{ Won ID Changes }
posted Thursday, March 8, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
After sifting through the constant flood of messages from the HLDS mailing lists, I noticed an update from Valve's Erik Johnson on the rollout of the improved WON ID system for Half-Life. If internal testing goes smoothly, all HL clients will be issued a new WON ID on Thursday. Here's the straight skinny:

When fully deployed, the updated system will use a single WON ID for all users (for those unaware, the current system provides up to 3 IDs, 1 per AuthServer, for a user). Remember that WON IDs are based on CDKey and users with multiple CDKeys will have 1 ID per CDKey. The updated system will stop the Unban hack as soon as it is fully deployed.

During the rollout period, users will either get their new WON ID or one of their old ones depending on which AuthServer they contact. Also, the new IDs use a new sequence, so all existing WON IDs will be invalid once the rollout period is complete.

For those of you maintaining lists of banned IDs on your servers, be aware that during the rollout period, IDs will be unstable. No user will have a guaranteed WON ID until the rollout period is complete.