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Half-Life 2 Street Date

Posted by Zonk on from the head-crabs-for-christmas! dept.

JFlex writes "According to Valve's website, Half-Life 2 will hit the streets on November 16th! From the press release: "The Company confirmed that Half-Life 2, developed by Valve Software, has gone gold with a planned retail street date of November 16, 2004." Gonna have to rush home and beat Halo 2 as fast as possible to free up some time for HL2!!"

5 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. How can you... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All geeks support such a company who disregards all computer users as theifs, criminals and crooks?

    Their program needs nannyware to even start up. As a geek, I find that reprehensible. Thats also why I use only windows 2000.. So I dont have to deal with MS's "change some hardware and fuck up your system" crap.

    I also know that many geeks refuse to touch this flaming pile of crap (even if the game content is good). Provide a respectable way for us to play without resorting to demeaning us as criminals, by default, and Ill buy it.

    If not, fuck Valve.

    PS: I was a paying customer of 3 sets of HL1.

    --
    1. Re:How can you... by Poseidon88 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't understand this viewpoint. All games these days have copy protection in one form or another. For the most part, these schemes are more of a hindrance to the legitimate users than the dedicated pirates. Steam actually gets rid of all the annoying problems caused by current copy-protection, and goes a long way towards actually preventing piracy. No requiring the CD in the drive, no hardware issues, no worrying about losing your key or having someone else use it, game content delivered as soon as it is available, patches downloaded automatically... And the best part: an online distribution system like Steam may help release game developers from their dependence on huge publishers. Frankly, I think more people should be rejoicing about Steam and the way it is changing the games industry.

    2. Re:How can you... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 3, Insightful

      6 years down the line, I can still install Win98 on an old machine, provided I have the drivers to run the hardware. Never the less, it will still install and work. The same goes for Windows 95, 3X, NT, and 2000.

      The same cannot be said for Windows XP. Can you guarantee that when WinXP goes out of support, MS will still hand out unlock codes? My greatest fear is not putting the CD in when a program runs, or having some dumb dongle, or some gimmick. My biggest fear is putting the power to run YOUR computer software in the hands of some company that can decide not to support it whenever they wish, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

      A likely scenerio I can see Valve going through is thus:

      1: They produce a forced online-register for new game.
      2: A while passes, and game is "old".
      3: More time passes, and they start loosing revenue.
      4: They decide to sell themselves (and their IP) to another company
      5: That company cares not if further "registrations" go on, and let the online register servers die.
      6: That money you paid for to get that game is now suddenly... worthless, and the new parent comapny cares not.

      Case in point: Aureal sound cards... Creative bought the rights to them, and now do absolutely nothing with them. Any work done is on Linux, and reverse engineered from Windows drivers.

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    3. Re:How can you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This has nothing to do with online distribution. It has to do with Valve controlling access to a game you have legally purchased through a license-like system. The parent post replied with an explanation as to why Steam is bad.

      My problems with Valve go way beyond that, though. Where the hell is there support for other platforms? They've basically told linux users to go screw themselves, and put themselves in bed with MS in various ways.

      It's not just Steam, it's not just the lack of linux support, it's not just the promotional deals with MS, it's all of the above.

      Unreal Tournament is an example of a game that has managed to be wildly successful, on multiple platforms, without being obsessed about DRM crap. Hell, Epic even stops requiring CD checks after a certain length of time.

      There's no reason why Valve can't do the same.

      I've lost a lot of respect for them over the years.

  2. Why isn't Steam voluntary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Frankly, I think more people should be rejoicing about Steam and the way it is changing the games industry.
    Make it voluntary and I'll sing it from the rooftops. REQUIRING steam is not necessary; all it does is give Valve more power over software YOU purchased. So yeah, if Steam were voluntary it would be awesome. It's too bad it isn't.