halflife 2 over steam on the 30th?

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/show...

saw this on the halflife2.net forums. If this is true, the people who will get half life 2 over steam will have it by the 30th then. I wonder why there is no gold announcement, yet?

Because of it''s only available through the ''net on Sept. 30th it doesn''t have to ''go gold'' yet. The retail HL2 might as well go gold a few weeks later. Valve could simply delay it or already implement some fixes and whatnot in the meantime. Which means the Steam version will be v1.0 and the retail version is something like v1.1 (while the Steam version gets patched in the meantime so they''re identical once the retail HL2 hits the store shelves.)

"Spunior" wrote:

The retail HL2 might as well go gold a few weeks later. Valve could simply delay it or already implement some fixes and whatnot in the meantime. Which means the Steam version will be v1.0 and the retail version is something like v1.1

i.e., Pay fifty bucks (or $9.99 a month, ) to be in a public beta.

i.e., Pay fifty bucks (or $9.99 a month, ) to be in a public beta

Isn''t that always the case?

Really now, think about how many PC games you''ve bought that you didn''t patch days if not hours after you bought it.

I''m just going to wait until hits retail. I could care less how long it takes.

I''ve got lots of other games to keep me company until then.

I''ll say this. If I was trying to push a piece of software like Steam, or trying to generate income with a subscriber base, _and_ I had a franchise like Half-Life to do it with, you can bet Steam subscribers would get preferential treatment on Half-Life 2.

"Ridlin1.5" wrote:

Really now, think about how many PC games you''ve bought that you didn''t patch days if not hours after you bought it.

Ok, am I the only one that enjoys patching games? Don''t ask me why, but I get quite a feeling of... accomplishment... when I patch my games. Or am I just a sick bastard that''s a glutton for punishment? Any other closet patchers out there?

(Note that very large patches do tend to leave a slightly bitter aftertaste...)

Ok, am I the only one that enjoys patching games?

Yes, you are.

Okay I will have to say that I don''t mind applying small (less than 5Mb) patches if it improves the game in some way. As long as the game was pretty much working out of the box it''s okay by me.

With the infinite number of PC hardware combinations out there, bugs are to be expected IMHO. Most of the time I see a list of fixes and I haven''t even encountered 1 of them.

I enjoy patching. When the developer is improving the product that I spent $50 on, that is good.

It''s not really the patching that is the problem, but the contempt for the customer most companies show when they patch. When your game is broken to begin with and the company merely says ""wait for a patch"" that is disregard for what I want from them. I paid $50 for a game that they didn''t deliver and they tell me to just ""wait till we get around to it"", in the meantime we can''t return it or even exchange it. That''s what pisses me off about patching, it''s not that they''re improving the game, they''re fixing it. If they also add new maps and features like Half-Life has been pretty good about then it''s different. If they patch to get the game to a playable state, then it''s inexcuseable.

Yes! See them start to crawl out of the woodwork!!

Pretty soon we will rule the world and the rest of you will have to download patches many tens of megabytes in size!

Huahaha. Mwuahahaha!! Oh wait...

Edit: I do agree with Pyro. Patching a product just to get it to work is quite a rotten deal.

I''m okay with patches that seem to clear up little tidbits that you''d never get without mass testing. People find the darndest way to break things and/or create unintended exploits. If a game crashes/locks/sucks out of box, I would sign up early for irateness and taking it back and never patching it and ranting for a while.

Steam seems to be working now that a million people downloaded it or whatever. Games even start semi-fast. All Seeing Eye even works with it, so I don''t have to cry about my custom filters.

But if they don''t add a crap load of servers just for downloading hl2, and instead again destroy the bandwidth being used to play CS, DoD, HL, TFC, etc, etc, they''re going to start seriously pissing off most of their player base. I won''t be downloading it. Heck I just made my wife promise to wait til Christmas to buy me any games (so that I survive this semester), but if my few precious downtime hours get screwed by this, I will...do nothing that affects valve. Sure I''ll be pissed. But who am I kidding? I''d make them happy by using less of their bandwidth for free (by playing DoD less and sulkily playing Morrowind) and end up buying hl2 for xmas anyway.

Boy I just uncheered myself up. They may not need to care. That would suck.

"Ridlin1.5" wrote:

Really now, think about how many PC games you''ve bought that you didn''t patch days if not hours after you bought it.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php...