A welcome reminder of what Steam is all about: a DRM system trying to take away the control from both traditional distributors and players. That it led to the current Steam de facto monopoly is not an accident, it was designed that way from day one. Read the full article on Ars Technica.

In other news: Water still make you wet.

Yeah. This isn't really news to anyone...

There were complaints, but not enough will behind them. Most were not willing to abstain from supporting it when ever more publishers and devs kept getting lured into the net of Steam. I wasn't even aware of it until 2011.

I still remember the first infected boxed games I bought that required Steam. It was Aliens vs Predator and The Ball in December 2010. Had zero idea Steam even existed. When the installer suddenly asked to download something and create an account there, I actually thought I got scammed. Cancelled the installation and only a couple months later, after doing some research did I find out how Steam worked and operated. I hadn't even considered something like that might exist. What do you mean I can't play the game I just installed from a disc unless I download some 3rd party program? I begrudgingly eventually did it but since then, I could no longer safely keep buying boxed games without keeping my guard up.

When the same thing as with AvP happened to me with Dragon Age: Inquisition and Origin a couple years later, I knew the future looked very bleak... Until I stumbled upon GOG thanks to a news headline about a System Shock 2 giveaway in June 2016. Made an account but still distrustful of digital only, didn't buy anything until a year later in October 2017. Seeing the way things were going, I found GOG to be the only acceptable solution for a digital only product with their offline installers. Grim Dawn ultimately being the game that made me pull the trigger, the rest is history.

I remember it like it was yesterday: my first Steam game ever was "Portal".
They gave that away prior to new years eve, I think.
When I heard about it, I thought long about it: one the one hand, what I had heard of "Portal" made me curious, on the other hand, Steam's "always online" requirement was putting me off from buying anything there.
But then again: a gift is a gift and you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
Iirc, I was done creating my Steam account, a whopping ten minutes, before the end of the free offer.
I then immediately downloaded the game and started playing (loved it!).
It took me still quite a while after that "first contact", before I actually spent money there.
And then I also waited for a sale with extremely good offers.
But yeah...that free copy of "Portal" was, how they got me.
shrug

As soon as I realized that client based DRM could lead to a future where only most popular games would get proper permanent cracks and the rest would require finding a new client fooling hack for each of them that don't interfere with another every time the client needs to be updated for various reasons, my plan to just wait a while and buy a used copy once the game was patched properly got scrapped immediately, as there just was no way I was going to play HL2 before it either is sold elsewhere without any ties to Steam or it has become abandonware.

HL2 may have been "too good" of a game for many to resist the online authentication requirement, but to me the more I want to play a game, the more I need to be sure that I have first future-proofed it properly and it also helps that I know that in case I should ever manage outlast Steam, I can focus on obtaining only games that actually turned out to be good in the long run rather than just getting praised as such early on and then quickly forgotten as soon as some other game got released.

I have never played Half Life 2 and I won't ever, unless it one day sees a DRM-free release. Same goes for Portal and Mass Effect 2 (despite having really enjoyed 1).

No game is good enough to submit to the chains of DRM over.

You haven't missed anything. I began playing it for the first time this year and uninstalled it after a little over 2 hours. Boring and uninspired (by contrast, I replayed Half-Life 1 and its expansions, still was fun).

I love half life 2 but prefer the first one. Try emulating the 360 version on PC if you want to technically play a DRM free version.

Funfact: The game is actually DRM-free on Steam... (In contrast to HL1)

I thought you need Goldberg to make it run without steam?

There is no such thing as a DRM-free Steam game ;)

To clear this up:-

Half Life 1 Retail Disc Original = Disc Check, can be No'CD.
Half Life 1 Retail Disc GOTY = DRM-Free
Half Life 1 (Steam, GoldSrc Engine) = SteamWorks DRM
Half Life 1 (Steam, Source Engine) = DRM-Free (but buggy)
Half Life 2 = DRM-Free
Half Life 2 Episode 1 = DRM-Free
Half Life 2 Episode 2 = DRM-Free
Portal 1 = DRM-Free
Portal 2 = SteamWorks DRM (Can be "Goldberged")

I could have sworn HL1 was DRM-free. I have both backups on my hard drive right from Steam. I just can't remember if I needed Goldberg to play them, since it has been so long. Thank you for clarifying this.