Half Life 2

[Navaros]

just to add my experiences with STEAM:

when i bought the Half Life Platnimum Pack, i could not enter my CDKEY into STEAM. STEAM would not accept it even though i entered it perfectly

after some research i came to the conclusion that this is actually a common phenomenon. what happened was, a warez kiddy generated my legitimate CDKEY and then used it to create a STEAM account. thusly leaving me royally shafted and unable to use the CDKEY which i myself had paid for

you think in situations like this, the game makers would side with the paying customer by default and not the warez kiddy, right?

wrong.

in order to be able to get your CDKEY back, you must mail the envelope it came on (because Valve is too cheap to ship the game on jewel cases) to Valve at your own time and postage expense. and not only that, there is a $10 - 15 USD (not sure the current rate but it's way too darn high!) "service charge" to claim ownership of the CDKEY that you already paid for! you have to send them a check or money order in that amount along with your CDKEY envelope, else they won't give your your CDKEY back

i have had this happen to me personally. and obviously it happens to a whole whackload of STEAM game users, because Valve developed a whole "policy" around this situation. although i use the word policy loosely because really it is extortion/robbery rather than a policy


for this reason i now boycott any product that uses STEAM and encourage everyone else to do the same