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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. "
I just love how Valve changed what they originally said about this...
All hail Valve, our next Microsoft Product Activation-like overlord.
"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.
Sounds like a move to try and get people to see Steam, and consider not buying the next Valve product in the stores.
Some ideas of Steam are nice, but I still don't like the idea of buying a product through it. Skipping the publishers is a bad thing, as they fund the new games. Sure, publishers need to treat the developers better, but to try and axe them out of the picture completely is a bad idea.
Sorry Valve, but I have no intention of letting Steam ever tough my PC. I will buy your game (if it turns out to be worth it), and I will acquire a crack to enable it.
Don't fuck over your customers. Things will get much worse.
If I'm going to be treated like a copyright infringer, I'll just wait for the crack.
...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.
Here we go again!
(in sarcastic tones)
HOW DARE THEY! They expect us to have a net connection! What year do they think this is? 2004 or something?!?! Don't they understand that people that have the horsepower in a computer to run the Source engine as in HL2 usually do NOT have any sort of net connection! What do they think we are, NASA?!?!
Valve is nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing jerks to make us pay for a game...A GAME! They should open source it!
Here is a list of demands for Valve:
1. Stop lying to us! We trusted you...er...don't know with what, but lots of people are saying you let us down...somehow...so stop it!
2. I don't want you spying on me 24/7. I know Valve is out there, looking through my window, looking through my mailbox, now you want to invade my machine and spread all your viruses and spyware to watch everything I do so you can sell it to the Iraqis for some oil-for-games program you have going! YOU'RE EVIL!
3. I want every game and every map and every mod ever made for HL/CS/DoD etc etc to be converted to the Source engine AND be included on the HL2 CD. AND I want everything on one CD.
4. I want Source to run 150fps on my Pentium 90 with Stock VGA graphics...using DX9.0c. Anything more than that and you guys just don't know how to program.
5. I don't want any bugs, none. If one bug shows up I'll sue you!
6. I don't want any type of security on these games. I should be able to install on any number of computers. I have 150 friends that all would like to "try out" this game so I want to burn 150 CD's with a copy on it so I can let them have it for a low price of $20 (that covers the cost of the CD).
Do these things and perhaps maybe I'll play the game...but only maybe.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
After all, product activation did a miracle for Microsoft. Stopped those evil software pirates completely, yessir.
Your logic is, "Skipping the publishers is a bad thing, as they fund the new games."
But the whole point of skipping the publishers is to get enough money so the developers can "fund the new games". And when you get to that point, WHY do we, as gamers, or developers, need or want publishers?
GPL Deconstructed
About how this authentication is going to affect future installations. Will Steam keep track of some unique product id (like a CDKey) and tie it to a specific install?
ie. You install HL2 and the next day some hardware/OS failure requires you to reformat/reinstall. Will you be able to re-authenticate on the same CDKey? What about if you delete an old install and want to re-install on a new PC?
What if you trade in your HL2 at EB for some reason (runs too slow, too buggy, you plain dont like it), will the next person who buys it even be able to authenticate and play it? This could effectively destroy the pre-owned market (at least for this game). Which would be total BS; if I want to sell my game, I should be able to. Is that not my right as a consumer?
Go look at the Steam website faq. They specifically state that CDkeys cannot be transferred between Steam accounts. Without a doubt, Valve (and probably every publisher out there) would love nothing better than to ensure that everyone who plays their game has to always buy a full priced new copy. There is just too much potential for abuse here...
Maybe I'm way off base, and I'd love nothing better than Valve to prove me wrong. I was on the fence about buying HL2, now I'd say my mind is made up...
* My understanding is that you were going to need Steam for offline play of HL2 since it was announced.*
that is not true. they said you would need steam for updates and online play, but if you wanted to just play the single player game out of the box then you wouldn't need a net connection(this would be the sensible thing, as some don't have net even).
among other things this makes it basically impossible for there to be a 2nd hand market for these as well(_this_ is what they're after.. making it impossible for even legally to buy it cheaper than store from someone who already played through it).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Acceptable forms of copy protection :
Ignore it. That's certainly acceptable, and works well for many game developers and publishers.
Add extras in the box that add value. Cloth maps, figurines, trading cards, etc.
Make a complex game that requires lots of documentation, and include it in a printed book.
Make an awesome multi-user component that requires logging into a server with a unique CD key to play online. It must be something that needs to use the Internet already, however (like a multi-user component would.)
Include the phrase: Please don't copy this game illegally.
Barely acceptable methods include :
Require use of that CD key to download patches and updates.
Having a unique CD key for each copy of the game.
Include copy protection methods that make it hard to copy, or make copies not work -- Safedisk, bad sectors, etc. These aren't very effective, but as long as they don't cause problems for legitimate users, they're acceptible -- barely.
Require that the CD be in the drive while playing the game. We don't like this, but we generally tolerate it if there's no other problems.
Hidden registry keys to keep track of previous installations and such.
Utterly unaccecptable forms of copy protection for a game :
Contacting the Internet (or requiring that you call up a phone number to get a code) for a single player game
Dongles (and other hardware keys.)
`Please enter the third word of page 25 now.' (or other sorts of code wheels, books, etc.)
Writing to the boot sector or other `off limits' part of the disk. (Turbo Tax did this recently.)
Installing Spyware that reports back to the publisher.
Programs that look for `cheating' or `cracking' programs on your disk and either refuse to run the game if found, or (worse) remove/break the offending programs. (EQ has done this, as and several programs refuse to work if programs like Daemon Tools or even Nero are even installed.)
Protections that damage the system if they feel they're being messed with (recent example: program that deleted your home directory if it detected a `pirated' CD key.)
Special device drivers that must be installed just to run the game -- like a special CD rom driver.
Unmovable files (if you put a file down, we should be able to defrag it!)
I'm sure I've missed a few in each category, but this should get you started. Game developers, you listening?
Umm, no. Product activation is something that has been tried a bunch of times, to no avail. While piracy is a problem, it doesn't mean it's an insurmountable one. For one thing, people *lose* money through piracy, and that sucks. That doesn't mean they make *no money* or even a drastically reduced amount. I think we all know the windows piracy problem helped establish it's market dominance.
Also on the "no longer being considered worth pandering to" note, I don't think I've ever seen any demographic ever cease to be marketed to due to piracy. Cable TV, lot's of pirates, still makes money. Dish TV, same. Windows, same. Any popular pc Game, same.
People keep thinking of piracy as something that can be eliminated, like polio. It's not some disease that threatens humanity. It's an aspect of human nature that has been around for quite some time (like, uh, pirates? You know, the swashbuckling kind?). There is a reason banks and large commercial retailers have insurance. Nobody has ever said "lets start a campain to stop bank robbery!" People are going to still rob banks, despite having 50 cameras and untold security. Some will succeed. If your business model relies on not having anyone *ever* steal from you, I suspect you have bigger problems. Does anyone have theft insurance? Why is that? Theft has been around a long time, why haven't we started 'The War On Theft'?
Now, making me give you my personal info to buy your product, that's fine, but don't expect me to do so. There are plenty of other games out there. Keep in mind this is the *single* player version that also requires activation. Would you buy console games this way? Oh yeah, that next Zelda is so cool, I'll just tell the Nintendo people my personal details, because I *know* they won't share them with anyone.
Please.
If you feel it's fine, you go right ahead, but in my mind at least, this is not a bright idea.
-- I have fans? Wow.
Oh no not again (crashing bowl of petunias time).
I'm going to ROTFL because the innocent notion of
requiring "Product Activation" has not so innocent
consequences.
Here goes:
Once upon a time there was a Greek company (yes, I'm the dumb programmer who had to do it) who thought that having a product *locked* to a machine was a good idea. They thought about Dongles (yuck) and other stuff, and eventually came up with a relatively innocous scheme.
So, they *required* product activation. Here's the bad news. Customers machines *break* and hence they trouble your support lines in lemming like droves. So, the more product you sell - the *LESS*
money you make because you have to hire more zombies for the support dept. (So, in our case a
$20 product ended up losing us $21... - or something like that).
AAARRGGHH!
One activation code - yes, and then forever more you allow *reactivation* on other machines. OK, that doesn't kill piracy, but you have to take the
rough with the smooth here...
(and remember you don't know how much information
is going back over the wire about your machine + environment. Get seriously FUDDED). Hell, just buy
from another company. (Like the Coca Cola classic
fiasco, if they want to sell it they'll have to listen).
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
No you really don't. The crack already exists today (the Steam debug client that most hl related leaks use), It just needs to be hacked onto the final hl2 release, which will take about 30minutes. As for the demo.. Go download CS:Source and see if it runs on your machine.
If you're not afraid of your console and making your game ugly, theres plenty of ways to speed up the game. If I didn't hate Valve and Counterstrike with a passion now, I'd make a howto, but cvarlist mat_ and screw with those settings for better fps, namely mat_dxlevel 70 as I said in another post.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
They may have a point.
There was a bug in Cstrike recently where if someone changed their name to include a " %n ", it would immediately crash the server and all the clients. They rolled out the fix sometime Monday, I think.
About Wednesday, one of the players on the server I was on changed his name to include a %n. This blew away about half the people on the server. Why? Because the pirates didn't have the fixed version yet.
As long as he sat there with the %n, nobody with a pirated game could logon, and the 40-person server was unable to climb above about 24 people. Normally, it's at 40 players 95% of the time.
Pirated Counterstrike, in other words, is extremely, extremely common. I don't know if it's deliberate on Valve's part, but they don't seem to be doing a good job AT ALL of shutting out the thieves. One thought that comes to mind is that maybe they're trying to get online 'buzz' early on, by making sure there are lots of Cstrike players. Perhaps they'll get more aggressive about shutting down pirates once the game hits store shelves.
But, it is also possible that they CAN'T for some reason... which, if true, doesn't encourage me that they'll get CS:S terribly cheat-free.
Looked like about 50-60% pirated copies on the server I was on. Real shame.