I can't get back to the quote because Steampowered is down (or at least not working right, apparently) but when asked if a connection to Steam would be required the response was, "The short answer is YES"

Thanks for the info Fang. I suppose I'll fiddle with it a bit more then. It seems to work quite well for me now that it's running - starts fast, quick load times on levels, etc. Getting into a game the very first time was frustrating though.

"Who are its enemys? Gamers. Each house that has downloaded Steam has been targeted by a Nuclear Missle."



Nuclear Missiles!!! Thank God I didn't download it. My buddy next door did though... he's such an idiot! I guess he's in for a surprise tonight... heh... moron.


Yeah it just sort of stalled out on me. Or did it? Can't tell. As for being connected, I thought it was said last Sunday that once online play or some other "functionality" of Steam was used with the single player game then a connection to Steam "would be required"?

Yea I read that, it's really bizarre. "When it is necessary"? To do what? And why for "like two weeks". If the current state of Steam is any indication, HL2 will probably be unplayable for those two weeks.

There will be a brief transition (like two weeks) when it is necessary, but then it will go away. It's a temporary issue

Two weeks! WTF? It shouldn't take them that long to catalogue all my MP3s

Even though I have all the content, apparently I can now no longer play single player HL unless I'm connected to the net. There was no warning about this when steam graciously converted all my files for me. Cute.

This was posted on that Half-Life2 thread.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Deeming [mailto:chrisdeem@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 4:16 PM
To: gaben@valvesoftware.com
Subject: Will it never cease?


I'm not sure if it will ever cease or not. The constant nagging question
that people are asking - Will Steam be required to have an internet
connection active when starting up a singleplayer game or a LAN game?

It's giving me a headache

Seen the petition yet?

Chris_D

No, it won't.

There will be a brief transition (like two weeks) when it is necessary, but
then it will go away. It's a temporary issue.

For my own interests. I don't want to be caught up in this whole Steam thing. Not having the ability the play games normally just for the sake of Gabe's profit margins... Possible spyware implications. And more... There are tons of games coming out to satisfy my interests. I don't want to change my PC gaming habits. UT2004 and Call of Duty are looking really good right now.

Steam is an attempt at making a pc like a console... end of story

I also interrupted the conversion of old files.
Now when I load steam it seems as if everything is ok. So I click on one of the games and it just says... "preparing to launch" or sumthing to that effect. I noticed if you right click on the game name and then select the "properties" option you can recalc or delete. Maybe I'll do this. Will let you know next week Friday how it went.

This thing is starting to scare me. And at the head of it all is the evil mastermind Gabe. The next Bill Gates? Perhaps I'm overreacting... perhaps not.

Maybe all the Valve ppl deserve to die? This Steam shit is just plain crap.
OR maybe they all have valves in their heads like on all those lame pictures, tha'd explain the whole Steam idea, poor fuckers.

Crap. That's some really shitty news.

NO NO, IT'S STEAM! ISN'T IT WONDERFUL?!?!? WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


(Sorry, I have to gloat a bit...)

Supporter of the "A happy fredster is a muted fredster" fanclub.

http://www.davidbowie.com

Even though I have all the content, apparently I can now no longer play single player HL unless I'm connected to the net. There was no warning about this when steam graciously converted all my files for me. Cute.

Crap. That's some really shitty news.

edit: Man, that just totally pisses me right the fuck off.

It was the best of games, it was the goddamn worst of games.
This comment was edited on Sep 12, 17:30.

I got it working last night. It converted my old full installs of HL and Op For, and after some coaxing I was able to get into HL (coaxing = restarting several times and killing it with task manager.) Jumped into a MP server for a minute, no problems, then played single player HL for a few minutes...all seemed ok. Note that once it does start working, it seems pretty well behaved.

Then I unplugged my network cable.

Steam of course won't launch, and HL itself is now launched through steam. I dug around to see if there was any file I could run directly. Nope, they all launch steam first. I Had steam create a shortcut and tried that. Nope. Even though I have all the content, apparently I can now no longer play single player HL unless I'm connected to the net. There was no warning about this when steam graciously converted all my files for me. Cute.

speaking of the planet mayhem site, if you click on that link, there's a pretty interesting post about steam.

"Why the hell is steam looking at kazaa user names, mp3 contents, HTM records, and a whole lot of other #### I particularly don't want Valve having detailed records on passed through an undocumented protocol?"

interesting.

Wonder why Blue has a link to ****** *****... No other news site wants to link to that hack site...

[Edit] Guess he killed the link after all.
This comment was edited on Sep 13, 01:35.

ok, so i`ve uninstalled. I`m re-installing.
I notice that Steam didn`t take it upon itself to remove the 1.2 GB of files if left behind (HL, CS, DOD "cache files") - as some one said "I already have them installed!".
Steam is currently "updating platform" - it has been for about half an hour now.
On the plus side, ive done all the housework I was avoiding, cos i`ve had to wait for this thing to work its magic.
I was considering buying HL2 through this, but I think I'll just go traditional this time

I bet there's another DOS attack on Valve... -_-

Yeah, a self-inflicted DOS attack.

I think I will wait until it is required to have Steam in order to run HL online and, more importantly, it's mods. When will that be? When HL2 is released?

This comment was edited on Sep 12, 16:23.

why do i need to download a 420 megs file to play Half-Life?? I already have it installed... damnit...

Really? It's preferring to download the game rather than just launching the files you already have installed??

Shiva H. Vishnu that's dumb. So far I don't like the sound of this Steam thing one bit. Nosiree, Bob.