Pirates don't have an excuse anymore.

[Sidewinder]

Did anybody see how much HL2 is now?


HL2:$9.95
HL:Ep1:$9.95



take that you dirty pirates.

 

[Aldenhelm]

Dont you just love our capatalist socioty?

 

[Remus]

I'm sorry but I don't think you understand. A game could cost only $1, it doesn't matter. The metality is, why buy when you don't have too...

 

[Xendance]

I'm sorry but I don't think you understand. A game could cost only $1, it doesn't matter. The metality is, why buy when you don't have too...

I think he meant the pirates who could not afford Half Life 2 when it was alot dearer.

 

[Planetary]

Pirates do still have one final argument that won't go away; Steam being mandatory along the lines of "You gotta have it!"
For me Steam's not a problem, but it could quite easily get on one's nerves if one lets it.
If there was a little check mark somewhere called "Disable Steam" then they'd not have an excuse.

 

[Shasta]

There is NO excuse for piracy. It is a conscious decision to break the law. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's to have a game without spending money, sometimes it's to avoid the hassle of something like Steam, etc etc. The word "excuse" is derived from the term "to be excused". There is NO being excused for consciously breaking the law. They are not doing it to feed themselves or their family, or any other "noble" reason. They are doing it to have something without paying for it.

If there was a little check mark somewhere called "Disable Steam" then they'd not have an excuse.

Tick this to disable the copy protection? Are you high?

 

[Planetary]

No what I meant was what if your ipod didn't let you put the songs on it on your computer or stereo or whatever you want to play music with and just summoned the RIAA's lawyers. (You can tell I read Slashdot). Steam is essentially a form of DRM, like what the Zune and Vista and all recent Microsoft products have, only it's not so obtrusive and annoying as MS stuff. I'm trying to say that although Steam should ultimately be necessary to get the game, running it every time just to play something could turn people off

And of course, when the free version of something is more convenient then the official real-money-bought version, lots of people choose convenience over morals. Though I'm not one of those.

 

[Operational]

The only annoyance I had with Steam was its tempermental Offline Mode, which I'm happy to say was fixed a while ago.

The prices currently are
Half-Life 2 - $20
Episode One - $10
Half-Life 2 + Episode One - $25

Still amazing value, I did a double take when I saw it.

Something strange I did notice while checking the price

 

[giant384]

sometimes the reason for pirating is that some companies sell games that may not be as good until you at least see a demo of it. without playing at least 5 mins of part of the game then i wouldn't want to consider buying it. i would rather download it then waste money on a game that i may not like.

 

[Beerdude26]

Steam is essentially a form of DRM, like what the Zune and Vista and all recent Microsoft products have, only it's not so obtrusive and annoying as MS stuff. I'm trying to say that although Steam should ultimately be necessary to get the game, running it every time just to play something could turn people off

*DRM keeps you from copying a game. With Steam, you don't even have to. Just remember your username and password and you're set for life.

*Steam is a game buying service at rather cheap prices, and you get the game instantly and permanently.

*Having to run Steam every time to play a game seems a bit dumb. Just keep it running in the background. Hey, it even updates games automatically! I like it how I don't have to go around looking for a patch on the internet, then realize that it's the North American one, get the proper one, and notice it's actually already outdated. And if you don't want to let it update, you just select the "don't update this game" option.

*If you don't like having to connect to an authentication server every time you start Steam, have it run in offline mode.

I could go on for ages, but these are pretty much the biggest issues and responses.

 

[Sidewinder]

I like steam...but I do understand how hard it must be for 56k users though.

 

[Ennui]

I hated Steam three or four years ago, when it actually made sense / was reasonable to hate it because it was ridden with annoying glitches and bugs. It's been fine for a long time, though... if you don't like copy-protection, don't play video games.

I buy games still, but I pirate some too... it really depends more on how much I like the game / developer. Steam is great because I know that Valve makes a lot more than they would if I bought it retail.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Yes, very true, Ennui.

 

[Beerdude26]

I like steam...but I do understand how hard it must be for 56k users though.

Indeed. But then again, most games that have big patches will be a pain for 56K'ers too.

 

[ríomhaire]

I like steam...but I do understand how hard it must be for 56k users though.

Not that bad anymore. Updating Steam takes a while and some games can take an hour before they're playable but because Valve (finally) released an update a while ago that allows games to be played before they're fully updated it's alot better.

 

[Link]

For ****s sake. I am ****ing sick and tired of the anti DRM crowd attacking steam. I hate most DRM, because it is obtrusive, and blocks you doing things that you have the right to do. Steam is the exception. So long as you have an internet connection, you can install all your steam based games on as many PC's as you like. Yes, it makes it a tad tricky if you are trying to share your account with friends, but you shouldn't be trying to do that. Basically, if you have persistant internet and a legit account, its nothing but a benefit.

Steam is the closest thing we have to a DRM system that works.

 

[Ennui]

Truth.

The only people that don't like Steam are the ones that don't want to pay for the games, and as their opinion is irrelevant, it's fine. Aside from that, the only people who legitimately can dislike Steam are those who don't have internet at home, but I still think it's ridiculous to be annoyed about that because 1) the box says that an internet connection is required, 2) there's practically no-one without internet that would play a serious computer game like HL, it's too small a minority to accomodate given the copy protection problems that would appear if they did, and 3) you just need to be online ONCE, then you can run it in offline mode.

 

[Planetary]

You're right Link. Besides, if one wants to try the game before they buy, there's always the demo, isn't there? I believe I once read a review by someone who said that when the game was first released, there was no free demo! Can someone confirm whether or not that's true? Games should always have a free trial of sorts, I believe it's called "shareware" or something like that. Doom 1 did it pretty successfully.

 

[Ennui]

There was no demo originally, I believe it came out a little while after the game itself was released.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

I don't like Steam but it's a lot better when compared to Starforce which destroyes your computer. The things i don't like is that offline mode never works when i want it to and if Steam stops working i am locked out of my games this has happened loads of times.

 

[Operational]

That used to annoy me too but offline mode has been fixed, I can trust that it works now.

 

[Danimal]

Steam used to piss me off a lot, especially with it's old friends system, wiped every damn time:

You have no friends.

Insulted me, it did!

 

[CyberPitz]

I love Steam to death. Have from the beginning, always will. It never treated me wrong, and it gave me a central location for all my games! And the way patches work is just PERFECT.

Now, I still do pirate games alot. I only buy a game if I'm going to put at least 30 hours into it. If I get bored of the game with the first 2 hours...then it's a good thing I didn't buy it. Because I don't have the money to waste of shitty games.

 

[Dekstar]

I have no qualms with steam. It's always worked completely fine for me, and I've never hated it when my internet went down and I couldn't play my games (though that is a downside, just not one I really think about). One thing that bugs me, however, is that it could be more versatile. VALVe are slowly adding extra functions to it (like the media that was added recently).
But, and I hate to bring these guys into it, but the hacking community has spent not even a relatively small amount of time creating a client that not only mimicks steam in every way shape and form, but have also added some extra functions that I personally would like to see, such as being able to ad non-steam games through .exe shortcuts to the load list, proper offline mode which would work whenever it's needed, perhaps adding a key to the registry whenever it's closed after being online, so it can see when it was last online then advise (not force) the user to go online in search for updates at their discretion.

And not relevant but they should take Hack-Cams (though that seems to have turned into vapourware) stance to cheating, looking for the after-effects instead of specialised cheat signatures. VAC2 is handled serverside, and should read a memory dump (perhaps) on connection to a server, or after a time-limit, and cross-reference it with a clean version of their DLL's.
Something like that anyway, I'm no coder, but if VAC works by someone downloading cheats and having to feed them through a system, then clearly it should be updated.

 

[ríomhaire]

What are the problems people have with offline mode? I've never had a problem with it.

 

[Rapstah]

That you can't play online!

Nah, I haven't had any problems with it either. Saves my life on holidays.

 

[Operational]

What are the problems people have with offline mode? I've never had a problem with it.

Before it was fixed it was pretty tempermental, I had many a gaming session ruined* because we didn't have an Internet connection and at least one person couldn't get it going.

* well kinda, we did move on to other games but it was annoying not being able to play CSS, GMod, etc

 

[heer0]

Did anybody see how much HL2 is now?


HL2:$9.95
HL:Ep1:$9.95



take that you dirty pirates.

That could be very cheap in USA, what about the other countries? This converted to my currency is around 20, which in other hand is around 3 working days payment (in the minimal salary, around 10% of it!!!). Cheap may be for you, but not for all. Nevertheless, HL2, Ep1, and Ep2 are great games and they deserve their money. I had to confess though. When HL2 came out, i was waiting so long for this game, the pirate copy of HL2 was available on the net even before our local stores offered the retail version, so i could'n hold myself not to take a look. But now i have both HL2 and EP2 retail and waiting for EP2...

 

[Narvi]

It's relatively cheap in my currency. I think I'll buy Episode 1 now...

*hastily discards pirated copy*