Slashdot Mirror
Half-Life 2 Preloading from Steam
Nos. writes "For those of us using Valve Software's Steam platform, we can now begin 'preloading' Half-Life 2. The article explains that this will download an encrypted version of the game that you can unlock when you purchase it. They only say that purchase options will be available soon."
I stopped playing CS when Valve force-fed their DRM, buggy, memory-intensive heaping pile of poo they call "steam" onto their userbase.
With Doom 3 who needs them!
Well if you can 'pre-load' HL2, Wouldnt that suggest that it is totally done? Unless you are just downloading libraries and such. This sounds promising, But what on earth is Valve waiting for?
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
The download servers are already at max capacity, but I have a little hypothesis. Since Half-Life 2 is such an anticipated game, and since everyone and their cousins will be downloading it, Valve realized this will cost entirely too much in bandwidth, especialy on days like today. To compensate, they set a user/bandwidth limit.
What will happen is this. Currently, Steam acts as a peer to peer hub (remmeber Valve hiring Bram Cohen, Mr. Bit Torrent?). Anyone with a sizeable LAN Cafe will know this because empty chairs with a copy of Steam running kills their bandwidth. Once people have the preload completely downloaded, they will begin uploading it and add more bandwidth to the mix. The more people that have it, the more it becomes available. I get the feeling LAN Cafes get a little more sway in terms of firsties since they generally have better connections than Counter-Strike junkies at home.
Not that getting the pre-load at this point is a necessity. There will be waves of preloads with content. This first one just being some static art that won't be changed, like textures, voices, and some models.
This sounds dangerous. It's only a matter of time before someone cracks the encryption rendering Valve the medium by which pirates obtain an illegal copy of the game.
We all know how [i]efficient[/i] Valve is in their security endeavors, ha.
everyone knows that in the first iteration of HL, the gimmick was that your flashlight's batteries drained and you had to let them recharge once in a while.
didnt you play it?
OK, this isn't on Half-Life 2, but it is on the concept of pre-loading / pre-releasing aspects of a game.
One thing I've never understood is why the publishers of highly anticipated role-playing games (I'm thinking Baldur's Gate and NeverWinter Nights here) don't pre-release the character generator.
By the time a specific release date has been set, the character formats should be firmly decided. Allowing players (or potential players!) to pre-create their characters is only going to create buzz and give people a reason to want to put those characters to use. It's a realizable benefit for the publisher without a significant financial cost.
But alas, I have never seen this happen.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Incidentally, I think there's a good chance that they won't knock off a few bucks for an online purchase. AFAIK the boxing/duping/printing outlay is done by the publisher and in the end is removed from the profits of the studio. I think Valve may see this as a very good way to make back what the publisher takes. I remeber Sierra not being to happy when plans for Steam were announced, and now it's obvious why.
If they haven't fixed the ease in which their keys were cracked is this even worth it? I cannot play my game online because somebody generated the same key as mine using one of the freely available online key generators. What good is it if you go out and buy a game and then you can't play it because of a crappy encryption algorithm?
So I'll ask again... Have they improved this? I'll stick to Doom 3 and wait for the mods until they have...
I dunno what everyone's worried about. I mean, it says encryption...not like, product key and verification crap. If Valve was actually worried about it, then they would have put some 128-bit, maybe even 256-bit single-key encryption in there, stuff which would never feasibly be broken. Now of course, that assumes the scheme only has one working key, which if they did do it like a product key thing, wouldn't work.
::shrug:: Practically unbreakable. I don't know if that's feasible under steam either, but my point is that all it takes is some easily found strong encryption (gnupg stuff, even) to make this practically uncrackable until the game is released.
But, at least, if I was valve...encrypt a seperate copy for each player, with an id to identify which key valve needs to give that player when they buy the game.
The only reason Valve is getting away with this steam crap is because of Counter-Strike. They've made it so you MUST download Steam in order to play CS because they shutdown WON last month. Any other game in the world and the gamers would have said "fuck you Valve", but becuause it's CS we have to put up with it.
I don't want to run your crappy Stream POS in the background all the time. I don't want to be required to play the newest version all the time. I want to be able to play the game I BOUGHT on a LAN without authenticating over the net. I JUST WANT TO PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME I BOUGHT. But Valve can't let me do that, they have to push their crap on me. Valve, you can suck my dick you bitches.
How hard can it be? Send out an AES-encrypted file and send out the key when the game goes gold.
This is a different problem than game copy protection and it's already been solved. If Valve screw it up, they're idiots...
Stupid? Are you kidding? What you have described is absolute genious - they have managed to ride a product for six years in an industry where remaining on top for six months is quite a feat. Their success is no accident, it is a direct result of intelligence in the company.
If we eliminate the possibility that this is BS, then I take it that you've gotten past the first step of figuring out how to unpack the GCF files that this preload came in? I Googled for this and came up with a tool called GCFScape, but isn't the idea that these files are encrypted? (or is it the the files within the GCFs that are encrypted?)
While I had some interest in playing HL2, a) I know that when a game publisher says "maybe" [some date months away] that means "longer than I care to wait". b) The whole idea of "steam" kind of, well, steamed me. More intrusive software I have no use for.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I wouldn't exactly call it a slashdotting.
h tml
If you look at their status page,
http://www.steampowered.com/status/status.
you will see that they have plenty of bandwidth available. The 'available' bandwidth is actually pretty accurate from what I've seen. They can pump out more than they're doing right now.
It asked you to try again long before it came onto slashdot.
They are intentionally throttling the number of downloaders for it because there is no great rush to make sure everyone has it right now (it won't be coming out for a few weeks at the very least, many retailers are speculating Nov. 1st, but I wouldn't hold much weight in their dates). They are throttling them because they don't want to degrade the quality of service for games already released on Steam (HL series of games).
Try again in a few days, and you'll be no worse off.
The problem with a CD like Quake 1, or a copyprotection scheme like safedisc, is that the ability to decrypt the files must be included on it. They can convolute it all they like, it's gotta be on there to do any good. Well, seeing as it's on there, you can find it and use it. Good crackers can do this with less effort than the game industry would like to think.
However in this case, it's different. What they could do is generate an AES key, say 256-bit just for extra parinoia, and then encrypt the data with it. They then send out ONLY the encrypted data, not the key. The key (and utility to use it) doesn't get released until they actually sell it.
In that case, my friend, you are fucked. This is the same way SSH works. Only you and the remote server have the AES key. Someone else can log all your data, but without the key, it's worthless since the computing power does not exist to crack that in a lifetime (much, much, much longer actually). So if this is how they are doing it, they are secure.
Now, when they release the key it is concievable that people could pass it along to friends to decrypt copies that haven't been paid for but so what? The game will be copied anyhow, as all games are, it changes nothing really.
Remember: Encryption is the tactic of keeping everyone EXCEPT the keyholders out. Copyprotection fails since it must give the key to the end user on the disc to work, but intends to keep the end user out. This can succede since they withhold the key for everyone, until a particular date.
Two words
"Steam Authentication"
I misplaced my Half-Life CD case when I needed to freshly install WinXP. I used a key gen to get the game to work. WON's server wouldn't authenticate my bogus key. I was left not playing for about two weeks when I finally found my CD case and put in a legit serial number.
I don't think that Valve is going to use a more lax authentication regimen for HL-2, especially after the "source theft" that happened last year.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Steam doesn't charge a monthly fee.
Yet.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
So instead of "loading" the level we're now... "prebuffering" ? Doesn't this sound familiar?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Valve is far far far from intelligent. The WON patches, source code leak, a release date that is overdue one year, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, content servers that authenticate, run the main website, and deliver content, and the Half-Life 2 plot leak (rumor) all point toward a company that has trouble keeping both of its brain cells in working order. It's far from a smart company. It's a very, very, very lucky company, who was fortunate enough to hit a goldmine of a game. A goldmine only kept alive with the mods that users produce.
valve had a 50/50 deal with sierra for distribution of half-life 1, and while i'm sure that they have come up with some kind of deal about what expenses are deducted from the gross before this split, i highly doubt that valve is going to offer the game for any cheaper than the game is in stores.
couple of reasons for this:
1) sierra probably forced them to keep the price similar enough so that it's worthwhile for them to sell the game at retail.
2) half-life1 continues to sell for near-full price (30+$ here in canada) almost 6 years after it was released. i don't consider bundling 2 mods that valve didn't have to pay for development (and that can be downloaded for free) exactly worthwhile of a full-priced game...
whether gamers fall for it (ie buy the game online for the same price as retail) remains to be seen.
i personally think this is the stupidest thing that valve could ever do - how long will it be before their 'encryption' is hacked and hl2 becomes a pirate version (potentially) long before retail.
as well, why the HELL would anyone download a game that they can't play? steam is brutal in it's management of system resources and bandwidth as it is, let alone having it download endless games that you can't play...
Gekido's Lair
Each official copy of Half-Life that's sold is associated with a Unique Steam ID.
Valve has started banning accounts which cracked Steam to obtain the recently released CS:Source.
They could easily to the same to people who get Half-Life 2 in that way.
How do you know your CD and Key will be around next year? If Steam is still running you're covered for as long as Steam is running.
Uh, I don't know about you, but my CDs don't go disappearing too terribly often. Things like networks, servers, companies, etc do. You answered your own question: "as long as Steam is running". I'd rather go with "as long as a CD exists", which is probably a lot longer, barring my house burning down, being subjected to a nuclear blast, or being broken into by a particularly thorough burlar.
And frankly, I trust Steam to be running much longer than I could keep a CD in good shape and not lose the key.
Sorry, but that sounds like your problem. Keep it in the case and don't use it as a frisbee or coaster (AOL CDs excepted), and you should be fine. I have CDs (both audio and data) that are over 10 years old that are in very good if not mint condition. It's not hard.
It's silliness to trust whatever this Steam thing is to continue rather than trust physical media. If it does, great, if not, you have a CD.
Ok, so you've got a CD and a Key, but Steam is down. Now what are you going do?
The same thing as the guy who downloaded it; not play.
It doesn't matter anyway. I'm sure after you register your CD key with your Steam account it would save the key and you could download the game if you ever need it again.
But I guess you do end up having one more shiny thing than the guy who chooses the download. And you even get to leave the house to pick it up!
Favorites list (don't remember if original CS allowed this. I used to write down the IP of a good server to play there)
Using Half-Life's in-game server management did allow you to toggle a server as a favorite and even allowed you to browse favorites only. The only problem was that it seemed buggy as hell and would frequently "forget" your favorites from another session (which can really piss you off), but it was there.
With Steam, all that business is managed automatically. It's heaven. As for buggy or memory intensive, I encountered one bug so far (input lag playing havoc with my keyboard) and that lasted only a few days.
Steam had way to many problems on release. It was no where near ready for release and shouldn't have been implemented. I didn't use steam for a long time (pissed off at Valve for buying out (ruining) HL mods), but I know plenty of CS players who were left without playing their precious game for days at a time because problems with content delivery and detection. If you know some young CS players, you know it can be more addiction than heroin for them. It pissed the shit out of them. I can remember hearing, "Steam sucks" every five minutes. At the moment Steam seems to have settled down and most of the bugs are worked out, but there are still problems. A month (or two) ago I was locked out for a week because Steam forgot to remove/update a file. While the system might seem to a nice way to update a game I still prefer just downloading updates off mirrors like the old days. Unfortunately as more games go to Steam (especially since Valve took down WON), less and less use their own sites and mirrors for downloading their mods.
Its obviously not finished yet, so you'll probably just end up downloading it a couple times as they fix bugs, change the media, and recompile everything...
Its a waste of steam bandwidth and yours. I'd understand if it was gold, but its not.
Trying to get some publicity now that Doom3 is out. Valve, just get the game out already.
------------ scottder
So let me get this straight: Valve is allowing you to grace your hard drive with a huge pile of useless encrypted bits that will lay there undisturbed until the still unknown release date of HL2, at which point you'll have to download still more shit (This isn't the whole game they're preloading), or just go buy the game on CD. What a joke. This sounds like just a big paper launch to combat the notion that HL2 is vaporware.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
"it should be mandatory" ???? what? don't you think thats a little like record companies saying saying it should be mandatory for you to have 5 different media players to play media from 5 different companies? I completely agree that companies SHOULD make older versions of software available for download or purchase, or let third parties distribute abandonware, but making it MANDATORY seems fascist.
-end of post.
I will get Half-Life 2 to see where the story goes, but I won't be paying for it.
Wow, you'll pirate the game illegally. You sure showed them.
If you were really so righteous, you just wouldn't play the game. You bitch about them then outright admit you'll still be playing their game. But hey, as long as you get to reap the benefits of their work without giving back, right?
Not really. Society is paying to maintain your copyright, if you don't keep providing the work for us we're going to assume you no longer need us to enforce copyright... Seems like it'd be perfectly fair to me.
I know it's extremely hip on Slashdot to bash Valve for some bizarre reason, but get real.
Hey, if the shoe fits. . . If this actually went hand in hand with a "gone gold" or RTM announcement, that would be one thing. But the only reason to release parts of the thing when there is still NO release date is to keep the hype machine rolling.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Mm.. TFC2.
An earlier statement was released, hinting to the ease of converting HL1 mods -> HL2. Hopefully this will be a reality.
Honestly, the TFC graphics never bothered me. They were a bit simplistic (by todays standards), but when you're playing at a high level of competition, you're not looking at the pretty graphics so much as bhopping, dodging, and planning your next move.
All the fancy graphics kind of annoy me, to be honest. I hope they keep the physics system exact. I want bhop, the quirky 'grenades go UP ramps' bug, sharking, etc. It just wouldn't be the same without it.