Please do a tiny bit of research before coming to a conclusion like this. Steam will not, and never will, make you pay a subscription fee. Even the monthly premium package, which was supposed to allow you to get every new Valve/Gearbox/Whatever released product as soon as it's released, but even that was scrapped. If you buy HL2, you will be able to play HL2 and all of it's mod with no further charge. That's all there is to it.
Valve has taken the Havok engine, and modded it heavily to their own liking. It's a much, much more advanced physics engine than Havok, more along the lines of Havok 2. It's far more advanced than Far Cry or Doom 3's physics engines.
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Please do a tiny bit of research before coming to a conclusion like this. Steam will not, and never will, make you pay a subscription fee. Even the monthly premium package, which was supposed to allow you to get every new Valve/Gearbox/Whatever released product as soon as it's released, but even that was scrapped. If you buy HL2, you will be able to play HL2 and all of it's mod with no further charge. That's all there is to it.
Valve has taken the Havok engine, and modded it heavily to their own liking. It's a much, much more advanced physics engine than Havok, more along the lines of Havok 2. It's far more advanced than Far Cry or Doom 3's physics engines.