Errius wrote on 2026-08-18, 22:05:

I'm curious about the original release -- how much of the game was on DVD and how much was DLC? Was it playable at all without additional downloads?

All of it and yes, but you need to disable copy protection/Steam reliance. I think that falls in the realm of piracy even if current releases are DRM-free and forbidden to discuss on this forum at depth.

Amusingly I was like my account must be older than that... but I forgot in my youth I had several accounts VAC banned for trolling people in Team Fortress. It wasn't until I started collecting games, that I decided to stop getting banned.

lots of Half Life 2, a game about an individual asserting his humanity and fighting for freedom from an oppressive distant regime with powerful tools of surveillance and controls over access ... and it can only be bought by signing up to combine, i mean steam 😀

(exaggerated for drama!)

I really liked it when Valve actively started to support Linux gaming. If I remember correctly, at some point that coincided with the anticipated Steam release for Linux, they offered Portal for free with native ports for Linux and Mac OS X, and that was enough of an incentive for me to download and install it. I mainly wanted to reward them for their support for Linux gaming.

Ironically, I could very well have installed it on my MacBook, which was still running Mac OS X at the time. But I still wanted to support them for this.

Portal (the first one) is also one of the few games that I played all the way to the end, at least in these past two decades. The "your enemies have weapons, but you don't, find a way to use theirs against themselves" premise seemed quite novel to me and made for some fun, thoughtful and creative gameplay in my experience.

This must have been around 2012 or so.

Half Life baby!!

I got it when I got Half-Life 2 (Orange Box). Seems to be the ticket.

UNFORTUNATELY, I can't even play it anymore and am back to the bootleg copy I had before Steam. (I use the retro system for that still) I think the next thing I got was Portal 2? Didn't really start accumulating games until 2014-15

The most excited I was to buy a game is when SS3 came out (2011-ish?) I got it three days after release (knew nothing about it up to that point). Same thing happened with SS4; I had no clue it was released the same day I bought it. (I didn't even know it was a thing, so I was very excited) Guh. Running SS3 sucked at the time, as my PCs were still sh*t. By the time SS4 came (2020), I could do it, very nicely.

Apparently my first purchase was Mass Effect in 2009, even though I had already played the game on X360 when it first came out.

I do remember playing HL2 back in 2004, but it was a "not entirely legal" acquisition, if you know what I mean. I didn't do much PC gaming in the mid-to-late 2000's as I was very busy with my studies and work, also during those years I got an XBox 360 (my first gaming console since the NES).

TheMobRules wrote on Yesterday, 23:57:

The attachment Screenshot 2026-08-19 203738.png is no longer available

🤣

CS/DoD originally, then HL2.