I think either Valve is being very smart, or Vivendi is being incredibly dumb (depending on who made the decision to sell CD-only for the U.S. market).
A strong majority of HL2 sales will be in the U.S.. Sure there will be sales in Europe and Asia, but no where near the numbers sold in the U.S. A CD-only set up in the largest market drives sales to the Steam system That's why I say Valve is really smart or Vivendi is incredibly dumb.
Hey, whoever made the decision, it certainly worked on me! Downloaded the Steam client over the weekend, and have a copy (supposedly) of HL2 on my HDD patiently waiting for the go-ahead from Valve.
And before all the Steam-bashers jump on my hide, let me say that Steam was easily one of the simplest, most painless process I have been through on the PC in a long while. Having experienced it once, I can say I am not going back to the old physical-copy scheme.
Although it does make EBaying played games rather more difficult. I think I will be selective about which games to download and which games to buy from stores. For example, all id-developed games will be purchased on CD/DVD format only
All you Steam-naysayers need to get with the program and enter the 21st century. Steam is not bad at all and very user friendly with low overhead.
You cannot make anything fool-proof. The fools are too inventive
You cannot make anything fool-proof. The fools are too inventive
GW: Tr Gandhi (Ra), Shiva Sung (Mo), Mangal Pandey (Ne), Rana Pratap Singh (Wa), Boddhi Satwa (Ri), Bhagat Singh (De), Bahadur Shastri (Pa)