His Steam account was hacked several times. The rescue turned out to be a 19-year-old game

The player showed how awesome physical game copies can be by using a 19-year-old purchase to get back into their stolen Steam account twice.

Reports of lost access to various accounts are, unfortunately, not uncommon. Despite two-step verification and other security measures, account thefts still occur—and not infrequently. And when that happens, getting access back isn't always a walk in the park. Steam is no exception, although many players have praised customer service staff who helped them recover lost accounts.

Of course, the Valve team needs to make sure the stolen account was really ours, just in case some scammer tries to "recover" a game collection that isn't theirs. You can use a credit card number, proof of purchase of the first game on Steam, etc.

However, a Reddit user has a more reliable proof of ownership of their account (via 3DJuegos). In 2006, the player purchased a physical edition of Half-Life in the "Bestseller Series" from the now-defunct Sierra company. Not really for this game, but for Counter-Strike 1.6, which was included in this edition.

Source: u/d20g / Reddit.

Since then (and before the introduction of multi-step verification), they lost access to the account twice—and each time easily regained it thanks to the CD key from that box. They are not the only one with a similar example. In the comments, many other players confirmed the effectiveness of this "antique" security measure.

Half-Life

November 19, 1998

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