A lil more luv for retail customers please

[Methias]

Am I the only one that was put under circumstances where they were not allowed to refund their retail copy and is now basically ****ed?

As far as I can tell, I will have to pay extra for Half-Life: Source (which I was quite excited about when I heard of its existence) and I will have to pay extra for Day of Defeat: Source (which I also really wanted). And I don't have to pay 10 dollars extra (like ever person who purchased the game through Steam), I have to buy the entire ****ing game over again + $10. Valve...seriously what the **** are you thinking? When I heard that you actually had NO PLANS to allow customers to purchase the two aforementioned products independantly on release, my jaw hit the floor. In a similar fashion as to when I heard Half-Life 2 would not include a multiplayer component and, furthermore, there were not even any plans to develop one. Yeah, quite frankly you've been dropping the ball quite alot lately. This is not good customer treatment at all. I prebought this ****ing game some time in early september of 2003 (in fact, maybe even some time in August). Obviously, that makes me a dedicated fan. And this is how you repay me? Well, **** you too.

But it's all oddly satisfying in a way. Because this behavior from you is actually very self-destructive in this particular moment in time, considering you have a lawsuit ongoing with Vivendi over Steam. I seem to recall Valve as being quoted as saying that "they did not anticipate Steam to play a major role in distribution or sales of Half-Life 2". Well, if you are selling a vastly superior package over Steam, and making more money off of it per unit, then that kinda refutes that claim. You are obviously making every effort to get people to purchase over Steam as opposed to retail. These efforts include flat-out neglecting your retail customers. And for that reason, I sorta hope Vivendi nails you.

 

[Dan]

uhh, so you're mad at them for not letting you purchase their products for $10? The way I see it it's their product they can do whatever they please with it. If they charge something ridiculous then people won't buy it, but it's not like they owe you cheap games or anything other than what you pay for for that matter. When you purchase most normal games, do you not normally receive just that one game and nothing else? I don't remember having other games bundled with Doom3, yet somehow it is expected from HL2? You're a consumer, you buy things, you "deserve" only what you pay for, and you're paying for HL2.

 

[DarkSonic]

Would you REALLY consider HL:Source a new game? All they did was throw in physics and new water. Whoopdee****ingdoo. Let's all go out and spend 50 bucks on a game we all ALREADY OWN! Wow, that's pure brillance. This guy has balls, and I respect him for stating this in a pure fanboy atmosphere.

 

[Dan]

It isn't a full game or a new game or anything. It was just a little bonus extra for something that was between a regular package and the gold edition. It would be silly to sell it seperately. It woul get like 5/10 reviews and then everyone would bitch and moan about how valve is trying to squeeze money out of old products. If you really wanted it you could have cancelled your retail order and got the silver edition. It's not like this is suddenly new info.

 

[Cole]

Valve dosn't package the retail boxs.
Thats vivendi's job.

 

[StardogChampion]

Basically retail customers get shafted. They get Half-life 2 + NO MULTIPLAYER, and a port of a crappy mod.

Retail should have included DoD:S, HL:S and CS:S. I paid £30 for my retail copy, but for £30 on steam I can get all HL2 + all the extras.

I hope DoD dies because the retail users can't play it without paying an extra £30+. Lets just hope NS doesn't sell-out like the DoD and CS teams, or Valve will try and sell us that too.

About refunding the game, I was told that when I bough it from the shop, maybe they should've told you.

 

[Rbentley100]

I can well understand no refundable because in affect all you are doing is buying a number and once that is regestered then the box itself becomes useless.

I can also understand valve pushing steam, so next game they make they can pretty much get rid of people like vivendi.

But I have to agree that it anoys me too that I cannot "upgrade" or buy seperately Hl:s or DoD:s Even if it is ioffered cheaper with the package deal. Atm I will have to buy another copy of hl2 and cs:s to gain access to DoD:s and hl:s and those two are not worth the $60 it would cost via steam.

One good thing that could out of this is that once steam becomes more established hopefully it will make games cheaper, because there will be no manurfacting costs, although I have to admit that I am not keeping my hopes up lol

 

[cleepa]

Why is everyone complaining about no multiplayer? Just wait a month and there will be a zillion quality mods for the game, just like the original HL.

 

[Ammonia]

I quite agree, I paid £40 for my retail copy, cos I don't have broadband so can't download it, and now I can't even get Half Life S or DOD S free, even though I paid more than the gold edition costs to download? Sorry thats stupid, and i cant even ask a friend to download it, cos you have pay an insanely high price for it. I own Half Life, Half Life Generations (with Blue SHift) and now HL2 and Valve won't give me a free re-worked game. It is rather cheap.

 

[Xac493]

Not valve's fault that you bought it retail. Can you blame them for adding insentive for people to buy the copy that gets them 30 dollars instead of the retail that gets them what mabey 5?. Even if they wanted too add it to retail they couldn't anyway because its being published under a diffrent producer (activision).

 

[Gray Fox]

Its just a shame, I paid 58,- euro's for the retail copy and if you calculate how much dollars that is (58x1.3) 75 dollars, and thats a lot of money and we have to go through all the steam things as you steam purchasers but still have to put the dvd in the dvd player and can't upgrade easlily, listen we don't complain becuase we are asses, we love hl2 and really just wanna be able to play all the things you steamers can, we know that a lot of it is not Valve's fault, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't bring our concernesand problems under attention, atleast we can discuss it here.

 

[ZeeM]

its kinda stupid
CS and DOD were available for free in the good old days...

 

[shapeshifter]

Basically retail customers get shafted. They get Half-life 2 + NO MULTIPLAYER, and a port of a crappy mod.

Retail should have included DoD:S, HL:S and CS:S. I paid £30 for my retail copy, but for £30 on steam I can get all HL2 + all the extras.

I hope DoD dies because the retail users can't play it without paying an extra £30+. Lets just hope NS doesn't sell-out like the DoD and CS teams, or Valve will try and sell us that too.

About refunding the game, I was told that when I bough it from the shop, maybe they should've told you.

Uh... retail comes with Cs:s, all copies do.

 

[colonelkadaffy]

yes but counter strike is crap, im more angry about being shafted when it comes to DOD:S

 

[Baal]

I have retail copy, will I be able to buy DOD:S when it is released?

I don't care that much...but I was under the impression I could buy it when it is released..

But again..it's not that big of a deal to me.

 

[colonelkadaffy]

buy!!! why should we have to buy a mods thats meant to be and is only been sucessfull becuase of its freeness!!! It will be dod 1.3 with a new graphics engine thats not even theres, and we have to pay.

 

[Xac493]

DOD and CS are still free on the hl1 engine. I love when people complain that they don't get stuff for free. OMFG those bastards eh!

 

[colonelkadaffy]

no im just saying its a rip off. I develop a free mmpog rpg (no where near hl2 or anything dont get me wrong) i just get mad when people go for the money grab like the people at Dod apprently have. I mean ive played it since day one, and now just because there makng exalcty the same game but with a new engine, its a bit disconcerting at best, surely you must agree.

 

[JPack]

Don't blame Valve. Blame the mod creators who sold their CS and DoD rights to Valve and now work for them.

 

[colonelkadaffy]

ahh that i dint know. capatalist bastards get rich at the expense of my freeloading grrrr!

 

[Xac493]

They put alot of thier free time into DOD and I had alot of fun playing it. 5 dollars more (if your counting hl:s as a 5 dollar value) isn't really that much. If you got retail, that was your choice. Noone tricked you. If you thought you'd get DOD:S you obviously assumed wrong which is noone elses fault but your own. If its really that big of a deal and you have a 56k, you could have had a friend burn it onto a cd. Its not like they just copy the files and boom they work with the new engine. I'm sure 5 dollars worth of work has gone into just the conversion.

 

[colonelkadaffy]

downloading through soruce is highly impracically for a person who lives at collage (steam dosnet work due to firewall) therefore i will most likely have to pay about £ 20 in a shop. Im simply arguing that now the two most popular mods are now no longer free, the HL2 mod community will never be as great as the oringial half lifes

 

[Diazo]

Errr.

There's a pretty big bit of info being missed here. Activision, NOT Vivendi owns the distribution rights to DOD. And I can't think of any situation where Activison would allow Vivendi to package DOD with one of it's products.

I would expect that once DOD:S is ready, we will see it for sale on store shelves, being published by Activision.
Note: ^^ My speculation, don't take this as fact.

Secondly, about paying for it. DOD for HL1 was a mod, done by the mod people in their free time. They had other jobs they worked at to pay the bills. Now, since they work for Valve, making DOD:S is part of there job, and they should get paid for their work.

And lastly, I expect to see fewer mods for HL2 then there were for HL1. I say this because things are more complex for HL2 then HL1 and creating a mod is a larger time investment. Due to this time investment, the only thing in the near future will be mods release by Valve. (Not truly mods if the game maker releases them, but w/e).

Diazo

 

[Rbentley100]

Im not saying that they should be free, as yes alot of time has gone into them and the brains behind the mods do deserve some rewards.

But what would be useful for these 'Extras' is if you could purchase them seperately, so for us suposed 'dumb asses' who bought the retail can buy them without buying a 2nd copy of hl2 which im sure you can understand would feel a waste of money

EDIT: also relevant to the popularity of cs and dod supposedly because they were free, since alot of people b the sounds of things have bought the silver package they already own the aformentioned mods, but for the rest of us, im not in much doubt that there will be a new 'cs' ie another succesful mod, after all dod and cs arent the only good mods for hl1, natural selection for instance is prety cool, so i guess we will just be waiting for new mods, this will most likely take some time due to the complexity of source

Richard

 

[scraped knees]

lets just say that forcing steam on us is unfair shit