All billionaires are the enemy. Valve is privately-owned, which means their evil is more long-term. You know the shit Sony’s getting flack for right now? Valve’s been doing it for over 20 years.
Valve pioneering into digital distribution in 2002 because they saw an opportunity to distribute in ways publishers hadn’t considered is not the same thing as Sony choosing to end physical media distribution in 2026 to kill off used games sales and control pricing.
It was made before HL2, and they supported physical console games (where pretty much all secondary sales were happening) for many years after (and including) HL2.
The retail version of HL2 required you to log into Steam to activate it. It was a big deal at the time because lots of people’s gaming PCs weren’t hooked up to the internet at the time.
Lots of games of the time had verification processes along the lines of “look on page 48 of the manual, go down 6 lines and pick the 8th word” each time you started the game to verify that you had the disk and a copy of the manual - making piracy more inconvenient.
Games would even ship with red and black manuals that were more difficult to photocopy.
All billionaires are the enemy. Valve is privately-owned, which means their evil is more long-term. You know the shit Sony’s getting flack for right now? Valve’s been doing it for over 20 years.
Valve pioneering into digital distribution in 2002 because they saw an opportunity to distribute in ways publishers hadn’t considered is not the same thing as Sony choosing to end physical media distribution in 2026 to kill off used games sales and control pricing.
Steam was created specifically to kill any secondary sales of HL2.
It was made before HL2, and they supported physical console games (where pretty much all secondary sales were happening) for many years after (and including) HL2.
HL2 and Steam literally launched simultaneously.
The retail version of HL2 required you to log into Steam to activate it. It was a big deal at the time because lots of people’s gaming PCs weren’t hooked up to the internet at the time.
Lots of games of the time had verification processes along the lines of “look on page 48 of the manual, go down 6 lines and pick the 8th word” each time you started the game to verify that you had the disk and a copy of the manual - making piracy more inconvenient.
Games would even ship with red and black manuals that were more difficult to photocopy.