Warning. Rant.

I bought half life 2.

I am a big fan of half life(i bought that too).

But I regret buying half life 2. I will now download the cracked version, since I already have a broken version that I payed for that's even legal(Here, not in the USA where draconian copyright laws actually has valve dictating how you use hl2 after you payed them money for it(sounds like communism to me -what happened to the land of the free? Or brave?)).

I haven't finished playing thru hl2 yet, but I suppose I will be a big fan of that too when I'm done. Here's why I haven't played it thru yet.

1. I didn't have a good enough graphics card to run it.

So I went to my friend who did. He had never been online but after fiddling about we managed to log on via a modem we ripped out of another machine. Windows didn't recognize it so we had to put it back, download drivers and then rip it out again.

2. The installation.

It all seemed rather peculiar, and after endless reboots and "is it done now?" it finally started to decrypt the game files. But we'd already had it so we killed it before it got done.

3. I bought a graphics card, good enough I thought.

And then attempted to install it at home, where there's a broadband line(2 mbits). I figured it would be faster but it wasn't. I thought it was broken until it finally finished. And since I never usually put my computer online(security reasons -this I write on a low-powered internet only box) I had it authorised(!) to run offline.

4. It works

Amazing, it's so cool, wow, Mindbl... BSOD.

5. Aye, the dreaded blue screen of death.
Again and again.

6. I reinstall windows and hl2.
Nothing works.

7. I write the help support, they say my graphics card doesn't support Hardware T&L but they're wrong. It does, even shader 2.0+.

But, it needed a new driver. This was released and...

8. It works again... I think...
Yes! It does! Wow! Cool!

9. Until now, unsuspectingly I had pushed my CPU a bit hard encoding video and the pc shuts down because it is too warm. No problem, down the multiplier abit and restart. No sweat. Until. Hl2 is no longer authorised, and my Steam account is gone. I have absolutely had it.



Account?! I don't need no stinking account to play games at home offline!

Authorisation? Fuck that!

I bought the damn game and the thank you is endless hours of misery? Indian helpdesk operators who are unable to look up the specs of a video card?
A perfectly ordinary crash that wipes out the install? The most tedious, boring and irritating installation routine ever deviced by man?

Fuck you Valve! FUCK YOU!!!

I'm pirating the game and I'm never logging on to your steam network ever again for any reason ever!!! You got it!!! You just lost a customer who's been singing your praise for five fucking years!!!

You think all that annoyingnes stops the hackers?

It doesn't! You're fools if you think so!

But it sure annoyed the heck out of me and I've instigated a new rule in my computer world to make sure I never get annoyed like that again. It's only my second rule in 15 years of computing(first one is: if you care what's on the hard-drive, don't go online). It is this:
If a software requires me to go online, I will not install it.

You may sing the praise of online gaming till your lips fall off, I'm not listening.

bangskij