"but why must we restart steam just to update Halflife 2?"...

Why must we run Steam(ing pile of...) to play HL2 to begin with ? If people dont have issues, they wont go looking for patches. If they have issues, they used to be able to download a patch, archive to CD and when the buggy game code shagged their computer they could re-install it up to a playable state without waiting 3 days (cause Steam is on its arse again) and 4 hours (transit time) to get back up and running.

I knew it was gonna suck ass. Ever since they released CS1.6 in the early Steam betas I knew it was all gonna go wrong. I know people at Universities with T1's at their disposal that are having issues. And we trust a company to deliver a distributed content and auth system when they cant even keep and IM system (friends) up for more than a day ? We must be dumb.

Now I knew I am gonna buy the game at some point, and it was there, I was there, my debit card was there, so I bought the game, but I have NO intention of even trying to install it until I either some way of hacking the installer is released (either by Valve or by some third party), I have the time to sit down and work it out for myself or I am at a LAN party and I have to use the game to join in. I know it is gonna be a headache.

Anyone know of or feel like starting a sorryeverybody.com -esque gallery of pissed off HL2 owners ?

Am I susprised there is a cracked/hacked/leaked version out ? No, I am not (It is not hard to get the content out of the gcf) but I doubt it is the "official" HL2 binary, the leaked version from last year is more likely.