Home Forums Soap Box Half-Life 2: Aftermath – STEAM ONLY

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    • #4067
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      What do you folks think of this. Valve are releasing an expansion pack for half life 2 but its only available via STEAM.

      heres an article about the expansion pack. Click

      It looks cool, lets be honest there is very little that valve do that isn’t cool, but the whole steam dependancy thing is a bit annoying.

      I understand that they are trying to rid themselves of publishers and have complete creative control over their own IP and also defeat piracy but its head-wrecking to have to download the expansion through a system thats shaky at best.

      Most likely it is installed directly from steam onto the customers harddrive, What happens if the customer needs to format their harddrive or whats to buy a completely new PC (not everybody has the resources to remove their existing harddrive and place it into another PC). The customer won’t have a disk copy of it on a disk like they do with all their other favorite games, will we have to download it again from steam and pay for the product a second time on our credit cards?

      What are peoples thoughts on the matter?

    • #20565
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      i understand why they use STEAM and it many pros, but for me it has huge cons….. and in the end it HL has been pirated… a friend of mine bought HL 2, got sick of STEAM crap and just downloaded a cracked version! the same will happen with is expansion, it will be cracked… and in the end some people that would have bought it will not because of STEAM.

      but all that does not matter, the most important thing is did they make more money etc this way or not…. only valve knows

    • #20571
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I had no trouble with Steam, I did the whole thing through download, and for large games, they downloaded pretty fast.
      I believe you can have the same Steam account on at 3 computers and as well as that, right clicking on a game in Steam will give you the option to create backups of whichever games you want, allowing you to burn and transport them easily.

    • #20573
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      sorry i forgot to say, what about people without out BB? i live in the village in UU and i can’t even get dail-up!

    • #20574
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Guess you are not part of their target market then…

    • #20737
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I like the STEAM only approach – more money for developers.

      However, I don’t have interent at home so…here it comes….I have not played HL2 yet :(

    • #20740
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Steam only ever caused problems for me. I had it installed on my laptop and while it worked fine when I was working in the office, when I went into college it would alwys try to update and get stuck with the college’s firewall. Then when I got home I’d have to connect through dial up just so it would let me back in the game.

      Good idea, but a bit ahead of its time…..

    • #20741
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Hrm, thats not really Steams fault. The ports for Steam were closed here in DCU until Games Soc made an agreeement with CSD (Computer Services Department) to have them opened so we could update our copies for Lab Gaming.

      I think Steam is a great idea really, the only downside was that it was the first service of its kind so they were going to have to experience all of the hiccups that such a new service would have. Hopefully future releases on the service and indeed other servies such as Game xStream which 3D Realms are using for Duke wont have these kind of problems….

    • #20748
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Despite my rant at the start of this tread I actually agree with what they are aiming to do with steam but I just find it annoying. These are all probably teething problems people have had with a new system like steam. I agree with steam making more money for their efforts, the deserve to make as much as the possibly can for the amazing work they do.

      But Half life 2 was (and is for some people who still haven’t played it…cough*.kyotokid*cough!) the most awaited pc title ever.Using steam to get Half life 2 started was like waiting in the que to see star wars episode 1 and having to jump through fire hoops and do hand stands at the same time, and then do the same thing whilst juggling knives to see the episode 2.

    • #20769
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      …but didnt it feel all the more satisfying as you fired it up for the first time? :lol:

    • #21539
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      An update on this, Aftermath is going to be retail also its been confirmed..
      http://eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=59354
      Hopefully there won’t be any major slippages this time! :D

    • #22119
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Its more than STEAM…its xStream.

      The “x” makes it sound cool….and so does this feature:

      “3D Realms choose to work with Game xStream because their service is not only highly flexible, meaning that a whole list of features can be either used or not, but because it allows what in my opinion is the most important feature of all, and one that Steam does not support: A player can buy a game, and within minutes start playing it, without needing to download the entire game. For example, I can start downloading the Doom 3 demo — one of the most content intense games currently available — and within six minutes I’m playing it as if I have the full game, racing like a madman through the opening level, while the game continues to download itself in the background. (You can not catch up to where new content isn’t available.) ”

      http://www.gamexstream.com/

      http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2005/06/digital_distrib.html

    • #22120
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Isn’t that similiar to what BT and Wireplay tried to do in the UK with the introduction of ADSL? As far as I know it never worked to well… :?

    • #22124
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      The Phantom is moving in on that territory too!

    • #22144
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Isn’t that similiar to what BT and Wireplay tried to do in the UK with the introduction of ADSL? As far as I know it never worked to well… :?[/quote:65c34124c1]

      Their main line up was a Tomb Raider game, what hope had they

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