Support NeoGAF

[Wellington]

Soon as I booted my PC this morning I got the message from Steam saying that HL2 was being unlocked. Others have confirmed the message on irc. Aside from giving me a heart attack, what else does this do? I was looking around for some sales numbers via Steam and I stumbled across this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3755398.stm

Locked copies

Its publisher Vivendi has now said that the game is finished and will go on sale worldwide on 16 November.

The game will also come with the online multi-player shooter, Counter-Strike: Source.

Fans have already been able to get a taste of the online game, buying it direct from the game's makers Valve using a proprietary digital distribution system called Steam.

Valve has been letting members of its online Steam community get hold of encrypted copies of Half-Life 2 over the internet.

It means thousands of people already have the game on their hard drives, but it is locked.

When officially launched, Valve will release the codes to access the encrypted files and start playing immediately.

So uh... Can a dedicated hacker please get crackin?

 

[DopeyFish]

yeah wtf

"Unlocking Half-Life 2" made me jump out of my chair

But I guess not yet

 

[PhatSaqs]

Is there any word on whether the game will be unlocked/available before the 16th for Steam members?

 

[Kon Tiki]

I deleted my copy. I will just buy the boxset. Do not like having wasted space on the hdd.

 

[Mrbob]

Is there any word on whether the game will be unlocked/available before the 16th for Steam members?

I doubt it. I didn't buy HL2 yet and checked the HL2 icon in steam and got this message:

"If you pre-order the game now, it will be unlocked and ready for play on the official release day."

 

[Wario64]

Hackers are at go

 

[Pfucata]

This is a failure of Steam (or more likely a victory for the lawyers).

The pre-load was supposed to help people grab stuff such as the art or intro that's not going to change. Once HL2 went gold, Valve was able to send people the full game via Steam. Now, there's no technical reason why we can't play HL2 right now -- it's an artificial delay. If Valve released HL2 on Steam before it made it to retail, a substantial number of gamers would go with Steam instead of retail.

 

[SKluck]

Unlocks files. Updates files. Locks files.

A small update was released yesterday for CSS.

 

[ManaByte]

Unlocks files. Updates files. Locks files.

A small update was released yesterday for CSS.

OOooh did they fix the %n bug?

 

[Nerevar]

This is a failure of Steam (or more likely a victory for the lawyers).

How is this a failure of steam? Steam did exactly what it was supposed to do. The only thing preventing you from playing it is some legal contract binding valve to prevent this. Hell, if I were Valve, I'd make the security intentionally easy to break on this just to piss off the publisher - then anyone who wanted to play it right now could.

 

[crawlingpeter]

OOooh did they fix the %n bug?

Counter-Strike: Source Update
October 19, 2004, 7:39 pm · valve
An update to Counter-Strike: Source has just been released. Steam will update itself automatically when you restart. Here is a list of the changes:

COUNTER-STRIKE: SOURCE CHANGES / ADDITIONS:
* Fixed %n exploit crash
* Fixed smoke grenade stacking with repeating sounds
* Fixed smoke grenades getting stuck in cracks and never detonating

 

[ManaByte]

How is this a failure of steam? Steam did exactly what it was supposed to do. The only thing preventing you from playing it is some legal contract binding valve to prevent this. Hell, if I were Valve, I'd make the security intentionally easy to break on this just to piss off the publisher - then anyone who wanted to play it right now could.

Oh, that's a great idea especially when they are already being sued by the same publiser.

 

[sc0la]

so what am I going to have to do to get Half Life source?

I don't want a T shirt, and I would prefer a physical copy.

 

[XMonkey]

Probably have to wait to buy it seperately on Steam.