Around this time, 10 years ago, valve suckered me into preordering Half Life 2 through their bloated, CPU-cycle chewing, completely unnecessary shitty piece of software known as Steam. They sweeten the pot a bit by granting me full access to the entire Half Life 1 series of games as well as beta access to Counter Strike Source, their first official game to support the revolutionary Source engine.
Still, no one else in the industry was forcing their software down our throats like this, and the idea that we would need to not only activate our single player game with an online service but also be required to use that same online service to play it was met with all of the sound and fury that the beasts over at gamefaqs could muster. Oh, and the hell that was activating HL2 on launch, with most folks having to wait more than 24 hours to finally play a game they had waited over half a decade for.
And here we are, 10 years later. When people look back at HL2 in the upcoming months, i really hope they go deeper into it and talk about steam, pc gaming, digital downloads, and the video games market as a whole. Because HL2's release is a watershed historical moment for all of gaming, and many of the things that are taken for granted in today's market have their origins in decisions that, had Valve tried to pull that stuff in today's social media xbone 180 climate, could've easily been aborted and disowned due to the possible backlash that would've come with them.
Kinda miss those times, really, and i can't wait to read about them come november.
Edit: well shit, that's a giveaway if i ever saw one.
