Even the launch version of HL1 was a great game but gosh, were Valve a crappy company back then. HL1 shipped with a bunch of trailers, so far, so good. But update patches contained mandatory new trailers. That was dialup era and downloading the updates cost much more money because of those stupid trailers. Then came Steam and made it worse. Imagine the pushback to ads in Windows 10 but add to the annoyance the fact that the annoyances also cost money. Broadband was still just getting started. My family certainly couldn’t afford it and they could even less so afford me being online on dialup all the time. So my more wealthy friend passed me CDs with the last non-Steam updates, mods like Counter Strike. Me having been a dumb kid would have ruined my family’s livelihood otherwise.
Even the launch version of HL1 was a great game but gosh, were Valve a crappy company back then. HL1 shipped with a bunch of trailers, so far, so good. But update patches contained mandatory new trailers. That was dialup era and downloading the updates cost much more money because of those stupid trailers. Then came Steam and made it worse. Imagine the pushback to ads in Windows 10 but add to the annoyance the fact that the annoyances also cost money. Broadband was still just getting started. My family certainly couldn’t afford it and they could even less so afford me being online on dialup all the time. So my more wealthy friend passed me CDs with the last non-Steam updates, mods like Counter Strike. Me having been a dumb kid would have ruined my family’s livelihood otherwise.