Brandon: On the half-life of Steam
So, Best Buy breaks the street date on the long awaited Half-Life 2. I buy it, as I was planning to.

I log onto my Steam account, where I have HL2 already pre-loaded. I enter my CD-KEY. It asks me for my CD. Fine, I put it in.

I wait.

I can't play.

Let me say that again. I can't even fucking play the game I just spent good money on.

It's locked, via Steam. I can't play the game that I bought until Valve says so.

I'm pissed, incredibly pissed.

Now I understand the idea behind Steam. It's a nice content delivery system, and it is good protection against piracy. But when I can't even play the game I just bought? I mean, I have an icon on my desktop for the game already. I just can't play the damn thing. I ALREADY BOUGHT IT, I'M NOT GOING TO PIRATE IT YOU BASTARDS.

I mean, come the fuck on. I got Doom 3 a day before it came out, I still bought it when it was officaily released.

And since HL2 requires Steam to authenticate, if Valve's servers just happen to be packed on release day (and believe me, they will be) how long will I have to wait to play the game that I have already paid for? A day, maybe two until the server load goes down? Or what happens when Valve goes under due to this kind of crap? I can't play Half-Life 2 anymore, because I can't use Steam.

It just annoys me, that's all...



Mood: Pissed


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