4 ms·

Valve has a netflix-like model early on. I remember that you'd buy boxed Valve software and it would come several license keys, one for the base game, then ano

• gigaflop 5y ago
  How early was this? My intro to Steam was via the Orange Box, which I bought from a physical store. I don't remember if Steam was mandatory for them. Either way, CD keys used to be totally shareable, before online DRM really kicked off. You could just copy the one you got, and let someone else use it to install the game. A downside I faced was when my CD for a game stopped working, and I had to buy the game all over again to get a new CD + key. Either key would work during the install, but I didn't have the option of just downloading the installation media, so I had to pay up. The other time I saw this backfire was in a (temporary) LAN setting with COD4:MW. There were only so many CD keys, and you wouldn't be able to join a game where 'your' key was already active. Otherwise, it was fully-featured and fully usable!
  • pvg 5y ago
    Fairly sure Steam was mandatory for Orange Box and was also probably the first (or thereabouts) time Steam did the key sharing thing - getting the Orange Box bundle would give you extra keys for the bits you already owned. This model isn't really how the bulk of bundles sold on Steam work now, though, for whatever reason - bundles tend to just get steep discounts on sale with possible extra discounts for content you already have.