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."
It's been pre-Slashdotted. You get an error saying their servers are already too busy doing preloads and to try again in a few hours. If you want to see the in-steam announcement though, go here.
As long as the Sniper rifle still has the red dot, I'll be happy!
"Yup!"
"Boy, I can't wait til next year when we can play it"
I felt my heart jump, just from the word soon. A tear came to my eye too, but that's because my eyes hurt from staring at a monitor too long.
RArr!
I wonder how long it will be till hackers find away to spoof half life 2's pre-loading authenticiation and users can play hl2 without actually buying it.
Now if i could only find that damn ati coupon thing, *looks at desk*, shakes head.
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!
Interesting...does anybody here remember the a vaguely-similar route taken with id for the Quake shareware release? An encypted version of that game (and essentially every past Id game) was on the shareware CD, and could be unlocked when purchased. And then along came QCrack.
Valve's distribution idea is interesting, but I hope for their sake that the security's very strong, requiring all sorts of authorizations and whatnots. If not, Doom III's slightly-premature leaking to the internet might seem like a far more ideal scenario than a Valve-aided distribution of compromised content.
Steam is free. I use it to play the version of cstrike that came with my platnum Half Life pack I got a few years back.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
So this will be the cause of the big internet blackout, not cyber-terrorist but gamers downloading HL2. :-D
I knew it when Valve delayed the preload.
I just got it to start pre-loading despite failing during earlier attempts. I can't wait to start not playing 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
...one, zero: http://www.filerush.com/torrents/Half-Life%202%20P reload%20Cache.torrent
what on earth is Valve waiting for?
Fixing bugs as many little bugs as they can, especially in level design I believe. They've said its very close to being complete, it's just being playtested to death at the moment.
Maybe if they used that encryption before they wouldn't have got their source code stolen... ZING!
Word up dude. Valve makes one game 6 years ago, and now is somehow living (leeching) on the mod community for more content to their aging quake 1 engine. Fuck them, fuck them up their stupid asses.
Last year Bittorrent's creator Brahm Cohen was hired by Valve to improve Steam's content distribution system.
Also in terms of overloading servers, slashdot has nothing over the hordes of counter-strike players.
Valve should get the war for The Game Company That Managed To Torture Its Fans By Having Code Stolen, More Release Dates Than Jerry Seinfeld Had GirlFriends, Leaked The Plot, And Gave You A Game You Could Download But Not Play Until They Let You Award. Wonder what the award would look like...probaly a figure of Duke Nukem.
Has anybody *ever* been gotten away with distributing encrypted files without somebody cracking it?
It's like giving the entire geek world a good, hard puzzle with an irresistable payoff.
vk.
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.
Already on it.
I got the game to boot using a kernel debugger and a little trial and error. SoftICE revealed the installer makes a call to something in _vis.dll, which in turn checks to see if hl2_acf.nfo exists within the steam install directory.
Decompiled _vis.dll with DisC, replaced the function call to a new function that always returns true. Recompiled _vis with Visual C++, nogo, then tried with Borland and the game booted.
Posting a crack tonight.
M
---
Always read sigs for important words like syyyyke.
I call shenanigans. DisC was specifically written for taking apart Turbo C dos executables. If you were genuinely following a trace like this, you would have almost certainly just intercepted the outgoing call to "_vis.dll" and loaded the truth value inline - not like you wouldn't have had enough room to work in.
This should be modded "Funny" since the poster makes it clear this is a joke by his usage of "syke" in his signature. Being syked is the 80's equivalent of the aughts being punk'd.
-AC
I know this is OT, but this has bugged me for YEARS.
:P (the fact that NWN characters can be ported- gear and all- between NWN expansions is a major bonus. It's things like this that have completely killed console rpgs for me.)
When the Playstation came out, I creamed my pants at the potential of memory cards- finally, a company could make an RPG.... and release "add-ons" or "expansion packs" that would be new games or side games but which would use your already existing character. Or a sequel to a game that was ACTUALLY a SEQUEL- picking up where you left off... exactly where you left off, levels, equipment, and everything. I figured games like this would be out within a year.
Boy, was I FUCKING WRONG. Aside from some in-game tricks in games like Metal Gear Solid, memory cards are basically just an itty hard drive that serves as a dumping ground for save data that doesn't overlap or play between games.
WHERE IS THE INNOVATION IN THAT?
Shit, if I knew I could move my NWN character into NWN2 (without, you know, creating a new one...), I'd spend a couple of weeks prior to release leveling like a bastard. And if the game's built right, it should be just as challenging at level 20 as it is at level 3.
Woo. Rant complete.
Is "Half-life 2" logically equivalent to "Full-life 1" ?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
1. There's actually CS1.5 for Steam out there. Google is your friend.
2. You no longer have to authenticate over the net to play Steam games anymore.
3. You don't have to update any of your games if you don't want either. Right click on the game and turn off automatic updating.
4. You are a fucking idiot, in case I forgot to mention it. Die.
Sorry guys, it was worth the karma burn.
As I said, the computing power does not exist. By this I mean all the computers in the world working together could not crack AES 256 in a lifetime, actually, they couldn't crack it in thousands of years.
And, of course, HL2 will be released in less than a year.
So, supposing they are using a reasonable encryption scheme, and why not, AES is freely available, no one can possibly crack it before it's released.
... steam ware. Not much change, is it?
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.
Way back in I-don't-remember-when, I had heard so much about this "Counter-Strike" thing that I finally broke down and bought a $30 retail copy at GameStop. Loved it. I quickly relalized this was just a mod for the full game called Half-Life. Always wanted to play Half-Life, but it was never worth the extra $20-30 bucks to me to be able to play it. So I pirated my roommate's copy until I almost beat the game... Then there was a hard drive format, so no more HL.
Steam comes along and with my CS reg key, I at last get the full version of Half-Life LEGALLY, and quick and easy access to other popular mods, and a server Favorites list (don't remember if original CS allowed this. I used to write down the IP of a good server to play there) so I can find good games faster, and keep it updated VERY easily. I've installed older CS numerous times and version compatibility was a constant headache, even WITH the seemingly appropriate patches. 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. And I don't know how little RAM you have, but steam barely scratches my 512mb, which I presume is common for todays FPS player.
As long as you didn't pirate the game(s), Steam is wonderful, IMHO
Will they do that for Duke-Nukem Forever also?
What about the "just got lucky" factor? It may take thousands of years to run through all of the available keyspace, but what if the second key that I try just happens to be the right one?
It might take thousands of years or it might take until tomorrow morning, or anything in between. But I don't see any way to absolutely guarantee that it won't be tomorrow morning; it seems just as likely as "thousands of years".
In that case, why decrypt it at all? If you just create random strings of digits eventually you are GUARANTEED to hit upon the entire halflife2 game, complete with patches, and including additional, SUPER AWESOME content, such as the level that seamlessly merges the entire DOOM3 game and has a character that looks identical to a naked natilie portman who speaks directly to you, in your own voice, perfectly, and then relives your early childhood in grainy 35mm footage before showing that you were, in fact, abducted by aliens.
Sure, it MIGHT take a hundred quadrillion billion zillion years, but you MIGHT hit upon it on your second try, right?
Interesting, though I notice Bram's avoided updating his donate, this is my only job page that pops up randomly when you use the bittorrent client.
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