I know this is a bit offtopic but absolutly legal i think. I installed and registered steam beta and started to download halflife and opposing force (free for all beta users). At that time you couldn't download a game at once. After hours of download (ISDN) i was able to play halflife level one. Then i found a site with the full steamfile of both games to download. It took me 2 sundays (XXL - germans know what i mean) to download them. But you may already know it. When download was finished you have to run steam online to install the games and steam automatically updated to release state and now wants a CD key for halflife and opposing force (games were only free for beta users). So has anyone a program to unpack that gcf file where halflife is packed in so that i can play more than that level one of halflife i have downloaded? I am waiting more than three month with 700 useless mb lying on my hd but i havn't found anything usefull.

Regards,
Andreas

Ehm, I don't quite think all that would be really legal  ::)

Tip :
Grab one of those cheap "HalfLife-Generations" packs, some shops still have them lying around.
(Contains HalfLive, CamperStrike *yuck* :P ;D , Blueshift and Opposing Forces, 4 CD's in total )

Unfortunately, the German "make peace not war" Editions though :-/

(also comes with the needed CD Keys of course ;) )

It really was legal in the betaphase of steam. The following link proves that (well, in german):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ola-15.07.03-001/default.shtml

I was able to play halflfe level 1 without entering a key. I think offering these games for free was a marketing trick to attract customers to install and register with steam and find the remaining bugs. With DSL i would have downloaded all files within the betaphase legally for free in 3 hours. They let me register. They got me as a free beta-tester. I don't want to pay just because the betaphase ended during my slow ISDN connection  :P

Regards,
Andreas

Halflife costs bearly 10$ today.. try on ebay you'll find it for 5$ and less..

So don't be a cheapo :) if you like the game - buy it.

Believe me. I 'have' and 'respect' originals. It's not money that makes me  >:(

It's the :P that STEAM showed me when the betaphase finished just before my downloads were finished.

Now i show steam the 'Effenberg'. I crack that gcf and if this is the last i am doing ;D

Regards,
Andreas