Valve (Half Life) is awesome. (package in the mail)

[Johnny]

So a few months ago I had a huge debate on another forum about piracy. Debating against an army of people who all had their mind set that game developers are all evil heartless corporations that charge too much for games and that stealing from them is cool because they where never going to buy the games anyway. Link[/ur]

Anyway a while later I got an email from a guy named Gabe Newell who apparantly does some work at Valve. He said that he had read the thread and appreciated my view on the issue of piracy. We did some talking over emails and I recalled that I actualy pirated the first half life game and now later on I have become a huge fan of the half life series so I made the point to apologize to him for "stealing" their game. A few emails later he asked me for my post adress because they where going to send me something. Today I got it. It was a "tube" that contained a Team Fortress 2 keychain. 2 packs teamfortress 2 cards and a [url=http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9306/valveej4.jpg]poster signed by the Valve team (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.60699?page=1)

[evild2player]

All I have to say is this: wtf?

[Lyrs]

So the point is... a company is good if they talk sweet and send you gifts? Never mind that Valve creates good games.

[WzWz]

So the point is... a company is good if they talk sweet and send you gifts? Never mind that Valve creates good games.

Sounds like how students rate teachers, except easy grades rather than sweet gifts.

[Johnny]

So the point is... a company is good if they talk sweet and send you gifts? Never mind that Valve creates good games.

Valve is great for the games they make and excelent for this!

[tarnok]

This seems like a good place to dump this idea:

I hate the idea of Steam. I don't want to debate that, I just hate it. But Portal finally made me break down and buy something from them. Holy **** is that game awesome. I really hope they're working on a sequel; even if I have to buy it over Steam.

PS: I don't like to brag, but I euthanized my faithful companion cube faster than any other subject on record.

[mhl12]

all I can say is.. wow.

I'm not a big fan of the half life series but I do kinda want to try out Team Fortress. Either way, developers should follow this example more. Piracy is not gonna go away anytime soon but who knows? Developers may gain a few more supporters this way.

[Johnny]

I really disliked steam at first. Especialy when I bought the half life 1 anthology box containin the game and both expansions and realised it was as bound to steam as half life 2 but lately it's become very convenient to keep your cd keys on an account at steam so I can just install the games and get all acess through the steam account. Not to mention that it makes updates easy and to be honest I'm allways "logged on" anyway. But I can see how it would be a really big problem on a laptop.

[Killerama]

That's awesome and Gabe is really cool, I believe he is the guy who responds to a lot of players' emails personally.

To be honest, I "stole" Portal when I heard of it. Then I saw what a great game that is and that Valve deserves the money for making it, and then some. So I bought the Orange Box for PC and deleted my "stolen" Portal.

Tarnok: Yes they are making a sequel to Portal.

[Dondrei]

Steam grrrr.

But Valve good.

Honestly I can't be bothered stealing games anymore, most of the stuff I have is from $10 bins so it makes no difference.