Slashdot Mirror
Half-Life 2 - Aftermath
Eurogamer.com has word that the expected expansion pack for Half-Life 2 is already in the works. Reporting on information gleaned from PC Gamer UK, the site has learned that the expansion will be entitled 'Aftermath' and is currently slated for a summer release. Aftermath will deal with the fallout from the events at the close of the PC title as the residents of City 17 make for the hills in an attempt to get to safety. Alyx Vance, heroine and robot wrangler, will play a larger role in the expansion, but the article doesn't give specific details on what exactly her relationship to you as the player will be. From the article: "The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now..."
I really hate steam and the direction in which video game distribution is headed, it's the whole reason I refuse to buy games like Half Life 2. I would be willing to pay a little extra if I got a nicely packaged product with a large dead tree manual and the reassurance that I will be able to play it years down the road.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of consoles use a steam like system as well, ala the Phantom Console. Count me out.
Will it have an ending? Because Half-Life 2 sure as hell didn't.
As if gamer's legs are ever used anyway. Moving a little would be a good thing.
Or don't tell me, you play Dance-Dance Revolution all of the time. ;)
Because this technology is not balanced. It allows the creator much more control over it than the end user, which is the problem.
Here is a fact: Right now Valve is watching you every time you play, and gathering information on your user habits, play times, durations of play, PC settings, hardware configuration, and storing it for market research data.
It's so much not the distribution method as it is the software in question. There is no reason for me to have their software running on my desktop with an active connection while I play. There is no reason for me to have to activate a store-bought version of the game online. Oh yeah, I forgot I might be a potential thief!
Now let's look at it from their side. Here's a group of people who now have an administrative piece of software on your machine. What else can they send through its active connection? What can they take away?
The liberties awarded to Valve when their software is installed on your PC are too much to ignore.
I actually acknowledge the convenience of Steam for some folks, but requiring Steam-based activation is abhorrent. While I am supportive of any company trying the counter piracy, there are limits to what they should require of customers. I know it's easy to sit here and complain without offering another solution, but it's not my job to come up with a solution that makes customers happy, it is the developer's/publisher's and they would be much better of if they were to work out a more sensible solution. I bought HL2 and I'll probably pay for the addon, but if there were a method that did not require Steam (and were legal) I would use it in a heartbeat. But it is really not all bad, when I reformatted my machine and reinstalled HL2, I only needed to reinstall Steam and Steam did the rest. Now I can play HL2 without the CD and without using a no-cd crack, so I have done nothing immoral/illegal. So it's in interesting blend of freedom and restriction, in my opinion.
Got sushi? The Sushi FAQ
Steam is the only direct-to-consumer internet-based game delivery service.
Umm... no. I bought a lot of games by going to a website, paying with a credit card, and downloading the game. That's "direct-to-consumer" and definitely "internet-based" game delivery to my hard drive.
Insomuch as a direct client-to-server experience with direct payment capacity in the client.
And why do I want a direct payment capability in the client? I don't. My web browser gives me all "direct payment capability" I need.
You trash it because it is the only one available and the only one that has performed.
LOL. It hasn't performed and that's why a lot of people are trashing it.
But anyway, my problems with Steam are not performance. They are that Steam doesn't want to be just a "delivery service". It wants to have ongoing control over what I do at my machine.
Why in the world don't I get a say in whether my game on my hard drive get patched or not? And why in hell would Steam throw a hissy fit if I decide to mess with game files -- again, my game files on my hard drive?
I want games that I will play on my own terms. I don't want a piece of software that will decide what's good for me and what's not.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You list a lot of great things about Steam, but you forgot the important one -
I don't play Counter-Strike unless Steam says I can play Counter-Strike. Whether I want to play it or not is a moot point, because the Steam authentication servers have to give me permission either way.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Nope, I want the box, dead-tree manual, and the original game disc to play, even 10 years after valve has gone bankrupt.
SNK is dead and gone. My Neo Geo still works great. 3DO is dead and gone, my 3DO still works great (well insomuch as you can call 3DO great). Sega's feeding tube will be removed any time soon, but my Master System, Genesis-voltron, Saturn and Dreamcast will all still work.
I play a pretty even mix between "hot new latest and greatest", and older "classics", or even not-so-classics that I enjoyed.
I find that good video games age well. I recently replayed Crystalis for the NES, for example, and found it every bit as good as when I was 10.
My 10 year old bugs me every day to let him play Samurai Shodown on the Neo Geo, despite the fact that he has brand new copies of Dead or Alive Ultimate, Soul Calibur 2, Tekken 300, etc.. He's also logged more time playing Yoshi's Island on my SNES than I have.
I'm sure the industry hates that. I'll go into EB or Babbages and drop 50 bucks, and rather than one overpriced new release, I'll come home with an assload of older SNES, Genesis, or whatever they have.
A store bought copy of HL2 won't work when Valve is gone, or else they've decided not to support it anymore. It seems to me, that's the whole point of Steam, that's the only thing it offers over another delivery vehicle like HTTP for instance.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...but a lot of people feel safer with [technology that works and doesn't take away your freedom].
Needing to authenticate to play a game offline is the greatest crime against gamers I can think ok. Fact is if this wasn't Half Life for that reason alone the game would have tanked otherwise.
But I suppose next your going to tell me how DRM is just the next "logical progression" to "protect users" and that people who buy will only buy CD's are just being silly for hanging on to the past.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
But if they followed Epic Games' lead, then we'd have Half Life Tournament 2005, and boy oh boy am I glad we don't.
This is often brought up in discussions of Steam, but unless they've changed it in the past few months, this is only partially true. I used ZoneAlarm to keep Steam from phoning home, and I could play in offline mode, but after a few days of this HL2 would complain and refuse to start until it had a chance to update.
So yes, you can play in offline mode. For a while. But eventually you have to be connected to the Internet to play the game.