[Maxvla]

"Note: some Steam-enabled single-player games (such as Half-Life 2) purchased at a retail store will allow offline play until the user decides to play online or enable other Steam functionality. From that point on, an Internet connection will be required."

"At a LAN party, this means that Internet access must be available to every machine on which Steam games are being played."

*warning- linked forum thread contains some bad language but is a good read for those of you interested in Half Life 2's single and multiplayer abilities/requirements.*

http://www.genmay.com/showthread.php...5&pagenumber=1

Personally I think this is a load of crap. Valve is now requiring players to be connected to the internet at all times when playing Half Life 2 no matter if you are playing single player or multiplayer online. This includes Lan parties of which most do not have a dedicated internet connection. The lan I go to every month does not have an internet connection so we would not be able to play this EVER at our lan.

This is their glorious plan to curb piracy but in doing this, they are inciting even more people to try to crack the game.

your thoughts?

[Banyan]

lame, as is the general direction of most of the devs out there. they just alienated a huge part of their potential market, wtf do they think, people on dial-up are gonna go on to play this game every single time?

these co's are actually feeding that big dark scene out there.

[Gnerma]

Ya know I bet you both (and everyone else who will post in this thread ranting) will buy the game anyway.

[mtnbikerjerry]

But if there is enough created backlash or publicity, than maybe Valve can make some last minute decisions to change this.

Come on people...

[Gnerma]

With what, an online petition? ROFL

Ugh, I swear I am going to be reading so many rants in the next few days... They will likely take it out a year or so after release. Hmm or two or three

One good thing about this though is they will likely use it for multiplayer cheat protection.

And people complained about Windows XP.. how about ETERNAL ACTIVATION

[Banyan]

Originally posted by Gnerma
With what, an online petition? ROFL

no, by not lining their pockets with money. not buying the f'ing game.

[J2T]

If that is true, being a 56k user myself, I can gaurantee you I wont be buying the game. If they remove that "feature", than I may consider it. That would be a bad move IMO to have it that way.

[WeaponX6X]

It'll only be so long until someone cracks it...

[AC Slater]

I guarantee that there will be some kind of crack for this, as this is stupid. I can see the stopping of piracy, but this will just make people want to defeat it even more.

[DaveSauce]

Well, keep in mind that many games have included anti-piracy, which was removed soon after the game was released in a patch.

There's an EA game that I can't think of the name for that blacklisted all Lite-On drives (due to their ability to bypass protection), and thus people who legitimately bought it had to resort to getting a no-CD crack (my brother). This issue was later fixed, because they realized they did something really stupid.

If I remember correctly, there was recently a patch for UT2k3 that removed the cd-in-tray requirement for playing the game. I'm not sure of the reason, and I really can't think that it has anything to people objecting to it. But, nevertheless, it is an example of an anti-piracy feature being removed.

Something as stupid as requiring the internet for multi-play is bound to be removed in a patch. However, I am surprised because, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't HL allow up to 5 identical CD keys on a LAN game? That sure is a far cry from requiring valve to spy on you in order to play even on a LAN.

Now my question is this: Will Steam be an option, or will it be a requirement, for multi-player? I know that valve really wants to push steam. But, that quote merely says that for Steam, you will be required to be online.

And I also agree that there WILL be a hack for this soon after the game comes out. Perhaps fairly quickly (i.e. days), due to the anticipation and probable high demand of the game. That is of course not to say that I intend to use such a crack, but the fact of the matter is the second a game is released, the crackers immidiately start working on it.

Gnerma, i'm going to dig up that e-mail addy for valve that you have...i have a few questions that I want to ask (mind you, not flames. just general inquiries about how multi-player and steam will work).

EDIT:

I just e-mailed Gabe. I asked him a few questions regarding steam, the "internet connectivity requirement," and some other miscellanious questions. If he replies, I will post it.

And thanks for clearing that up TPC. I wish BF1942 would do the same....it's real annoying to have to wait for my cd drive to spin up between maps, heh.

[ThePerfectCore]

If I remember correctly, there was recently a patch for UT2k3 that removed the cd-in-tray requirement for playing the game. I'm not sure of the reason, and I really can't think that it has anything to people objecting to it. But, nevertheless, it is an example of an anti-piracy feature being removed.

It was dropped because enough of the community agreed that having the CD in the drive was pointless, when Epic could just verify the CD key.

I wish more game companies would follow Epic's example.

[Flashfx2]

Is there anyway that we could be misunderstanding the statement? If not I think that it is rediculous. 99% of the time I have internet connection but what happens if my school network goes down? So now I can't even play single player games? I think that is b/s I really don't think I will buy the game. I feel especially sorry for people who have dial-up.

[BIB]

O CRAP IF THEY DO THAT, THEY JUST LOST ALOT OF MONEY, INCLUDING MINE.

[DaveSauce]

Originally posted by Flashfx2
Is there anyway that we could be misunderstanding the statement? If not I think that it is rediculous. 99% of the time I have internet connection but what happens if my school network goes down? So now I can't even play single player games? I think that is b/s I really don't think I will buy the game. I feel especially sorry for people who have dial-up.

That's exactly why I e-mailed gabe, to see if this is a misunderstanding or not. I personally feel that the quote provided says next-to-nothing, but time will tell..

O CRAP IF THEY DO THAT, THEY JUST LOST ALOT OF MONEY, INCLUDING MINE.

shhhh.....no yelling please....heh.

[Malakai]

FYI people, this is not just for HL2.

Steam is going to be required for any valve game or mod (Half Life 1 and all mods) with in the next 2 weeks. WON is being taken down and replaced with steam.

The main issues I have:
1) External server brosers (All Seeing Eye, which I paid for) as of yet will not work. Steam needs to load half life, and you cannot get a steamID otherwise.
2) Now, all HL games require a net connection to play single player or lan.
3) Steam scans every file on your computer, puts then in a database file, and sends that info out to the net. However benevolent valve's intentions are (anti-piracy and cheat), this is just no good.
(more info about that here:
http://www.natural-selection.org/for...1&t=46747&st=0 )
4) You cannot get get the newest patches to HL and CS without steam.

So basically, we (the half life mods comminity) is getting royally screwed. We have the choice of using steam or quitting all HL mods.
I love Natural Selection, but I'm not going to have valve alienate me like this. I have been a long time customer (I even bought CS retail when it came out back in the day) and do not appreciate these attempts to control what I do with software I have legally purchased.

Not being able to use external server browsers also royally ****es me off. I paid for ASE because it is the server browser I like. I don't want the one valve chooses for me, I want the one I want.
It seems valve is taking a very microsoftian viewpoint of software.

If steam is not either "fixed", as in completely overhauled, or made optional and not required, then I won't be buying HL2. I probably won't be able to continue to play HL1 mods either. Which really sucks because NS is my favorite game.

[Flashfx2]

Valve = Microsoft of the gaming industry?

[Gnerma]

Originally posted by DaveSauce
If I remember correctly, there was recently a patch for UT2k3 that removed the cd-in-tray requirement for playing the game. I'm not sure of the reason, and I really can't think that it has anything to people objecting to it. But, nevertheless, it is an example of an anti-piracy feature being removed.

Well I think its more like Epic is just cool like that. They did this for the original UT with the final patch as well. So it was very likely planned from the beginning.

[CChaos]

Originally posted by BIB
O CRAP IF THEY DO THAT, THEY JUST LOST ALOT OF MONEY, INCLUDING MINE.

Be that as it may, for this to be a bad decision they actually would have to lose more from people not buying the game than they currently lose from people pirating it. It just goes to show the extent to which the internet ****s up traditional business methods and forces companies to "get creative".

I'm not saying I support this, I'm just not suprised.

[john240sx]

Originally posted by BIB
O CRAP IF THEY DO THAT, THEY JUST LOST ALOT OF MONEY, INCLUDING MINE.

then you can use the money you would have spent to buy a keyboard with a working caps-lock key


considering that i only have about a month (maybe less) left with my broadband, and no option other then dial up, there's no way i can play this game. i wasn't counting on playing MP but i figured SP would be good enough until broadband is available at the new house. oh well, there's hundered's of new games that are either out or will be out soon that i can play

[Chris]

bad move by valve if you ask me, but still the actuall game content its self should be excellent, we fingers crossed anyway. I can see why they are doing it, but honestly that sayign come to mind that i cant remember....err cut your nose to spite your face or somethign along those lines. Hmm roll on Doom III!