Valve says sorry to banned gamers

12,000 get apology and free games

Game delivery outfit Valve has apologised to thousands of users who were banned from its servers for cheating whilst playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Valve boss Gabe Newel 'personally' sent email apologies to 12,000 gamers who had been booted from the game after the company's anti-cheating system had a bit of a melt-down.

Newel wrote: "Recently, your Steam account was erroneously banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

"This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.

"The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans."

The bans have now been reversed and accounts have been restored. The company has also given two free copies of Left 4 Dead 2 to all affected players, one of which can be gifted to a friend.