Errius wrote on Yesterday, 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.