Valve Releases Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update

[Developer12]

Because of the DRM inflicted by the Steam DRM Platform, this is also an unspecified time limited demo. No thanks!

Not enough gets said about this these days. When HL2 came out it was a big deal that the only way to play it was putting up with DRM. (Except on consoles like the 360, though I could be wrong?) If you bought a boxed copy, all those CDs it came with were useless frisbees without an internet connection and a copy of steam.

VALVe have made some vague references to an "emergency plan" or "contingency" to enable.........something, who knows what. If the company suddenly died overnight I doubt you'd be able to install the games anymore like you can with a downloaded GOG archive, and considering the shitpile that is Steam's "offline mode" I doubt you'd be able to play most of the already-installed ones for very long either.

If we're honest, all those mumblings were a total fairytale being spun by VALVe to mollify steam buyers and keep them buying, without worrying about whether there was an end-of-life plan.

[Developer12]

Am i getting it right that they grant access to it for free, but will remove said access when the promotion ends? If so that would be absolutely disgusting. When rockstar did similar promotion fro GTA 5 they granted ownership to the title to all who registered during the promotion time!

From the article it seems you get to keep playing as long as the steam servers continue to work. Could be a year, could be 100.

[varikonniemi]

From the article it seems you get to keep playing as long as the steam servers continue to work. Could be a year, could be 100.

Why not allow offline play? It's a disease of the ages and even valve is infected.

[Kiba-kun]

Because of the DRM inflicted by the Steam DRM Platform, this is also an unspecified time limited demo. No thanks!

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam#Valve

Half-Life 2 is one of the DRM-free games on Steam, there are thousands of them. You know nothing.

[MastaG]

Just started playing from scratch in my Steam Deck.
I runs perfectly fine, but I didn't check whether it was running the native Linux version or the Windows version through Proton.
I only kinda wish they'd redid the textures on a higher resolution though.

[kpedersen]

VALVe have made some vague references to an "emergency plan" or "contingency" to enable.........something, who knows what. If the company suddenly died overnight I doubt you'd be able to install the games anymore like you can with a downloaded GOG archive.

Indeed. If the company goes bankrupt, there will be no-one to pay the developers to create the official DRM "cracks" required for the customers to play their collection. This just won't happen and Valve knows it.

and considering the shitpile that is Steam's "offline mode" I doubt you'd be able to play most of the already-installed ones for very long either.

I believe Steam requires connection to the DRM servers every few months. Certainly when the hardware ages and needs replacing, the DRM will be retriggered because the hardware profile hash will have changed. Its all just such a scam.

[gukin]

I installed half-life from CD and it worked, I haven't tried with my five CD deck of HL2 though.

Even with my weak-sauce 100Mb Internet access, I'll bet it downloads and installs faster than the original CDs; even on a busy Saturday night.

Now someone needs to explain what a CD is to them youngin' whippersnappers.

[smitty3268]

Am i getting it right that they grant access to it for free, but will remove said access when the promotion ends? If so that would be absolutely disgusting. When rockstar did similar promotion fro GTA 5 they granted ownership to the title to all who registered during the promotion time!

No, not at all.

Valve gives away their old games for free all the time. There's nothing nefarious going on here, they just have tons of money to burn and Half Life 2 was a major event in their company history they want to celebrate. At worst, you could say it's advertising for Steam.

[Tsih]

Time really flies, I remember getting HL2 with a coupon code that came with my new GPU 9800XT, maybe HL3 with the next 9000-series Radeons?

[ManganMan]

Well, it's rise and shine again, Mr. Freeman.