I’m old enough that I got HL2 in a retail box, when it was new.
and the fucking disks installed the game encrypted, and I could not use my computer until the next day, due to it thrashing my HDD and CPU so hard to decrypt the files that my computer was functionally useless that evening, and overnight.
now THAT was some bullshit.
This was too, cause I remember steam games bloating with temp files back in the day and regularly having to clear out the folder so you had HDD space.
And this spurs me to bring up the lie of digital purchases… Which was sold to us on the promise of cheap games. We were promised that if we gave up on physical games, then the devs/publishers wouldnt have to pay for printing manuals/boxes, packaging of games, warehouses to store them, and the cost of shipping to get them to the stores/consumers… Which meant they could sell games for lower costs, that game prices would plumet to 25-30 dollars for brand new day 1 releases… and devs/publishers would still get a bigger chunk of revenue/more money from that, than from the old 50 dollar physical big box games with all the feelies, delicious manuals, disks that meant you can install the game however you want, whenever you want, etc etc.
Instead, what digital purchases have gotten us is… a total lack of ownership, that our games can be taken away from us at any time, for any reason, because buried in all the legalese we don’t “own” anything, we just have a “lease”…and for that, we’ve been given the right to pay 10-20 dollars more for games than what they cost during the physical game era, and the risk of the platform disappearing and taking our or games with it (which I’ve already ran afoul of and drastically altered how i buy games)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Steam used to be slick and fast before it changed over to chromium and started trying to become a social media platform… also wish it had a simplified legacy version so people could still run it on older OSes to run the games they own that only run on older OSes. but apparently thats a super controversial topic that makes people unhinged
I installed Steam during a Lan party back in 2007 (i think to play Left 4 Dead) and remember thinking “Damn, not another bloody useless account”. Little did i know :)
I had CS:Source Steam version, except I gifted it unopened (don’t remember why, probably had enough IL-2 and SW:Battlefront and SW:EAW to play) to a friend, so only saw Steam installation on that friend’s PC until much later.
My first Steam game was Empire: Total War, which is, eh, not too old.
BTW, it’s Russia and most disks you would buy in my childhood were pirate localized versions or just pirate versions, sold in underground crossings or in shabby-looking small stores. Nobody here understood what copyright is and how it’s connected to any right, like - really nobody. It’s baffling really when people who confidently and certainly thought of copyright this exact way then, just like everybody around, are today being judgemental and condemn digital piracy. While the new generation which wasn’t very conscious back then - doesn’t. Two-faced cowards. OK.
I’m really nostalgic over all those small stores, because back then not only they existed, but those ugly malls everywhere didn’t exist. Also in underground crossings everything was cleared (probably to make profit for malls ; of course it was illegal to sell there, but - I really feel more for those people than for the law), but now there are stores in them again, mostly coffee and snacks.
I’ve seen licensed localized versions by 1C on small racks in book stores, though, and those weren’t too expensive or bad, and the selection was usually good, but small, still - the people who decided which games were put there had consistently good taste, I’ve seen Thief various parts, Neverwinter Nights, Silent Hunter, various quests, maybe something else there.
I’ve had licensed WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, my first non-pirate game, and later got The Frozen Throne.
The only place with really many-many official disks I’ve seen in my childhood was Soyuzmultfilm official store (a rare place, I mean, I live in Moscow, it’s huge and is still cool, and it was even cooler), and that place was kinda expensive (and looked expensive).
Though the games causing more nostalgic feelings for me were Dark Swords (an MMORPG much like MUDs) and Wizards’ World (a browser game much like MUDs with very cheerful global chat in a frame to the left) and Travian (still alive, but was better then). There was something called Wizards’ World II (not sure if it was by the same people), which I really liked (well, it was a plagiarism at HotMM, but a nice one, cool graphics and multiplayer). Unfortunately not around anymore.
Honestly I had more than many kids (born around 1996) did, and I’m really ashamed that my dad got depressed and didn’t see me get more useful before dying from Covid. Lots of it was due to his own idiocy, but he’s done a lot and deserved far better regardless.
Honestly rain is the only thing which always, without a single failure, makes me feel I’m in the same world as then and some things in it are genuinely noble and good. So - it’s raining and people are remembering the time of LAN parties and Steam being unknown. And I’m remembering first installing Settlers, not sure which part. Sorry for the mind dump.
I got a code with my 9600XT, it was delayed so long the card was pretty much outdated by the time it came out, but I still had the code that came with it!
Pretty sure I was able to pre load it on steam before release day, I remember I took the day off work just to play it.
Kinda miss waiting fucking forever for games with multiple CDs. I know I had a game that came retail with 5 discs, I just can’t remember which one. I remember KOTOR had 4.
did counter-strike 2 come with half life? i vaguely remember half life but i remember counterstrike 2 being played a lot in the dorm floor in uni. i feel like i remember them being connected some how but i can’t recall.
the counter strike that came with HL2 was Counterstrike Source.
CS:S was such a phenominal game… So many years of nights spent staying up till 2am playing on the same server, with the same guys… and all of them gone now, like tears in the rain…
I’m old enough that I got HL2 in a retail box, when it was new.
and the fucking disks installed the game encrypted, and I could not use my computer until the next day, due to it thrashing my HDD and CPU so hard to decrypt the files that my computer was functionally useless that evening, and overnight.
now THAT was some bullshit.
This was too, cause I remember steam games bloating with temp files back in the day and regularly having to clear out the folder so you had HDD space.
Me too. I still have it.
Edit:
HOLY SHIT!! I’ve been missing my civ II disc for 20 years. It was in my half life 2 box!!!
I miss box games.
I miss feelies.
Same.
And this spurs me to bring up the lie of digital purchases… Which was sold to us on the promise of cheap games. We were promised that if we gave up on physical games, then the devs/publishers wouldnt have to pay for printing manuals/boxes, packaging of games, warehouses to store them, and the cost of shipping to get them to the stores/consumers… Which meant they could sell games for lower costs, that game prices would plumet to 25-30 dollars for brand new day 1 releases… and devs/publishers would still get a bigger chunk of revenue/more money from that, than from the old 50 dollar physical big box games with all the feelies, delicious manuals, disks that meant you can install the game however you want, whenever you want, etc etc.
Instead, what digital purchases have gotten us is… a total lack of ownership, that our games can be taken away from us at any time, for any reason, because buried in all the legalese we don’t “own” anything, we just have a “lease”…and for that, we’ve been given the right to pay 10-20 dollars more for games than what they cost during the physical game era, and the risk of the platform disappearing and taking our or games with it (which I’ve already ran afoul of and drastically altered how i buy games)
Congrats on finding your Civ2 disc! Do you have a drive to see if it still works?
Yeah I’ll have to hook it up soon. :) I’m just stoked that I found it haha.
I remember when Steam came out and everyone hated it because of how slow and buggy it was. Crazy how times have changed.
The client is still rather resource intensive, it’s just that computers have gotten so much faster that you don’t notice it.
Now, if Valve would ever deal with the download and sync issues, that would be nice.
Steam is still slow and buggy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Steam used to be slick and fast before it changed over to chromium and started trying to become a social media platform… also wish it had a simplified legacy version so people could still run it on older OSes to run the games they own that only run on older OSes. but apparently thats a super controversial topic that makes people unhinged
I installed Steam during a Lan party back in 2007 (i think to play Left 4 Dead) and remember thinking “Damn, not another bloody useless account”. Little did i know :)
I had CS:Source Steam version, except I gifted it unopened (don’t remember why, probably had enough IL-2 and SW:Battlefront and SW:EAW to play) to a friend, so only saw Steam installation on that friend’s PC until much later.
My first Steam game was Empire: Total War, which is, eh, not too old.
BTW, it’s Russia and most disks you would buy in my childhood were pirate localized versions or just pirate versions, sold in underground crossings or in shabby-looking small stores. Nobody here understood what copyright is and how it’s connected to any right, like - really nobody. It’s baffling really when people who confidently and certainly thought of copyright this exact way then, just like everybody around, are today being judgemental and condemn digital piracy. While the new generation which wasn’t very conscious back then - doesn’t. Two-faced cowards. OK.
I’m really nostalgic over all those small stores, because back then not only they existed, but those ugly malls everywhere didn’t exist. Also in underground crossings everything was cleared (probably to make profit for malls ; of course it was illegal to sell there, but - I really feel more for those people than for the law), but now there are stores in them again, mostly coffee and snacks.
I’ve seen licensed localized versions by 1C on small racks in book stores, though, and those weren’t too expensive or bad, and the selection was usually good, but small, still - the people who decided which games were put there had consistently good taste, I’ve seen Thief various parts, Neverwinter Nights, Silent Hunter, various quests, maybe something else there.
I’ve had licensed WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, my first non-pirate game, and later got The Frozen Throne.
The only place with really many-many official disks I’ve seen in my childhood was Soyuzmultfilm official store (a rare place, I mean, I live in Moscow, it’s huge and is still cool, and it was even cooler), and that place was kinda expensive (and looked expensive).
Though the games causing more nostalgic feelings for me were Dark Swords (an MMORPG much like MUDs) and Wizards’ World (a browser game much like MUDs with very cheerful global chat in a frame to the left) and Travian (still alive, but was better then). There was something called Wizards’ World II (not sure if it was by the same people), which I really liked (well, it was a plagiarism at HotMM, but a nice one, cool graphics and multiplayer). Unfortunately not around anymore.
Honestly I had more than many kids (born around 1996) did, and I’m really ashamed that my dad got depressed and didn’t see me get more useful before dying from Covid. Lots of it was due to his own idiocy, but he’s done a lot and deserved far better regardless.
Honestly rain is the only thing which always, without a single failure, makes me feel I’m in the same world as then and some things in it are genuinely noble and good. So - it’s raining and people are remembering the time of LAN parties and Steam being unknown. And I’m remembering first installing Settlers, not sure which part. Sorry for the mind dump.
I still have my 3 disk box
I still have my original box/CDs too… i have no idea where they are, but I know i have them…somewhere.
Few things more precious
Why does she look much more asian than in the game?
I could be wrong. But i believe i read something that said they changed her model in a couple updates.
I way going to say “gordon as well” but gordon doesn’t really have a model, does he?
I got a code with my 9600XT, it was delayed so long the card was pretty much outdated by the time it came out, but I still had the code that came with it!
Pretty sure I was able to pre load it on steam before release day, I remember I took the day off work just to play it.
That bridge level still, to this day, fires every one of my acrophobic neurons.
Kinda miss waiting fucking forever for games with multiple CDs. I know I had a game that came retail with 5 discs, I just can’t remember which one. I remember KOTOR had 4.
I don’t personally remember any game retailing with 5 CDs, 4 was the limit, anything over that and they’d just go for a DVD instead
did counter-strike 2 come with half life? i vaguely remember half life but i remember counterstrike 2 being played a lot in the dorm floor in uni. i feel like i remember them being connected some how but i can’t recall.
No, Counterstrike 2 came out a couple years ago.
before that was global offensive.
the counter strike that came with HL2 was Counterstrike Source.
CS:S was such a phenominal game… So many years of nights spent staying up till 2am playing on the same server, with the same guys… and all of them gone now, like tears in the rain…
oooh that makes sense; yeah this would have been in 1999/2000ish. i remember a name similar to counterstrike but i wasn’t sure
i did a search and i think it was this one i was thinking of actually (source seems to be 2004 remake of it but i was out of uni at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_(video_game))
You probably played Counter Strike 1.5 or 1.6, or both at different times, these are the ones that were made off the original Half Life