At EB that notice was on the HL2 GOTY edition on a sticker on top of the box, but no such sticker was on the DoD Source box. It either wasn’t there in the first place, or was taken off when the box was gutted by the EB drone.
In any event, I think something that critical should be a permanent part of the box art, not on a sticker similar to the ones on CD’s, PS2 games, and DVD’s that we’re so used to throwing away.
Hey chet, is Mike Dussault still over there? (I assume I would’ve heard about it otherwise, but hey.) Just, you know, curiousity killed the Seawolf.
I always thought Steam was great. Not because it’s free of issues, mind you, but because it enabled me to not touch the CDs ever.
CDs bug me…although I don’t mind having a disc usually, CD=6megs/second DVD 20megs/second and if the UK gets all their releases on DVD why the hell can’t we?
This not releasing a DVD version crap pissed me off, and still does. I may go on a support email tirade about it again.
I’ve already bought…lets see…11? games off digital distribution and I’m on dialup so I can’t even acquire them from my house. Heh heh. The retail industry should be the ones most concerned about the lack of DVD releases in that respect.
I never had a problem with Steam technically. Day one, I purchased HL2 online and had it down in the wee a.m. hours working fine. I’ve never had a problem with Steam since. And technically, I think the distribution medium is peachy-keen, and where I’d love absolutely everything to be right now today.
My only problem with Steam:
It, and every other distribution method like it, ought to include in its shell a simple checkbox that says “play offline.” Not something you have to use Zonealarm or whatever to force, but something user-friendly and simple. A checkbox. So that when you launch the game, you can rest assured it’s not sending information about you, your play habits, your play frequency, etc. Even Microsoft’s Office and Google Toolbar make survey participation or stat-sending optional. Whether you’re a corporate apologist or, like me, not so much, isn’t having the option to pull down or keep up the wall better than not having it at all (or having to start manually blocking ports and executables)?
I’ve always been a little surprised–not that Valve would try to roll the public on this “seeming non-issue” (it’s very much an issue from a precedent standpoint), but that so many are just…apathetic about it. “Who cares? Let 'em collect on me. They make awesome games. Valve rules. Put the wires in my head now, dude.”
I’m sorry, I’ll try to make it clear. It was my opinion that steam was used to get sales behind the back of Vivendi Universal and was screwing them that way. Plus , and again I stress its my opinion, Valve made life harder for retail customers to activate HL2 in order to cause problems for VU and thus screwing customers as well. There is no link or evidence because thats my opinion. Think it a fucked up and wacked opinion if you must but I didn’t mean for you or anyone else to take it as some linkable documented fact. Is that clear enough or do I need to explain it in more detail?