Half Life 2 Aftermath

[Agozer]

If it's only through Steam and you have to pay for it, I'm not getting it the "legal" way.

For all of its faults, Steam is actually a pretty good system. In fact, there's really only one major fault, and that's the temporary server issues at release time.

 

But maybe I'm biased. Anything that could lead to greater creative control, and therefore variety, and/or lower costs in games is ok by me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Steam one bit, but I've never liked to buy anything online (for a few reasons, but I'm not going to go into those now). And yes, it should be relatively cheap, since like most of you, I've seen more than enough expansions in stores that sell at full price.

[Wizard]

Sounds like you're judging it based on the beta.  I started using it near the end of the beta and it's never been anywhere near that bad for me.  HL1, CS1 and DoD worked without any problems, offline and on.  HL2 authed in seconds for me just a few days after launch.  Granted, not being able to auth it on launch day would have been an issue, but I consider it a growing pain.  No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was in beta since the beginning and up until last December I stopped using steam. I summed up the first 15 months of steam after beta.

[Gryph]

No one I know has experienced such problems. And I've been using Steam since it's inception. I hated it too because it sucked back then but it's a lot improved now.

 

And I authed HL2 right when it was available and it took about 10 minutes. I was lucky enough to be awake for it.