Valve Releases Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update

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  • TheLexMachine
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2013
    • 420

    #31
    Originally posted by rabcor View Post
    Half Life 3 when?
    Whenever they decide to finish the game they have or do a new one, for VR, which hasn't and never will, catch on. They have a working version of HL3, in their company network, but it's just not finished. The reason we never got it years ago, is because they felt the game was nothing innovative and they decided to abandon it for L4D.

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    • QwertyChouskie
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2017
      • 637

      #32
      Originally posted by rabcor View Post
      Half Life 3 when?
      Supposedly, there's something relates to half-life currently in development.Might be HL3, might be a sequel to HL:Alyx, who knows. Honestly, I'm more hoping for a new official Portal game, but sadly there doesn't seem to be any publicly-visible movement in that regard. I guess the upcoming Portal: Desolation fan game will have to fill in, though that is also a ways out. AHHHH I JUST WANT GAME but I know they need time to cook but AHHHH I JUST WANT GAME

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      • Developer12
        Senior Member
        • Dec 2019
        • 1574

        #33
        Originally posted by varikonniemi View Post

        Why not allow offline play? It's a disease of the ages and even valve is infected.
        Valve basically INVENTED online-only DRM. Steam is and always has been.

        When steam came out everyone had a shitfit over how it was DRM. The only reason people use Steam at all is because Valve made it mandatory to play Half Life 2. Even if you bought a "physical copy" in a store, those 4 CDs were useless frisbees unless you installed steam and let it call home.

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        • Jabberwocky
          Senior Member
          • Aug 2011
          • 1205

          #34
          Awesome! More studios should do this.

          Originally posted by Developer12 View Post

          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.
          I won't ever forget the day we loaded multiple CRTs into an old broken small car and drove to someone's office to download HL2. I still had 56k dial-up.

          You're right initially the CDs made the downloads smaller but it became useless after the first few updates.

          Welcome to Phoronix.

          I'm not sure if this is true for HL2 multiplayer even when on LAN. It's still cool to be able to play it if Valve servers vanish but you will still miss some features.

          If you're someone like me who enjoys half-life co-op then it's a showstopper. I'm sure it's fine for most people though. I actually played it earlier this year with some kids. I just had to show them half-life and playing on their own would have been too difficult or boring for most of this specific group (GenZ / GenAlpha).

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          • rabcor
            Senior Member
            • Apr 2013
            • 1366

            #35
            Originally posted by QwertyChouskie View Post

            Supposedly, there's something relates to half-life currently in development.Might be HL3, might be a sequel to HL:Alyx, who knows. Honestly, I'm more hoping for a new official Portal game, but sadly there doesn't seem to be any publicly-visible movement in that regard. I guess the upcoming Portal: Desolation fan game will have to fill in, though that is also a ways out. AHHHH I JUST WANT GAME but I know they need time to cook but AHHHH I JUST WANT GAME
            there were i think plans to make hl3 and portal 3 the same game at some point, it would be interesting to see them mixed.

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            • Developer12
              Senior Member
              • Dec 2019
              • 1574

              #36
              And how are you going to install these games when the steam servers shut down?

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              • Developer12
                Senior Member
                • Dec 2019
                • 1574

                #37
                Originally posted by chithanh View Post
                "I thought for a whole five minutes about it, and could not come up with a solution for this problem, so it won't ever happen!"
                C'mon, it is not that hard to imagine how Valve's provisions look like.

                There is nothing stopping Valve from releasing a Steam client which does not require connection to Steam servers. In fact this is how in case of bankruptcy, Valve could ensure that people can still play their games.

                Then additionally set aside funds for prepaid hosting of the game files for one year and traffic costs for (game size * number of owners), and everyone is covered with all their games.
                Could do, or they could just be like GoG and not use DRM in the first place. But they don't. And they won't.

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