Half-Life 2 go bye bye / Valve = RIAA?

[Jammrock]

Hmmmm ... inet authetication to play on the LAN? That's really freak'n lame. I thought they'd be smarter than that. I suppose if Vavlve offers the patches via the usual channels, such as FilePlanet, PlanetHalflife, 3DGamers, etc, that you could circumvent this by never using Steam to update or patch the game. Assuming that is possible.

Though requiring Steam authentication to play any form of multiplayer game is really, really lame. Assuming that HL2 is considered a 'Steam game' and must authenticate to LAN game.

Jammrock

[Technoid]

well, Orwel had the date 20 years wrong

[bsdgeek]

HL2, which used to be high on my "wanted" list, has now dropped, replaced by JK:JA and Call of Duty.

[GNEP]

I'll get it anyway, even if I don't approve. But I'm also DEFINITELY getting Call of Duty having played the demo, and JK:JA probably as well.

[Zao]

I can tell you, that JK:JA doesn't require a key or an original to be played online or in LAN.
That will lay the way for a huge community, which may improve the game's popularity and make people get it since 'it's the game that everyone else are playing'.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Whew! It appears that perhaps this won't be as big a deal is it was first appearing to be...

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6844

Looks like this will only be required for two weeks. It's unclear if it means for 2 weeks from when you use the game, or just the first two weeks that HL2 is out and active on Steam.

[bsdgeek]

Much better.

[Jon P. Inghram]

One of the rumored reasons is that it might be intended to interfere with people grabbing CD keys before the products reach customers and/or software stores.

[The Rock]

It doesn't sound *too* bad now, and the CD key grabbing reason sounds like a valid one, but I still wish they could invent better copy protection so that none of this B.S. would be necessary.

[Paddy]

I would have no objection to get the game through steam.
I guess it *should* be cheaper, although I am unsure if i would need to burn the ISO to a CD....

I can live with out a box.