Half Life 2 Online Activation Needed for Single Player

[Vampmon]

Anticipating a massive onslaught of piracy, Valve Software (the creative talent behind Half Life 2) is looking to mitigate their financial losses. Valve hopes to accomplish this by requiring individuals during installation to verify and create an account - even for single player. The move is in response to the apparent leakage of several major games, such as Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Doug Lombardi of Valve Software spoke with GameSpy PC about the new single player account. "During installation the user will be prompted to authenticate the copy and create a Steam account. After that is complete, the single-player and LAN games do not require an Internet connection."

Last October, Valve Software was the victim of a serious security breach which allowed unknown individuals to download a large segment of Half Life 2's source code. While it was not enough to actually play the game, it marked a new era of multimedia finding its way online.

Conversely, it appears that some gaming software companies are moving in the exact opposite direction. Impressed with the extensive media coverage of prereleased games, inXile will intentionally prerelease "The Bard's Tale." Although this title is not very well known, it will be interesting to see how this gamble pays off for inXile.

www.slyck.com/news.php?story=587

[crackerjacker]

bullshit
so what if the person has no internet access they wont be able to use the game.
hmm

[evilmegaman]

that's valve for ya. I don't like them either but since games are the only thing I buy, I might as well buy em. so I will have a legit key and a net connection. If you don't have an internet connection and have a computer good enough for half life 2 (which doesn't need much) then you might as well not play it anyways... just my opinion

[wonderboy2005]

I would imagine that there will be somthing along the line of activiating it via phone - maybe even a 1800 number that you can use your modem with to activiate. Still, this is pretty stupid in my opinion. Id venture to say that within a week of its release, someone will have made a crack that bypasses any security/activiation problems. Then, those who actually bought the game, yet dont have an internet connection will have a hell of a time getting the game to work, while those who choose to pirate the game fly through the installation with little or no trouble.

[talkinghand]

Originally Posted by wonderboy2005

I would imagine that there will be somthing along the line of activiating it via phone - maybe even a 1800 number that you can use your modem with to activiate. Still, this is pretty stupid in my opinion. Id venture to say that within a week of its release, someone will have made a crack that bypasses any security/activiation problems. Then, those who actually bought the game, yet dont have an internet connection will have a hell of a time getting the game to work, while those who choose to pirate the game fly through the installation with little or no trouble.

Gute gesagt!!

[wonderboy2005]

Originally Posted by talkinghand

Gute gesagt!!

danke.

/me loves internet translation tools

[black_magiic]

Again anbody that has a computer that can run HL2 but has no internet connections is clearly missing a few screws. Im not even sure such an animal exsists

[ducttapeBigSexy]

you know, games are one of the fews things i buy, and it's great because my brother and i usually split the cost (we both love video games). but, come on, let's be fair here? if you have two people playing the same game, is it really fair to make them both spend $50 for two licenses? how about this: we at least bought one copy - that's more then you can say about the people who just downloaded it and cracked it...

[Legin]

This is hardly news. The original Half-Life is the same way, and has been ever since they introduced the excrement that is Steam at least 9 months ago. Now if you want to play Half-Life or any of the mods offline, you have to first connect to the internet and load Steam. This is particularly annoying if youre on dialup. And if you dont internet access, you just cant play (unless you go back to the old WON versions).

Half-Life has been the only game Ive played online for the past 3 or 4 years, and the last PC game I bought. But theres no way Im going to buy the sequal because of this idiocy with Steam.

[black_magiic]

Originally Posted by Legin

This is hardly news. The original Half-Life is the same way, and has been ever since they introduced the excrement that is Steam at least 9 months ago. Now if you want to play Half-Life or any of the mods offline, you have to first connect to the internet and load Steam. This is particularly annoying if youre on dialup. And if you dont internet access, you just cant play (unless you go back to the old WON versions).

Half-Life has been the only game Ive played online for the past 3 or 4 years, and the last PC game I bought. But theres no way Im going to buy the sequal because of this idiocy with Steam.

you must be thinking about playing online because I was able to play Half Life single player no problems with having to activate or register anything

[evilmegaman]

Black_Magic: do you have steam? Because you have to register to use that, And you need it nowadays unfortuanately. But you can play offline once you've used steam.

[black_magiic]

You only need steam if you want to play online if your content with play HL single player you do not need install steam. I played HL fine for 2 weeks offline with out installing steam. It is true that in order to use steam you need a valid key.

[Psilaxs]

Like everything else, it will be bypassed the same day the game is released, (windows activation anyone?)

[Legin]

You need to load Steam and be online in order to play Half-Life or any of their mods offline. Itll work for as long as you dont reboot, I believe. That was certainly the case for quite a while with Steam. They might have put a half-assed fix on it since then, but I dont think so. Its not something that will be bypassed because its already been months with the exact same system in place and no cracks for it that I know of.

[seraph]

Originally Posted by Psilaxs

Like everything else, it will be bypassed the same day the game is released, (windows activation anyone?)

Exactly...just take a look at any other software product which needs to be activated online. There is always a way around these things...