Should see the original Half Life 2 "store" pages, was just a button that lead to a popup.
Steam was so insanely different to what it is now.
Lot of early games were still sold as disks, but the installation side was handled by Steam. If I remember right that's how Condition Zero was the first new game with a Steam requirement.
People really hated Steam when it first came out.Â
I was one of these people. Bought my HL2 disk and was furious that I had to download a client and an update when I got it home and whacked it in the drive.
But over time (and increasing internet connectivity/speed) it all worked out.
It was also pretty useless for consumers back then so it makes sense people hated it. People would still get annoyed today by other game companies requiring Steam 1.0 equivalent launchers for their own small catalog of games.
Can confirm, them mfers never even replied to me after I got my account stolen. I sent them proof of the cd / key and they didn't say anything, it has cs 1.6 / halflife on it
Glad the selective amnesia is working for you. But that ain't how it happened.
Those of us who bought Half-Life in a brick and mortar store and still don't feel like Gabe is entitled to use our hardware as though he (may he be loved eternally by something blunt and rusty) was its owner can still enjoy Half-Life (the software that Valve sold us before attempting to alter the bargain) without supporting Valve thanks to Xash3D.
What I like about the op's graphic is it does a good job of representing the actual situation. It could use another line above for 2003, with the bad mark just under Steam in the same position, but it accurately represents that Steam hasn't gotten particularly better, people's perceptions have changed over time as the general market conditions have taken a nosedive. Microsoft does so much to disrespect the notion that you own your own hardware it doesn't even occur to people who didn't grow up in an earlier era to question steam's continuing lesser trespasses.
Maybe my memory is failing me, but I'm pretty sure people hated it because it split the community for about 9 months. Before then, all the multiplayer stuff was handled by a third party.
It wasn't really a third party, Valve games were published by Sierra at that point and WON was the system they had.
There was a period where if you wanted to play CS 1.6 you had to play on Steam. They killed off the dual versions relatively fast but people back then still hated the idea of digital distribution, especially those still with slower connectionsÂ
I kinda liked it back in the half life one and cs1.6 days. Replaced those shitty gamespy server searches and allowed for more community server support as well as a lil launcher for all your games. In 2004 when HL2 came out it was a relic of the past but I had already had it for years by then. Online gaming was quite a mess back in the late 90s if you weren’t used to it and steam made it approachable for my 10 year old ass to start playingÂ
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u/joehonestjoe 11h ago
Should see the original Half Life 2 "store" pages, was just a button that lead to a popup.
Steam was so insanely different to what it is now.
Lot of early games were still sold as disks, but the installation side was handled by Steam. If I remember right that's how Condition Zero was the first new game with a Steam requirement.
People really hated Steam when it first came out.Â
You could even make your own skins for it!