Half-Life 2's EULA is Illegal

[o_catzeyes93]

How is it that the requirement of internet connection is not clear enough to the buyer? Whether I have dsl, cable or modem connection I still have internet connection and I CAN authenticate the product thus unlocking it so I can play offline. How would you say they should have specified this? "Must have internet connection to authenticate your product" ? Trust me, even THAT would not have been enough for many.

And why is everyone is crying over steam being installed on their system?... I didnt hear anyone crying over the won portion of the hl game being installed so people could play online, but now that steam is installed and viewed completely separate from the game, NOW people cry about it? common ... arent we getting a little demanding here? Plus, the installation requirements included the total amount of harddrive needed... this included the steam authentication engine.

[o_lithium]

The problem is ... you probably tried steam at it's early stage. The word "OMFGWTFBBQ?!" applied on it , it killed a part of TFC me thinks. The program was un-stable ... it's still is ... i could log-on 1/100 of the times i tried. Steam ain't that bad when it works. It pissed off a lot of people. What i don't know is if "Valve's Contract ended with Won" , how come could we still play 1.5 ?

[o_thedarkone]

Originally Posted by billdoor

It's not possible to generate valid online keys for Half-LIfe 2. The most you can do is plant a trojan and steal somone's or buy a game and return it.

Or people could just open the box in-store, copy the CD-key from the sticker on one of the paper CD sleeves, and walk away.

[o_billdoor]

Originally Posted by TheDarkOne

Or people could just open the box in-store, copy the CD-key from the sticker on one of the paper CD sleeves, and walk away.

You can, but then the store have an obligation to refund your money since they effectively sold you a used or broken product.

[o_billdoor]

Originally Posted by CatzEyes93

How is it that the requirement of internet connection is not clear enough to the buyer? Whether I have dsl, cable or modem connection I still have internet connection and I CAN authenticate the product thus unlocking it so I can play offline. How would you say they should have specified this? "Must have internet connection to authenticate your product" ? Trust me, even THAT would not have been enough for many.

The problem is that a lot of people are on college networks that filter out steam traffic. They don't want to play multiplayer, but they can't even decrypt the single player game. Technically, they have internet connections, but they aren't able to play the game. There's also the problem that Steam cancels its offline mode whenever you have an internet connection, even if that connection is filtered so that Steam traffic cannot get through. This means those people have a really hard time playing single player since as soon as they connect to the internet, Steam puts their games in "online mode" which they can't play. I think they may even have trouble switching to offline mode because their ISP blocks the traffic they need to do that. Not Valve's fault perhaps, but they still need a clearer warning about the type of internet connection you need to play single player -- the ports and protocols that need to be unfiltered for example.

[o_catzeyes93]

I can see that point. With all of this, I am sure the makers will have learned a couple of things with this new revolutionary way of delivering a product, and will adjust accordingly in their future releases.

[o_ekim]

It's not possible to generate valid online keys for Half-LIfe 2

Why is that, exactly?

[o_billdoor]

Originally Posted by ekiM

Why is that, exactly?

Well, maybe I am a little out in saying it's not possible. It's very unlikely, possibly to the point of being impossible to achieve in the average lifetime. I don't know the exact algorithm used to generate HL2 keys but it probably has a range so large that the number of leigitimate, online-playable keys that haven't already been registered is totally insignificant. Assuming Valve have some rudimentary timeout system to prevent people checking more than a few keys per second against their auth servers, the chances of finding a valid online key should be infinitesimal.

[o_ekim]

OK fair enough, it isn't feasible. "Impossible" is a pretty strong word though!