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Half-Life 2 Retail to Require Steam Activation
An anonymous reader writes "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. "
"Q. What's the latest status on Team Fortress 2?
Doug Lombardi: After we announced TF2 on the HL1 tech, we made the decision to move it to the Source engine. It is still in development and we will be announcing more on that title soon."
Don't bother, no one cares any more. You blew it.
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that they have given me an excuse to not purchase the game. I use my machine for programming, with a bit of light gaming on the side. I'm not interested in Steam (I get my rear end handed to me in multiplay) and if I have to sell my machine's soul to their marketing drones, well they can take their delayed, litigated and now "strings attached" game and shove it.
Sad really, reviews are high and I loved the first one. I guess I will be more productive next month than I expected.
Sig under construction since 1998.
This'll barely even slow the warezers down. I bet there'll be a crack out within a week of release, if there isn't one already.
If I'm going to be treated like a copyright infringer, I'll just wait for the crack.
from the average public joe.
"Hey mister, this game wont work. Can I exchange it?"
...I urge others to do the same. If we, the consumers, keep on permitting u-turns by companies, and cheerfully accepting them, it will only encourage this culture of mendacity that is more prevalent each day in this world.
No one should have to cede control over his machine and agree to a Draconian agreeement that indemnifies Valve in the event of any screwups to play a game he legitimately purchased. This is about control, not about copyright infringement. The crackers will have this one on Usenet inside of a week--the only ones inconvenienced will be those who purchased a game that has to call home to use single player mode, and a company that's going to collect and sell Bob-knows-what information about them in the process.
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What is an acceptable way for companies to deal with piracy then? I mean, come on. We really damage our credibility if we bitch at every attempt to curb piracy. But we complain about Microsoft barring modded XBoxes from their servers, about copy protection like this, we complain when companies sue file sharers...
/. populace, that's increasingly what we're looking like. And down that road lies us no longer being considered worth pandering to.
Are people really arguing that there should be no way to prevent piracy? Because based on the aggregate outrage of the
Personally, I think that good old-fashioned copy protection is by far the best method of preventing piracy. Nobody gets sued. Nobody gets hurt.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Because there still are some, here and there. 'Net access isn't as ubiquitous as you think it is.
But the whole point of skipping the publishers is to get enough money so the developers can "fund the new games".
;-)
Who do you think funds a new development studio with no released titles already making money for them?
Valve's got to the stage where it doesn't need the financial backing of a publisher, but for smaller people, it's a very important source of monetary investment.
As for the Half-Life 2 requiring product activation - I'm not sure if this is the best route to be going down. Yes, nearly everyone has an internet connection these days, but there still are some people without. A friend of mine is a big fan of Half-Life (and games in general) but has no internet access at home. An outlier? Yes, but there's probably more of them than we think, especially in the casual PC gamer market the original Half-Life has more recently done so well in. Such people are a bit unlikely to be posting on here, for a start.
I've nothing against persistent user profiles and product registration for online gaming - a bit less anonymity might cut down on the number of idiots currently infesting servers - but requiring activation for an offline, single-player game does seem to be going a bit far. Anyone pirating the game will most likely have a registration-free hacked version, as already mentioned...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
But for a single player game, it makes no sense, beyond marketing and copy protection, things we hate (newsflash: even people who paid for their game hate copy protection. It's rarely as `invisible' as it's supposed to be. Ironically, many end up getting the pirate patches, because it makes the game better.)
In any event, MMRPG vs single player game Internet requirements -- it's hardly the same thing.
hl2 isn't an online game.
to quote the interview "Doug Lombardi: During installation the user will be prompted to authenticate the copy and create a Steam account. After that is complete, the single-player and LAN games do not require an Internet connection."
so.. to play the _single_player game you need to authenticate during the installation.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm not the parent, but I can still say that I play Die By the Sword - at least 3 times a week - it's only SIX years old, but Treyarch and Interplay have long stopped caring about or supporting the game.
And the big issue here with HL2 is that it's a single player game, there's no need for anyone to have to log online, yet they're making it mandatory anyway. It's something I and many others are becoming increasingly fed up with, because they make you go through increasing circles of bullshit in order to play a game you spent hard-earned money on.
When Doom 3 came out I bought a copy the day after release, and then I was told I had to remove CloneCD, Daemon Tools and Nero in order to get the game to work with their moronic copy protection. As much as you like to say Valve and id can do whatever they want with their software, this is crossing the line between "protecting their copyright" and "taking over my computer". I can't wait until Windows Media Player will automatically uninstall and registry-ban Winamp and iTunes...
As things go, I don't want Steam. I don't want the 500-some-odd megabyte install I had to do when they decided to move TFC over, I don't want to wait for Steam to patch itself, I don't want the memory and processor overhead of having Steam running as a background process whenever I start my computer and checking for updates, I don't want to hear about Valve's latest news whenever I login to play whatever game I bought years ago, I don't want to play CS:Source.
I would have bought Half-Life 2 because I was interested in playing Half-life 2.
Now I'll just download the game a week early on Bit Torrent, crack it, and then purchase the box copy and leave it sealed on my shelf. I shouldn't have to, but at least my way everybody wins.
The whole point of getting a box is you can install the CDs even if Valve goes under and stops running activation servers. Welp, no more. It's pretty annoying actually. I think I can expect Microsoft to be running Activation servers 10 years from now (if only out of fear of a 250 million+ class action lawsuit), but a game company? It's like divx all over again....
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Maybe you should try seeing the other sides point of view.
For example, my current machine can not run HL2, and I will not be getting one that can for quite a while. I will be picking up the collector's edition when it is released because I like collecting them and want to secure a copy.
Cracks aside, what guarantee do I have that I will be able to play the single player HL2 and HL: Source game when I do have the machine to run it? What about 5 years from now when I want to play through HL2 and HL: Source again? And what about mods, from what I understand the system isn't as open as it use to and Valve has control over them. A lot of PC game companies have died over the years, and so have multiplayers severs, but at least I can still play the single player versions as well as mods with my legally bought copies.
Also while it is unlikely, what is there to stop Valve from pulling a Microsoft, and have them no longer supporting HL2 single player, HL: Source, old mods, or any of other their classics?
Don't assume that it is just pirates who are the ones complaining, I bet there are quite a few legit buyers like me that don't like this turn of events. Seriously, I purchase all my software, have never used any cracks and have no intention to do so. But given the requirement to authenticate games to just play single player I might reconsider this policy I have. I just might have to start downloading and backing up cracks, BUT only for games that require authentication in order to play single player and if I can no longer authenticate my legally purchased game.
so how am I supposed to play it when it's imposiible for me to use STEAM?!?! I must use a proxy server to connect to the internet, which is also used by many other people, so port-forwarding is not an option. Therefore no steam for my PC. And thus I can't even play the legitimate version of it, oh well I guess I'm just going to need to find a cracked, boot-legged version of it anyway :(
./R My blog
I am already entitled to a copy of Half-Life 2. I have purchased an ATI video card what seems to me now like ages ago. Had I not, I would have thought about buying Half-Life 2. I know many who might have been interested in purchasing it as well. After this, no one I know or I would ever consider buying the product, would it be only out of spite. This new security measure is ludicrous.
I anticipate more than usual will now be downloading it from an alternative source (no pun intended) more simply than Steam users will. This will be done without silly activations being required and possibly days before November 16th.
Congrats to Valve, they managed to alienate another chunk of the gaming community with this decision.
First of all, I want to say this is totally uncalled for. I dunno why they can't just go Blizzard's route and make only one CD-key run at once online. You can't really get an online key for Starcraft without buying it, and it's been out for years.
Also, I want to know how this will affect reselling of the game. Let's say in a few months I'm tired of HL2 and decide to sell it to a friend or something. Will he be unable to make a steam ID? Will he have to use mine? Because that would suck a bit.
It just seems they put way too much into this stuff when there are such easy answers already out.
Long load times in the bad old days were due to a combination of slow CD-Roms and expensive hard drives.
If a game takes a long time to load because it has so many game objects or it's a huge map, I have no problem. Okay, maybe a little problem, but I understand. It's physical limitations which are the problem. I didn't like swapping disks in the bad Really old days, but it was necessary so it was endured.
But these days it isn't due to basic media problems, it's because the designers/publishers think the benefits of Securom, Steam and whatever else are worth the degradation of the total user experience. When you think about it, it's really a slap in the face to legitimate consumers.
Seems like an excellent way to combat piracy to me.
-Zeecog
Patches are automatically downloaded and applied by Steam - only people with non-legit copies would have to patch manually.
I've dreaded that this would happen. When Steam -does- work, it's about as useful as a nail in my eye. This or that doesn't work..."you were unable to download the security token for the server"...you can't switch bloody arms in certain display modes! Now we have to rely on this to activate our software? Don't get me wrong, I love Valve, but if I wanted to spend a lot on software and get raped in the process, I'd use AOL.
28:06:42:12 - That is when the world will end...