It’s November 15th, and Half Life 2 is almost here. Halo 2 flew by me, unnoticed (I’m neither a fan nor an XBox owner). Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines is but a blip on my radar. I’ll play it later. I have my newly replaced 9800PRO (which I almost screwed yesterday with a bad BIOS flash) and visions of headcrabs dancing in my head. This is a want 13 months in the making.
In February, I got my coupon for a free copy along with my exorbitantly priced Asus 9800XT. Failing to read the fine print, I didn’t notice that to get a hard copy, I needed to send ATI not only the coupon, but also the original barcode (long gone) and the original receipt (never had one). The only other option is to enter in the keycode in Steam, Valve’s content-delivery system. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll have to do that in order to play it on time. I suppose I’m somewhat justified in downloading an ISO when the release groups crack it. Not that I will *ahem*.
People who preordered the equally exorbitant Gold version of HL2 received their packages late last week. The catch is that the software requires validation from Valve’s website in order to run. Some people think this is a revolutionary new way to fight piracy. It’s not. Product activation is as easily bypassed as copy protection. The reason we haven’t seen any early releases may be because Valve kept such a tight reign on early copies. I imagine that some nerdy hacker somewhere is hex-editing his little heart out to spread illegally free gaming goodness across the globe.
Gaming companies need to start accepting the idea of software piracy and working with or around it instead of wasting their time fighting against it.
UPDATE: I feel I should point out that upon scratching the silver coating on the keycode bar of my coupon today and entering it into Steam in order to “register” HL2, I was told that my keycode is already in use. Upon consulting Steam’s help file, it seems that the only remedy is to “purchase” a new key code, something I have neither the time or inclination for. Jesus, it’s like they want me to pirate the damn game.
Since my computer’s ability to play HL2 at an acceptable level is slightly in question I am more excited about Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell expansion. More stakegun action!
I downloaded Bloodlines yesterday, if my PC handles it well I’ll purchase HL2 — once the DoD source is up and running. ;)
i can now finally put good use to my radeon x800 ^_^
I’m so pirating this motherfucker.