play HL2 without installing it?

[paqman]

Quick question for y'all. Be nice, I'm a newbie. I work the night shift, and have plenty of time to play games/watch movies at work. However, I can't install anything on my work pc, due to restrictions they set on our pc's. But it has the hardware to handle most games. I've found that with some games, "Call of Duty 2" in particular, I was able to just copy all the contents of the COD2 folder from my "Program Files" folder, onto my work computer and play it just fine without even installing anything. I was quite amazed at this, as I thought that installing it needed to write stuff to the registry. But either way, I can enjoy COD2 on most machines without even installing it!

Anyway, I was wondering if it was possible at all to do something similar with HL2? I tried it and it didn't work, so I was wondering if any of you know of a way to do it? I just can't install anything on my work pc, but would love to play HL2 at work! I successfully did it with COD2, and I know it's been done with other games, so if you know if it can be done with HL2, that would be great!

Thanks!

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Half-life 2 must run through steam sadly, so you'll need to install steam to do anything.

 

[paqman]

Half-life 2 must run through steam sadly, so you'll need to install steam to do anything.

True, I guess I was hoping someone had worked around that as well. Maybe with something like this hack.

*link removed

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Well i suppose you could use such a thing, but it's illegal as Valve specifically say playing their games without use of Steam breaks your terms and conditions thing you agreed to. And we cannot support such a thing on this site, with our connection to Valve (who host this site). So do what you've got to do, if you wish to, but recognise it's not advised.

 

[giant384]

can you not import steam from anothor source then download through steam?

 

[xombine]

Yeah, use your same trick by copying the Program Files folder for Steam to you work comp and see if it will run.

 

[paqman]

Sorry guys, I didn't realize this forum was supported by Valve. I know that what I want to do probably breaks some rules, but I don't want to do anything illegal. Maybe I'll just try to get the admin at my work to install the game for me. Actually, now that I think about it, Valve probably doesn't allow the game installed on more than one computer at a time either, but since I'm the only one playing it...

Thanks anyway guys!

 

[Geogaddi]

You can have it installed on infinite computers, but you can only be logged in to Steamfrom one location at a time.

 

[giant384]

this forum isnt technically supported by valve. also you it is true that you can install it on any computer, and you can log on to the account more then once on 2 different computers but once you start playing a game it will say 'steam ticket expired'. still though just put the steam files on a flash drive or something and open it from your laptop then download the files away.

 

[diluted]

you could try just copying the entire Steam folder, then copying it to the new computer and running Steam.exe. I doubt that it'd work but you never know.

 

[Tyguy]

where do you work?

 

[Kanuch]

wwell, my friend has hl2 running without steam, but its illegal, you have to copy it from dvd (that takes too long time), its bugged and with errors.
im gona ask my parents to buy me a collectors edition including CS: source, HL2: deadmatch and HL: source for christmas. its quite expensive but still better that friends version. he cant even run mods on it!

 

[xombine]

you could try just copying the entire Steam folder, then copying it to the new computer and running Steam.exe. I doubt that it'd work but you never know.

That's what I suggested.

 

[The Brick]

you could try just copying the entire Steam folder, then copying it to the new computer and running Steam.exe. I doubt that it'd work but you never know.

Works like a charm.

 

[bigburpco]

Or a better idea - put Steam onto a portable drive instead, so you don't have to wait for the bloody thing to finish copying. There also won't be any... evidence that you've played one game or another.

It'll probably work.

EDIT: I think your work computer doesn't restrict Steam, seeing that it's not widely known by non-gamers. So then you could download it again.