[kupoartist]

Originally Posted by dan da man

Edit- Why can't you play HL2 without the internet?

Valve recently confirmed that when you install Half-Life 2, you'll be prompted to set up a Steam (their content delivery system app). The installer then authenticates your Half-Life 2 CD-Key and what have you with the Steam master servers. There is no legal way round this - all versions of Half-Life 2 have to authenticate with Valve's Steam servers to unlock the game. It prevents piracy (though someone could presumably modify the .exe to skip the step, which would be illegal - but i'm pretty sure that it's not as easy as that anyway) but at the same time, if you can't connect to the internet during installation, you can't install the game... Thankfully, you don't need to have the connection active anytime after installation (Unless you want to play an online game of course).

I'm not sure how all this will affect sales of the game. On the plus side, if it's difficult to pirate, most people will have to pay to play. But that's also a potential negative until a proper demo is out so that people can try before they buy. As for the necessity of an Net connection, It sets me wondering. I guess if you're the kind of person who has a decent PC so you could enjoy HL2 in the first place, you'll probably also have a net connection... That does a lot to show how "niche" this game will be (ok, that's a bit harsh - the original still sold 10 million copies, which is pretty good for a PC game). The latest rumours say that there may not even be a console version of the game after all... that they're holding it back till PS3 and XBox2.