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"Ever since the release candidate for Half-Life 2 was submitted to VU Games in mid-September, a piñata has hung in the lobby of Valve's headquarters. The plan: to bust the sucker open when the game achieved gold status. Earlier today, GameSpot learned from an informed sourced that "the piñata has been broken" and the game has gone gold. Further evidence of the game's completion was a press release issued this afternoon touting the first review of "the entire game." Though nothing official has been announced yet, it appears the fat lady is at last clearing her throat."
Interesting.
> Slight exaggeration I think. :P
> Steam is 10 meg uncompressed, and I think its a fair bet it'll come
> on the HL2 CDs too. The only way they could end up downloading a gig
> of stuff is if they download valve's back catalog too (hardly a
> requirement for playing HL2).
Indeed so it is, still, Valve have been know to download some of their back catalogue games without permission. Some people even had Condition Zero installed after they told Valve not to, only they didn't find out they had the game until they went looking.
> I'm thankful I'm connected and have Steam already downloaded, I'd be
> mighty pished off if I bought the game from the shops, brought it
> home then found I had to go through faffing about downloading a 1GB
> application just to play the thing.
Slight exaggeration I think. :P
Steam is 10 meg uncompressed, and I think its a fair bet it'll come on the HL2 CDs too. The only way they could end up downloading a gig of stuff is if they download valve's back catalog too (hardly a requirement for playing HL2).
And if you still want a box, get a blank DVD case and print out this: [URL]http://www.earthconfederate.com/files/hl2case.jpg[/URL]
There are many other covers you can print off if you look (sorry I don't have time to post the links to all) if you don't like this one.
I'm thankful I'm connected and have Steam already downloaded, I'd be mighty pished off if I bought the game from the shops, brought it home then found I had to go through faffing about downloading a 1GB application just to play the thing.
> Unfortuanatly yes. It’s some kind of anti-piracy protection thing,
> which granted, would go some way to cut down on seeing HL2 pirated,
> but Valve could have taken into consideration those who don’t want to
> install steam, and more importantly, those who don’t even have an
> internet connection.
Thats the most idiotic and stupidest thing I've heard in my life, Valve have really done a good job on this one
That's basically a form of discrimination, if people have no connection to the internet (like you stated) then they cannot play the game. Thus forcing people to fork out money for a connection as well as a game purchase, or miss out on playing it overall.
It's like asking a starved orphan to purchase a house before they can get their food rations.
Valve = Gay.
Nice move Valve, you might not get 'people stealing the source code!!!11' with this.
They'll probably delay the release of the game incase someone 'hacks in'.
> So say if the user was on dialup and they just wanted to play the
> game offline, would they have to go through the monotony and
> stupidity of this process?
Unfortuanatly yes. It’s some kind of anti-piracy protection thing, which granted, would go some way to cut down on seeing HL2 pirated, but Valve could have taken into consideration those who don’t want to install steam, and more importantly, those who don’t even have an internet connection.
You at least don’t need to keep Steam on your PC once you authenticated Half Life 2.
Reefer wrote:
> Is getting it off Steam cheaper? If not, that seems like a really
> cheap way to do things.
£38 for the Silver package, which isn’t that too bad a deal considering you get 4 games, 5 if you want to include Counter Strike: Condition Zero which cost around £15 in the shops.
> You'll also need and internet connection and have Steam
> downloaded in order to play Half Life 2, no matter which package you
> get be it online or in the shops.
So say if the user was on dialup and they just wanted to play the game offline, would they have to go through the monotony and stupidity of this process?
Valve had the brilliant idea to require you to authenticate the game via Steam, not much problem to those who already have it, but for those without it's almost like a kick in the groin.