This Geek

I’m _not_ fucking impressed.

It’s taken me 2 hours to install Half-life 2. First, you get the install from 5 cds. Then “Steam” launches, and spends half an hour updating itself — thanks to my shitty connection.

Once it’s done that, it spends god knows how fucking long, “decrypting” Half-life 2 game files. Now, literally, 2 hours later (I’ve been online 2 hours and 10 minutes now), I click on “Launch Half-life 2″, and it starts off by telling me that it will launch in about 82 minutes… which has dropped down to about 10 minutes now. The motherfucker is busy updating.

This is the LAST so-called “Steam” game I’m ever gonna buy, so long as I live here.

Valve, you fucking suck!!

So I run out and buy Half-life 2 this afternoon. Get home, all ready to play it, only to discover, to my horror, that it requires an internet connection to install(!). Fucking bastards. What the fuck for??

Now normally, I wouldn’t be too bothered about this… but I think our telco exchange got nailed by lightning last Thursday, because I haven’t been able to make a digital connection (ISDN) since then. Using an analogue modem has been really flaky as well. It’s the first time in 2 days that I’ve been able to establish a connection, shitty as it is, and the fucking telco has been really slack about fixing the damn problem. I’m pretty damn pissed off.

It really annoys me that a game now requires an internet connection in order to function. This ain’t America folks. We just don’t have the fucking infrastructure for that! — Well we do, but there is one telco here, and it has a monopoly, so it charges the earth for phone calls and especially data connections. Check out Hellkom.

So my question is, why isn’t there an alternate means of activating this game? Why no phone numbers? What the fuck is wrong with you people? You think everywhere is the same as the USA? Kiss my ass. Unfortunately some of us have the misfortune of living in a shithole backwater (Or should I say shitwater backhole?).