Half-Life 2 demo and Steam: Crap

Kulin said:

I think the choking you're referring to has to do with the stuttering bug - http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news

Maybe they didn't fix it for the demo, but I have not read otherwise.

# January 2, 2005 11:24 PM

Denny said:

STEAM:

good idea gone bad... a *LOT* of folks have been caught in the spat between Vivendi and Valve; make them both look bad to the folks who know whats going on.

I wonder if Valve is going to try and dump Vivendi and just publish on-line?

# January 2, 2005 11:30 PM

David Taylor said:

Jeff...I was so impressed I dropped Halo 2 when it game out...and played HL2 to completion...only getting back to Halo 2 a few days ago.

# January 2, 2005 11:47 PM

Cyriel said:

The problems you referring could be related to some game bugs; but don't forget that the piece of crap Nvidia Forceware drivers together with a overclocked 6800 can cause lots of problems with HL2 - including BSODs (!). (clocking it down makes it a bit more playable though; but i still have problems with spontaneous freezes and so on)

This is the reason why I bought the game, installed it for a day then removed it and put the box in the closet with the other games, only getting it out again when either Valve or Nvidia get their act together OR the moment I have bought a more stable ATI Radeon. Oh well, prolly end up with a Radeon anyway, especially cause this isn't the only game my 6800 Ultra has problems with (and seeing my friend can run anything without any problems at all with his X800 PciEx almost makes me pull my hairs out...)

# January 3, 2005 3:36 AM

Jeff said:

ATI has more stable drivers? Ha! Sorry, but if Doom 3 runs fine, I'm not going to pin the problem on drivers. My card isn't over-clocked, and I've never had anything else crash on my nForce motherboard. HL2 didn't cause a massive system failure, it just died on itself (I could kill the process and move on).

# January 3, 2005 10:22 AM

Jon Galloway said:

I had that stuttering problem with the initial release of the game, but the patches have corrected those for me. The load time is disappointing, but definitely not worth overlooking a pretty great game.

I agree about Steam running at startup being annoying. You can kill it, it will start automatically when HL starts up.

It seems like a dumb business move for them not to have updated the demo, though, since your experience is definitely not unique. I've heard that Steam will also include a user experience patch soon which will modify brain patterns of Steam users to not notice the load delay and stuttering issues. This may have other business benefits for Valve if it proves successful.

# January 3, 2005 4:17 PM

andrew said:

I not happy with steam at the moment!! i bought the game at christmas, like a lot of poeple!!! I then went to install and found that you have to register online, that cool... but that took ages as every one brought a copy at christmas!! it then went to decyrpt the game files, that took 3 days, it frooze at 30%, so i'm not sure if it has completed it process as i went to unstall steam, then re-install steam. I then find that i need to download a patch to play the game, the patch is 838mb, i have a connection speed of 512Kb download,, so i though it won't take to long....i still have not downloaded it....i keep my computer running all day and sometimes all night but there serves run at average of 56kb which is nothing!! I just want to play the game...there is just to much crap to play game....i never going to by a pc game agian, i just to may hassle you don't need....i'll just stick to my XBOX!!!
thanks alot steam you just wasted my money...i loved half life, and could.t wait for the sequeal, now i just going to play halo 2!!!

# January 5, 2005 6:44 AM

Insano said:

Sorry to hear so many negative experiences.

I was fortunate enough to purchase the game before it was released and started preloading the game early. Once the game was released it took me a few attempts to get /decrypt the remaining crytical files but it was all worth it.

I am running Half-Life 2 on a 2.4 Ghz machine with an ATI 9600XT all in wonder card and I haven't had any problems. Definately the best fps since the original HL - even with the extra application which runs at startup (boohoo - not!).

In my books, HL2 definately urinates all over Halo 2. Speaking of which, wtf is with Halo 2's Level of Detail changing dramatically at close range during the cut-scenes??! What a bunch of crap. At first I thought it was some dodgey transition effect, but it's the just the freaking LOD changing! The cut-scene will suddenly change the camera angle and you'll be looking at a bunch of blocks which eventually turn into people and structures after a second. How the hell could the guys at Bungee / Microsoft miss such a thing?

# January 6, 2005 7:48 AM

MGB said:

Well, you people that are giving up - you aren't really missing much. Disregarding the steam boll0ks and the appalling engine design (stuttttttter) I summarise it as 'Generic shooter with a bit of (sometimes buggy) physics and nice water'. As for 'engrossing scripted story', whats so amazing about driving round in vehicles for about 1/4 of the game?! A few good set pieces do lift it above the average though, but not enough to prevent me selling it on a few weeks after buying.

# January 7, 2005 5:50 PM

gazza said:

ive just bought this today and am now off straight back to the shop because of the crap steam thingy and the fact i cant even run the game with these specs.....
p4 2.4ghz
1gig ddr ram
radeon 9800 card
etc...etc

how is this possible when ive just finished the far superior far cry without even a glitch!!!!!!!

damn you sierra for denying me the chance to at least try the game out rubbish...rubbish...rubbish

right i'm off to e-mail watchdog now i've got that rant out of my system... regards!

# January 13, 2005 8:59 AM

Siggy said:

Well thank you VERY bloody much, Valve! Thanks to you and stupid poxy Steam, I can't play ANY of my Valve games because they freeze at the menus. How slow is HL2 with these specs?
750 pentium processor (YEAH it runs with a 750!)
Radeon 9600
So as one can see it aint worth playing once completed.
Also CS Source; beautiful game used to run fine, even on a 56K modem, now ping constantly 990's. once again not worth playing

My one refuge is CS: CZ now it don't work either.

It really is sad when a superior games company like Valve force us its loyal (If not whiny) customers to suffer all that shite just so they don't loose a few (thousand) quid through software pirating. For shame. :(

# January 15, 2005 1:26 PM

rcowles1 said:

Steam is junk. Had the game since Xmas and still cannot play. Anybody have any tips. Never can connect to steam. Haven't even seen the into yet. What a joke.

Called Valve, Faxed Valve, Email questions to steam. Nothing. Followed all tech info. on the steampowered site. Nothing. We are still on dial up at my house, nothing else available.

FYI
Valve Software
Phone 425-889-9642
Fax 425-827-4843

# January 18, 2005 8:23 AM

Jam said:

Played and finished before xmas.

Beautiful graphics and game play (especially the tripods) but steam is a pile of crap and will never buy another vlave game again

# January 20, 2005 10:34 AM

hl said:

Spent nearly a month dl'ing demo. After waiting for about another hour through steam update screens, tried to start game. Now says estimated time before launching game is 600 minutes as it downloads more junk. Steam is total shit. Doesn't matter how good game is, Steam should be labelled as malware.

# January 20, 2005 1:22 PM

SirTMagus said:

Steam is total ass, agreed. But my HL2 demo seems to work fine, without any lag but the graphics...

Are totally MALFORMED. And I don't think it's a graphics card issue (though it is just the one that came with my Gateway laptop) because it's just the gamma and the character models. The screen is DARK as hell and the characters are all detail-less jet black automatons. Just black shadows walking and running back and forth. It looks like the game was dipped in crude oil. It's unplayable.

I want to know: WHY? If it IS my graphics card then, well, I'm pretty much screwed as I can't upgrade my laptop. If it's something else... what is it?

I'd really like to get this problem fixed since all my other specs are up to par.

# January 20, 2005 3:06 PM

Rob Filth said:

I bought all legal copies of Half Life,TFC,CS,Opposing Force and Blue Shift but after my experiences trying to get the Half Life 2 demo to work I will NOT be buying Half Life 2.

Half Life 2 MAY be the greatest game in the world, but that means Jack Shit if you have to get permission each time you need to play the single player game cos of the Steam load of bollocks.

Steam was eatting up my processer usage trying to update...constantly failed on the updates and generally is the biggest and most frustrating piece of crap going.

Needless to say I just couldn't play the stupid damn game cos of the rubbish in the end. I even upgaded my system so I could (supposedly)play Half Life 2.

Sorry Valve but I paid your wages by buying legal copies of Half Life 1 but I will not be buying Half Life 2 in any shape form or size until either you drop the fucking Steam rubbish from the single player or until someone finds a hack around it so that it is not required to play the single player game.

Steam does NOT stop piracy, it penalises the ligitimate honest user from using your products. I had no intention of getting a pirated copy of Half Life 2 but the experiences with this Steam rubbish have made me to decide to boycott the game completely.

I am uninstalling as I type- there are far, far better games out there than half Life 2 purely because they do not require this authentication crap to play the single player.

# January 21, 2005 6:27 PM

bigstu80 said:

Computers give me the fuckin shits sometimes. I did have a nice post I was typing up but IE decided to crash so in a nutshell:

Steam is THE most useless piece of software out there (above those stupid programs that open your cd tray etc) AND you need to pay for it!! Downloading the patch for the HL2 demo took 1/2 hr and 100% cpu usage. wtf???? Steam is the reason I'm not buying HL2, why do i need to log in to a server to play a local game??? shit shit shit shit shit.

# January 29, 2005 5:48 PM

Philip said:

When I try to install steam it just freezes, it doens't say that it's downloading anything ... after an hour (high speed cable connection) I've shut the install program.

Steam wasn't installed properly so I couldn't start it. But I was also not able to uninstall it since... That's getting on my nerves.

This has not really encouraged me on buying the real game, just to find out that I'll have the same problem again.

# January 30, 2005 9:28 AM

Benny said:

I can not forgive valve this transgression of trust. I am so angry that I let myself be tricked into this steam crap. I'll have to spend a week in the registry cleaning this dung off my CPU.

# September 7, 2006 9:21 AM

Tom said:

After reinstalling OF on a whim i was shocked to see that i had to get steams permission to load each new section, what a load of bollocks!!

# September 13, 2006 8:10 AM

Dirk said:

Heck, I agree with every negative comment above, STEAM is full of crap!

*Oh it's just there to stop piracy*..... WHAT???

Heck it's gonna stop players from playing thats what.

Great job when trying 4 times to download the demo with steam, crashing 3 times at 30% and something, then finally when its loaded/installed, it freezes.

Great *** Valve.

# October 20, 2006 12:23 PM

Loco said:

I played the game without any problem. The only bad thing is that I had to wait very long time to load for the multiplayer games. I got bored, and I uninstall hl2. I still have it with my other old cd. But the worst thing is that every other pc game is trying to do the same. They are trying to emulate it like steam. A big example is Battlefield 2, BF2142, and others that might come soon. That is why I am not going to buy pc games anymore. Before you can create your own server. Now you have to pay to create your own server. The worst thing is that you are using your pc as your server not their servers and you are paying for it?!!!! That is too much. Valve I respect what you did, but being with steam was a big mistake. That is why valve is not famous anymore.

# December 17, 2006 3:25 PM

Jolker said:

How do you get the game to work? I've never seen anything like this, i've had friendlier viruses.

# January 11, 2007 1:21 PM

Josh said:

Bought Half life 1 anthology off of ebay, assumed i was buying the original game. turns out theres a sticker on top saying you need internet to register the game...nothing on the box other than that. fine, leave my laptop for an hour for it to load up steam, which the box did not say it required to play. steam cant load. absolutely useless. what is the point? its an 8 year old game, who the hell is going to pirate it and it was sold as the game no mention that i would need to log onto steam EVERY time i wanted to play it.

# February 8, 2007 11:34 AM

gordon said:

dlamnie to jest najfajniejsza gra na całym świecie.HALF-LIFE jest to gra o rużnych zombi którym widać flaki jest to super.

# February 10, 2007 5:22 PM

Rob Trebble said:

We MUST let the steam out of "steam"!

This whole concept is crapola. I will never buy a game that requires steam again.

The servers are slow, they are often temporarily unavailable for weeks on end, and EVERY time you want to play you have to go "through" steam. Even with the offline procedure for steam, internet access is still required.

I bought a game, if I dont want to register it, I should not have to. PERIOD!

# March 9, 2007 1:02 PM

Subhero said:

I must agree Steam is total bullsh*t

Very long loading times and hassle to play.

Finally I got HL2 to work without too much trouble, and it didn't stutter or freeze, and I must say the game is very good.

I do get some problems playing online though. Sometimes it gives unexplainable errors, I have to re-validate everytime I push a button and loading times in which I could grow a beard, shave it and grow it again. All in all the Steam part is total junk, but the games are good running without any problems.

Valve, I have three tips for you: DROP STEAM, DROP STEAM, DROP STEAM ....

regards,

Subhero

# March 9, 2007 9:58 PM

Codee said:

How the heck do you uninstall the demo when done?

And HL2 suck's i dont like it.

# March 10, 2007 3:46 AM

Lb969 said:

Is there some number I can call, or some address I can mail to, give them a copy of my receipt and the serial or something and have them MAIL ME an actual copy of the game?

I have frigging dial up. I did not pirate the game. I have a legal copy and even have my original store receipt.

I paid 30 bucks for the game, and I friggin want to PLAY IT THIS CENTURY.

This will be my last purchase from Valve, I'll tell your that...

# March 13, 2007 8:26 PM

K said:

Steam sucks. No one should by this crap because of steam. You're right, why pay $50 for a game that you have to register to play even in single mode and offline. It sucks.

# April 7, 2007 2:54 PM

Nathan said:

What a waste of time. I was absolutely blown away by the first version of half life, and it ran just fine on my old P1 166!

Now in marches steam and takes the ease right out of the process. How long am I expected to wait while the "downloading updates" window sits there without even a progress bar to let me know it's doing something? Useless PR killing mistake in Valve's part...

# August 5, 2007 3:00 AM

sef said:

What's up with the decryption? mine freezes at 50% does it usually take ages? or is their something seriously wrong with the steam server? It's sad that people have to go through all this bs for the game to actually work. Hopefully someone fixes this problem fast other wise steam will lose alot of customers.

# December 10, 2007 4:36 AM

DavidW said:

Steam is absolute crap. I've upgraded to a new PC and wanted to play HL2 again, and the SHIT I've had to go through with Steam to try to get it to run is horrendous. First they wiped my password, then enabled me for a few days on a new password, and now today I try to play and password comes up blank so I enter it manually and it fails - there's nothing I can do now to play the game. Even the "Forgotten Password" email they send has the priceless message:

"Please also enter the *answer* to the following question into the 'Secret Answer' field of the same dialog:

What did customer support last reset your passphrase to?"

I search all emails from Steam on "passphrase" and there's no such thing. So what do I have to resort to YET AGAIN? Email Steam of course.

It seems some companies are not happy to allow you to play their games even when you have:

1. A legitimate original/bought version of the game.

2. The legitimate original CD of the game in my CD drive.

3. The Registration Key (on the back of CD #5)

4. A Steam user account name

5. An email address registered with Steam

6. A Steam user password (which they seem to disable whenever they want)

7. A Steam "Verification Code" to attempt to retrieve a forgotten password, which I did not forget.

Thanks for wasting another 2 hours of my life Steam.

Signed,

VERY disgruntled veteran PC user and gamer.

ps. I'm taking a copy of this email and pasting into every forum I can get my hands on. I've had enough of this crap from companies like this.

# December 14, 2007 11:07 PM

bob said:

i also agree with everyone, i just bought the orange box over christmas ecstatic that i was going to play portal, half-life 2 episode 2, and team fortress 2, but after 3 days THREE Days, and that includes leaving it on all night with my crappy dial up connection, i still have yet to play the games!!!!!! F*** you STEAM!!! F*** you.

god...

# December 28, 2007 11:54 AM

rob said:

Steam is just that, the smelly air that rises from a big stinking pile of shit.

I happily buy games 2nd hand or swap with mates.

Now thats gone.

I didnt know what steam was until a friend gave me his copy of hl2. Yup you guessed it, steam wont allow multiplayer etc.

Bastards

# January 3, 2008 9:39 PM

Jack said:

Bah-hah, this is great stuff. Steam only sucks on it having to update constantly, and having to update the game before you can play it. I've had no real problems with steam though, just a little frustration here or there. But I plan on having valve games for a long time.

# January 5, 2008 2:15 AM

Jeff's Junk said:

It's strange how some posts on this blog get comments even to this day, one of them being a post about

# January 5, 2008 10:14 AM

Assem said:

You are right Steam is just a pull sheat

I bought the game then I couldn't install it on my computer becuase of the stupid steam.

I have tried every thing but no way to make it. the only solution that they sujest is to use different net work. what the huck?

so I have to go to starbucks to play the freaking game every it or move out of the campus to play it. PS

# January 19, 2008 11:07 AM

Jeremy said:

you just lost a sale valve, not buying any of your games because of steam

# January 29, 2008 3:22 PM

William said:

I have to agree. I heard that Half-life was awesome, but when I downloaded it it took forever and a day. Then every time I tried to play it. Guess what? My computer had a fatal error and crashed!! Here's what I said. "You've got to be [CENSORED] [CENSORED]ing me! I spent like three [Censored] hours for this piece of [CENSORED]! VALVE YOU [CENSORED][CENSORED] ASS [CENSORED] MUTHA-FUCKTARDING [CENSORED][CENSORED] RAPED IN THE [CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED]

[TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. PLEASE STAND BY....]

[CENSORED]!" God! Where was I? Oh, yeah. Anyways, I just can't believe that Valve would just let people deal with these problems instead of trying to solve them. I mean, it's their friggin' game, for God's Sakes!

# February 6, 2008 10:56 PM

David said:

The first release I played was a hacked copy - No problems ran like a dream.I thought I would support this company an purchased the next release. Wasted hours of expensive bandwidth registering etc. What a waste of time - Never ever again. Nex t time I will get a cracked version. Much better for my sanity

# March 14, 2008 8:51 AM

dill said:

well i think that valve is realy cool so i dont know what your talking about

# April 5, 2008 5:28 PM

bob said:

steam is bull shit you have to pay to play online games

# April 8, 2008 2:51 PM

Richard said:

I think its worth getting hl2 and cs:s considering all the mods you can get

http://www.moddb.com/

# April 16, 2008 8:14 AM

matt said:

should a pirated copy (on CD) require the use of steam? i don't see why it would, but my friend has a copy that works mainly ok, the only problem being the occasional error: "Node Graph out of date. Rebuilding..." After this it usually continues to function but may crash. Explanations/thoughts?

# April 30, 2008 5:47 AM

CaptainCajun said:

Freaking steam, I just wanna play the freaking game! I really dont find watching the load percentage go up every once in a while for god knows how long! And check this out: Every time I try to load this Steam Bullshit for HL2, it always goes straight to 28%, then about to 40%, and then back to 28%, time after time after ****ing time! WTF?!?!?!

I just wanna play HL2 you mutha ****ing game!

HL2 looked fun at my friends house, but he had problems with steam when he deleted it without knowing of it's importance. Now he can't play it, and I can't even manage to get it to load! Thats two more people pissed off at STEAM! Jesus Christ, you know what else? Steam is the official biggest concern of Half-life critics. You think Valve would have learned, dumbasses! I think I'd rather go play Runescape some more than deal w/ this crap!

DOWN WITH STEAM, LET IT BURN IN THE 7TH CIRCLE OF HELL!!!

# May 19, 2008 6:35 PM

Another person pissed off at steam said:

YOU HEAR ME VALVE? DROP STEAM!

Jeez, I'm scared to buy another Valve game after I saw the modern terror that is steam.

# May 19, 2008 6:42 PM

Hash said:

HL2 is a good game yes...... but i think valve thinking steam will stop pirating is way off! STEAM IS WHY WE ARE PIRATING YOU IDIOTS GET RID OF STEAM

# May 22, 2008 11:41 AM

rivetz said:

GOD this is so HORRIBLE, I bought Halflife 2 and brot it home and the first thing it does, it kicks my DOG right out of the blue, that is so mean, I was like "WTF VALVLE???! You pice of sh*t, I am not a pirate!" Then I went to go have dinner and Steam ate all the beef stroganoff like a SELFISH little B*TCH! Then I g upstairs and what do I find?? STEAM, in bed w my wife and watching my anime!!!!!

I'm like, "Steam, you suck, Valve you totally suck!" Steam basically ruined my life and took a crap on the windshield of my Toyota and ruined my credit rating, slapped me in the forehead with a d*ck, and made me look bad to my friends family and coworkers. ARRRGH VALVE HOW DARE YOU AT LEAST ATTEMPT TO CURTAIL SOFTWARE PIRACY AND PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENTS WITH A COOL ONLINE TOOL, YOU F*CKS RRRRROAAAAOOREURWIUW I'M SO UPSET LET ME TELL THIS ANONYMOUS INTERNET FORUM ALL ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!

# May 22, 2008 1:22 PM

Cunt said:

rivetz: are you fuckin' alright man?

PS: Steam can go fuck itself. I'm happily playing pirated valve games without steam (UCL works)

I would have actually paid for HL2 if it weren't for steam.

# June 6, 2008 1:24 PM

butthead said:

Do you know what also sucks? YOUR FACE. We're only giving our opinion and our experiences... you see it as a rant, but its a critique of Steam's service. Heard of freedom of speech?

# August 28, 2008 1:10 AM

kharne said:

Steam is the most desultory piece of shit that I've had the displeasure of installing on my PC. Don't feed me the whole "steaammsd oly wurk wit fasssst internest omg lol leett1!!11!" bullshit because I have heard many people with high-speed connections have had troubles too.

I had it working on my PC once, and half-life would crash. Hell, even the reviewers for Half-Life 2 had problems. What the hell?

The whole concept of Steam is preposterous. The premise is that it is going to stop cheating and piracy. No it doesn't stop cheating; Crysis has an inordinate amount of cheaters. So does the other games.

Stopping piracy? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Are they serious? If the pirated version installs nicer than the commercial version, what do you think people are going to go for?

People like me would like to buy a legitimate version of the game, but when it doesn't work, I have to result towards methods that I would avoid for many reasons: P2P

And punch Gabe Newell in the face for me when you see the fat fuck.

# September 23, 2008 10:10 AM

Adam said:

I bought HL2 a week ago, I've managed to install steam (took 3 days) and then Update HL2. The game isn't that great. Now I'm waiting for part two to update. Steam is crap. I've paid for this game, I should be able to play it when I want. Not when Steam's servers say I can. I'm now going to look for a pirate copy that doesn't require steam. I'll never bye a game that uses steam again.

Another point, when I installed it I put it into my 'Games' folder. It removed all my other games! WTF! Far cry, X2, Unreal, etc all gone. I had been playing X2 for over 3 years. My empire has now gone. When I complete HL2 it's going in the bin.

Valve, you've lost another customer.

# October 7, 2008 6:11 PM

Warn said:

Wow, this thread has been going for over three years, and the problems still exist. I just bought Portal for the PC. Well, several days ago, but I haven't been able to play it yet because Steam won't let me download the updates that I need. I have the disk in my computer, but I can't play it. Sure, I only have dial-up, but the box just says I need an "internet connection." If I needed high-speed, that should have been on the box. Steam just chokes my computer for ten minutes before giving me "Steam Error - This game is currently unavailable. Please try again another time." I'm searching forums for instructions on fixing this, but it sounds like there aren't any solutions. I will just have to wait to play Portal until I have high-speed, and hope that Steam still exists then. I will also be sure to never again buy a game from Valve or that uses Steam, and I will tell everyone the same.

# October 16, 2008 9:40 PM

Darren Kopp said:

Steam rocks man. I buy everything through steam now.

# December 7, 2008 1:03 AM

John said:

It's 2009, and Steam is still shit.

# January 5, 2009 5:40 PM

Tom said:

A good PC and internet connection does help

# January 27, 2009 5:24 PM

annoyed said:

All steam does is make loyal customers turn to downloading pirate copies like what I'm about to do...

# December 29, 2010 3:44 PM

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