I was up all night browing teh internets (its addicting) only to find this http://pc.ign.com/articles/790/790013p1.html WTF VALVE???
It's not such a bad idea, 10 dollars more and you get hl2 and ep1. If you already have them, you can give them to a friend. $50 for ep2, portal, and tf2 is still a great deal.
You can still buy it off steam. If you don't have a credit card (or are paranoid about ID theft), you can usually get a gift card from your bank and use that. And if you have a slow connection, you're screwed either way, because you'll have to download 15 updates before you can play. So I really don't see why it's that big of a deal.
Indeed. I'm going to get episode 2 and Portal but not going to pay at them. :p (Just joking. Of course I pay at them just to get the Portal game.)
I've heard that the reason they cut the Black Box was that brick-and-mortar retailers would have screwed them over (The Steam Review), or something. And yeah, don't fret your pretty little heads. Everything will still be individually available on Steam. Only people buying them for the console will end up with spare copies of HL2 and Episode 2.
I have a friend who will probably buy HL2 and Ep1 off me if I buy it retail...but who wants to buy retail...steam ftw.
If it's the same price, I'll go retail, save myself the bandwidth. Will the HL2 code count as another Steam ID for CSS?
Only if used on another Steam account, if used on an account with HL2 already installed it won't work.
retail will cost more because there needs to be profit. If VALVe sells the packages to retail for the same price as online, then retail will jack up the price so they have profit. third party distribution. with steam, its directly from VALVe to consumer, first party sale. since its pure profit, and not buying to sell for profit, they don't jack up the price.
hl2 cost me less retail than steam charges. I understand your theory Killx, but Valve has decided to increase profit margins instead of lowering the price of games. Retailers face tougher competition.