Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Half-Life 2 retail - steam activation MANDATORY?!

Stalkid64

Stalkid64

Citizen(sixty)four
Courtesy of the magical land of slashdot;
"In a recent Gamespy interview with Doug Lambardi it was revealed that the retail version of Half-Life 2 will require product activation. This isn't just restricted to multiplayer, you will have to create a Steam account and activate your retail purchase before you can even run single-player. "

So... you need to install steam (that buggy, bloated pile of garbage delivery system), register an account and have an internet connection... To install a singleplayer boxed retail copy of the game I'm paying £30+ for? Ha ha ha. Good one. :happy:
What? They're serious? Hm, smacks a little of "Microsoft" syndrome. Screw that then. I just lost interest. :bye3:
*Kills amazon preorder*.
 
OP
Stalkid64

Stalkid64

Citizen(sixty)four
vampireuk said:
I have a fun game to play, its called lets all post in the right forums :D
Click to expand...
I also have a fun game.

It's called quoting the section of the forum it was posted in;
"Talk of the town - talk about anything in this forum"
What's that word again? Oh, "anything".
What? Really? Like an important topic that people should be aware of, for example..? Advising and helping people as opposed to moving threads which no one else seemed to be objecting to just out of personal spite, say? *cough*
My game also promotes discussion. Thus, I like my game better. :p

Seriously though, you even need Steam to login and play the SP game offline. Why can't they just include a retinal scanner and get it over with? At least then we could have a comedy robot voice to accompany it. ;)

*Retinal scan complete. Steam login authenticated. You may now play the game you already paid for, thank you.*
 
Last edited:
Gorxon

Gorxon

New member
Administrator
Stalkid64 said:
I also have a fun game.

It's called quoting the section of the forum it was posted in;
"Talk of the town - talk about anything in this forum"
What's that word again? Oh, "anything".
What? Really? Like an important topic that people should be aware of, for example..? Advising and helping people as opposed to moving threads which no one else seemed to be objecting to just out of personal spite, say? *cough*
My game also promotes discussion. Thus, I like my game better. :p
Click to expand...

What's your problem?

The gaming forum is here so that we can have all gaming discussion in one place, instead of having a darn mess...we dont post i.e PJ64 discussion in Talk of the town, do we?
 
ScottJC

ScottJC

At your service, dood!
Maybe the forum description of talk of the town should be changed to "Everything that isn't covered by another forum" :p

Have to agree with Gorxon here.
 
blizz

blizz

New member
I have banged my head against the wall too many times over these things
 
Last edited:
Hexidecimal

Hexidecimal

Emutalk Bounty Hunter.
Who cares? You all have net connections anyways, it takes like 5 minutes to make a steam account, you activate it once, and anyone who says they aren't going to play HL2 online is a liar to boot, quit bitching.
 
Gorxon

Gorxon

New member
Administrator
Hexidecimal said:
Who cares? You all have net connections anyways, it takes like 5 minutes to make a steam account, you activate it once, and anyone who says they aren't going to play HL2 online is a liar to boot, quit bitching.
Click to expand...

Well, we all have internet connections, but what about the people who don't? I still know a very few people who don't, and who would perhaps consider buying this game.

Besides, it's a principle thing. In this case I think I'll buy it through Steam anyways, so its no issue for me. But on the other side a DVD with case would be nice...hmm...

(I guess I should mention that I haven't used steam before (only got normal HL version), and that I have no idea how good it is/isn't)
 
DuDe

DuDe

Emu64 Staff
We're not living in fucking 1995 you know, I doubt that there are many gamers out there who aren't connected to the Internet.
 
Jaz

Jaz

Ex-Mod
vampireuk said:
I personally wouldn't want to have to be conected to the internet just to play a single player game.
Click to expand...

Personally I don't see the problem. A good example is Fable on Xbox. You can sign in to Live on that game (no online features whatsoever) just so you're friends can invite you to other games, etc.

So it's nothing new, I guess.
 
blizz

blizz

New member
nah, it's all about fighting the power!

of course people could just vote with their wallet and not buy things they disagree with....
 
Modem

Modem

ph33r teh hammy!
You only have to be online for regestration for a steam account. Just register, then you can play the game through steam in OFFLINE mode.

1: There really aren't that many people who aren't online.
2: Most people that aren't online likely won't have a computer to run HL2.
3: This is mainly bad for game pirates. Which, IMO, is a GOOD thing.
- Modem
 
OP
Stalkid64

Stalkid64

Citizen(sixty)four
The piracy argument just doesn't hold up if you look at it for a second;

1. Pirates will download the game. They'll have it nice and cracked and all wrapped up in a cute little .rar file or 1,000 and they'll unarchive it, then get on with happily playing the game, never having to worry about the steam issue. They'll do this regardless of any such measure, and were always going to. It won't `put them off` because that's what they'd do anyway. They're pirates. So what does this do to even cause them the slightest worry?

2. People who buy the game will pay for it. They were always going to buy the game and happily give Valve their money. After all, why would they really want to pirate it when they can install it and reinstall it happily forever from their cd/dvd boxed edition? That's the point of the retail version. Except they have this little annoyance, permanently tied to steam and their account if they want to reinstall the game on, say, a laptop or something similar, just to play singleplayer.

Now, who gets the better deal there? The person who was going to download the cracked version anyway and who won't be bothered with this nonsense at all, or Joe Normal, who was willingly paying for the product? Which one does this activation process actually *really* effect?
Painting it as an `anti piracy` measure is flawed at best. It doesn't affect the pirate one bit. It'll affect the people who bought it though.
Just doesn't seem right. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top