For what? Piraters are stealing and using material created by another party without the expressed consent of said party.

And they're far from broke.

Valve is also far from broke, considering they are made up of mostly ex MS programmers, and considring that fact, I'm pretty sure they'll release their games however they want to, and there's nothing you can do about it but whine.

Basically.


"And I'm doing it harder than I've ever done before"

-Ignignot

I would have loved to (and probably still will) but the ending just turned me off of it so much :/. That just really disappointed me -_-.

Right... I think some of you are completely not getting his sentance.

"I've YET to talk to anyone who has the urge to play through it again..."

Key word. YET. Meaning everyone he's talked to up until the time he posted that, didn't want to play through it right away a second time. Since he didn't talk to you three who want to play through it again right away, you don't count. However, now that you HAVE said that you have an interest in playing through it again, if he were to say the same thing elsewhere on these boards, it would have to read some thing like, "I've only run into 3 people who had the urge to play through the game again after finishing it..."

Sorry, but that really bugged me, and after being brought up a third time, I felt I should address the fact that he isn't in the wrong, you are.

The real problem here is that software companies are getting paranoid and are chasing shadows when it comes to piracy.

By implementing big-brother creations such as steam, Valve is making it harder for legit users, where warezers are not affected at all. Such oppressive measures may drive people to pirate the game out of spite.



Nothing can be done to stop it. It is inevitable that software will be copied and distributed, regardless of any protections that can be implemented. There is always a way, finding a weakness is only a matter of time.

ahahahahahahahahahahah bums get a ****in life HOOLLLLLLA

I like Steam

one, I am on dial-up and i can easly wai for downloads to finish.

two, if valve was to ever go out of buissness or half-life two is put in the bargain bins (wouldn't matter as valve does their own bargain releases) then there would probably be a fix released.

Anyway, you should realise that a company like valve does think ahead in the long term.

You forget. Not everyone is you. Not everyone has the hours to wait for a game to either download and install, or update. I am one of those people. If it's going to take more than an hour or an hour and a half, and I don't feel I need it that badly, I kill the download. It hogs my bandwidth, thus slowing me down, thus making it take longer for pages to load, or files to upload to my sever, etc., etc., etc.

And don't suggest I get broadband. Not everyone can get it, or can afford to get it. I'll point out now, that the one of the many reasons we haven't is because our dial-up connection is completely free. We never see a bill, and neither does anyone else. We aren't stealing. It's slightly complicated.

Then buy the hard copy and spend the one to two hours downloading the verified files and updates.

... well I think I'll just stick to the online version if it's alright with you.

Which is what I'd intend to do with HL2. I wasn't refering to it, however.

When I updated HL, Opposing Force, and Team Fortress Classic, each took about 6 hours. I'm online at least three or four hours a night, and most of those took two nights. That's updating from the Platinum Pack. I would have done Counter-Strike, but it would've taken even longer, and I don't play CS (I don't like it), so I felt it was pointless.

So for me, updating things like that is a pain. Granted I was more than likely VERY far behind in updates, but still, delivery seemed to crawl along at an amazingly slow rate, and it sucked bandwidth.

After updating though, I can say that I feel that doing ANY of them was pointless. The only HL based game I play is DoD. Even that is sparse. I tried playing the HL campaign through Steam once, and decided to just reinstall my Platinum Pack. Through Steam it sucked. Really aged graphics, they killed immersion with the loading screen, and it seemed very slow.

Meh. I'm not very fond of Steam.

Crazy, I've NEVER EVER has to wait longer then 5 minutes to download even the full version of CS, DOD or any of Valves games, even the validation of the HL2 files only took 4 mins. If that.

I must be one lucky SOB.

On dial-up?

He said on dial up, so you know :p

So what you do is you go to the properties of the games you dont play, and you turn off its automatic updates.
Easy.

... That helps me how, exactly? I never have Steam running except when I want to play DoD. I updated all of my games because it was suggested that I do so. After seeing them, I feel like I wasted my time and that what I had was better. Automatic Updates are NOT a problem.

...
YOu just said it was a waste of time updating them all, so I told you how to turn off the updating.
It may be a little late to avoid all the initial updates now, but if you had done that in the first place you would'nt have had this complaint.
If you do it now then you can avoid un-necassary updates in the fute, THAT is how it helps you.;
As for doing it becuase it was suggested... thats just silly, if I dont play game x ever, I'm not going to download every update for it just because my mindless computer says so.

1. My computer did NOT suggest I update my games. I was told here, on these boards, SEVERAL times, that I should acquire Steam and update my games to their latest version. I only decided to do so, after I got the urge to play DoD and it was made apparent that the ONLY way it was ever going to run, reguardless of if I wanted to play online or not, was if I had Steam.
2. So I ran updates. After everything finished, I ran the games to make sure the installs and updates were good (as in, everything worked and nothing was borked).
3. Upon running the games, and seeing what Steam had done with and to them, I decided I had effectively wasted my time in downloading those updates. How could I know before hand? What I was seeing that I didn't like, would have never occured to me to ask.
4. The only game I play through Steam, as I said, is DoD. Even that is rare now. Why? Not because the game sucks, I find it to be damned impressive. It's because I suck that badly at playing it. I enjoyed playing it the first few times even though I was getting my *** handed to me. But after playing it a few more times, and continuing to get my *** handed to me over, and over, and over again, I stopped having fun. I realize this is a game that takes awhile to get good at, but being shot by people I can't even see, from places I've looked at 6 or more times before moving out, even when I'm doing my very best to stay low, gets discouraging quickly.
5. In case you missed a sentance up there, I said that, "Unless I'm playing DoD, Steam is NOT running." That means it's never on. At all. Ever. It can't update. Why? Because it's not ON. Autoupdaters don't work too well when the software isn't running.
   [/list=1]
   
   Is that slightly more clear? I could've sworn it was pretty clear to begin with.

Geez man, calm down.
I am so SO SO sorry I ever tried to help you. I will try to avoid doing anything nice for you in the future, happy?

I am calm. I think there was just a large breech of understanding there between us for a bit.

I remember a time when I didn't have a 3d accelerator.

I remember when games began to require the aforementioned hardware item.

I remember being pissed off.

I didn't buy games for a while.

I foolishly thought that the industry would change to suit me, and they would always have software rendering available as a choice.

After a few months I wanted to play games again.

I bought a 3d accelerator.

You will eventually learn to live with steam, however inconveniant it may seem at this time.

this man speaks the truth.

My dad is playing it through again.

Other than the loading bars and the menu screens, steam didn't change anything graphically, so I don't get what you mean when you say "what steam had done with and to them"

Now, granted, I don't like HL's new menu either, but I don't think it's bad enough to say that steam ruined the game...

But really, your same complaints could be said about patches on dialup. A game releases a huge patch and you have to spend a whole day downloading it on dialup, and you don't even notice any changes when it's installed. It sucks, yeah, but the problem isn't specific to steam.

Most games have the same issue with an update being released every once in a while, and the dialup users are aggrevated because of the filesize and lack of significant changes. But I don't see how your issues can be blamed on steam; the only games it forces you to update are the games you tell it to update, and if steam didn't exist you would have had to update DoD just as much anyway...

On a side note, this really made me laugh.

A_Big_Fat_CoW speaks the truth, as does Bill.
Mikus is probably lying though, who ever heard of a dad that plays video games? That just brings the coolness factor of video gaming down. Old people aren't allowed to play, its just not cool if old people do it! :p