Considering the way Half-Life 2 launched, plagued by Steam-generated problems, the launch of H-L 2 Game of the Year makes some sense. Eager gamers that made sure they were some of the first to get their hands on the new edition of the popular Valve game have discovered that they own the package but they just can't touch the goods.
Gamers all over the U.S. have had a rough weekend as they have run to purchase Valve's Game of the Year edition of Half-Life 2 only to find that installing it stopped them from gaining any form of access to their Steam accounts. Steam has been a source of sorrow for quite a few fans of Valve and its games but the company insists that these are teething problems on the way to achieving a fast, simple and reliable online content delivery service.
Valve can be criticized for the various problems that have cropped up with Steam since Half-Life 2 launched but they have shown a strong commitment to their platform. Considering that the first complaints were sent to the company late last Friday, it took the company until 10AM PST to address the problem and produce a solution and an official apology. According to Valve's Head of Support, Doug Valente, all users affected by the Steam problems associated with Half-Life 2: Game of the Year will be rewarded for their patience. In a statement made on the Steam forums Mr. Valente claims: The registration problem has been fixed. It may require that you log out of Steam and back in but it is all working.
We have put some new procedures in place to help ensure that this doesn't happen in the future.
As an apology, we will be adding a copy of Condition Zero to all the accounts that were effected by this problem (I know who you are ;-)) as both a token of appreciation for being our customer and as our sincere apology that this happened in the first place.
Just in case you are wondering how you will know if you have received your CZ Valve's Head of Security added: CZ will show up under your play games menu in the next 24 hours. You may have to restart Steam in order to see it. This will only show up if you tried to register your copy of HL2 GOTY during the effected period (basically anytime before 10AM PST this morning). If you don't see it in your account by this time tomorrow and have restarted Steam, PM me with a note and your account name and I will look into it.
The problem then has now been addressed and all gamers should already be well into the H-L 2: GOTY experience but the experience once again raises some questions regarding Valve's ability to support such a service as Steam and some gamers have written to MG to suggest that Valve purposefully used the weekend as an excuse in order to cover up any problems that came up with the launch. It doesn't seem likely that a company of Valve's reputation in the community would risk it all in this way but the lack of vigilance on Valve's behalf over the weekend over their own forums, where the problem was first reported, raises some further questions. It may be the case that a company that is as dedicated, as Valve is, to the creation of top quality games does not have the resources to fully support a demanding project as is Steam, after all even Mr. Valente admits about Valve that, Alas...we're not a big company...