURCES” hit the sauce a bit early today. After all, it is hump day. Whatever the case may be, not every rumor can turn out to be true. Some are debunked a bit quicker than others mind you, and this is apparently one of them.

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These days you can’t say the word “Google” in an acquisition rumor post without setting the internet a-buzz with chatter and that is just what has happened this morning. Citing “well placed sources”, the Inquirer is reporting that Google may gobble up video game company Valve any second now. Of course the fact that Valve is a gaming company is likely of little relevance to the giant G. Instead, the consensus is that Google has its eye on Valve’s beloved content distribution platform Steam. Steam is known throughout the land as the godfather of download services, currently hosting 440 game titles and roughly 15 million active users. Ask any one of them how great Steam is and you’ll get a pretty quick read on why Google might be eying Valve. This could mean big things for Google and bigger things for Google competitors – Valve makes content distribution so easy a caveman could do it.

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