Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is the Half-Life 2 EULA Illegal?

Posted by Zonk on from the deep-thoughts dept.

Ant writes "Many people are having problems connecting to the Steam servers to play Half-Life 2, and now the legal agreements that surround a purchase of Half-Life 2 have been examined. The German Consumer Association has found that the packaging on Half-Life 2 is misleading. In a report made following complaints from the public, they said that the mere listing of an internet connection under the 'other' category in system requirements did not accurately describe the true extent of the internet tie-in with the game, and ordered Vivendi to amend the packaging and untie Steam from HL2 or face a hefty fine."

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. HL2 Packaging and Steam by Nevita · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They're right. The packaging lists an internet connection as required, when a Steam account (which does require an internet connection) is what is actually required. The packaging is false, but I don't think Valve/VU should be fined or forced to disconnect Steam from HL2. THe better solution would be to force them to restate the game requirements (i.e. a public admission that they were misleading). Problem solved.

    Don't turn this into a "we can finally rip Steam out of HL2" issue. It's completely irrelevant.

    --
    Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
  2. A few minor additions... by raygundan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. The offline authorization expires, and requires you to re-authorize periodically.

    2. If Steam goes down, but your internet connection is still working, you'll lose your offline authorization.

    3. Because of #1, if Valve ever goes out of business, takes Steam offline, or disables HL2 on Steam you'll lose the ability to play HL2, even offline, once your authorization expires in a month or two.

    #2 is the really nasty one right now-- it's impossible to know if Steam is up without checking (their status page said "steam is online" during the last whole-day outage), and once you check, your old authorization is cleared out while it waits for a new one from the server. Of course, if the server's down, you won't get a new one, leaving you with an unplayable game until they fix their shit.

    #3 will be particularly nasty in the future. Although they're nice folks now, if Valve is ever purchased by a nasty company, they could push us all out of the game to encourage "upgrades" to newer games. Or, valve could just die and leave us in the lurch.