Homer said:I kind of doubt this is true, pc gameplay really ran a 2nd rate review from what I have seen.
Why would they not do this? Did you see how bad it was when Doom 3 came out, I remember reading that one site had over 50000 downloading it on bit torrent. VUG \ Valve likely saw this and thought that 1 time authentication was a good idea.
Really it is not that unlikely but would suck if you did not have an internet connection.