Oh no, no no no. HL2 was far worse than that.
HL2 made you install the full game, off of 5 CDs, and it installed steam as well.
Then after the installation was complete, you had to register a steam account, and log in, so steam could decrypt your installed game, Which if you had a computer that wasnt bleeding edge in 2004, that your computer would be locked up and unusuable for a very long time. Mine was locked up for almost a full day processing the decryption.
And I still say, to this day, that steam is bullshit. That I shouldnt be forced to run steam for single player games, but back then at least steam was just a server browser/matchmaker. It wasnt the big pseudo-wannabe digital walmart+facebook that it is today… so you at least had an excuse to run it to play multiplayer games like HL2 deathmatch and CS:Source.
But requiring it for any single player game is the height of bullshit.
I wager most the people you find eagerly sucking off Valves cock as if its gods gift to gaming, are people 21 or under, who did not know a world before digital downloads, and who didnt know valve at their worst, before lawsuits and countries forced them to be marginally better.
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe 14 hours ago
Finally, a kindred soul. Valve is the worst thing to happen to PC gaming in decades.
It annoys me how people whine about exclusives on epic when valve were the ones who forced steam down our throats in the first place with HL2. We literally have them to thank for this.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
True, but, and I dont want to be in this position, but its a little bit different having their game on their service, and epic going out and paying other companies to drop their games off steam before release so they can have timed artificially exclusivity on epic.
Those are two entirely different piles of bullshit.