Half Life 2 is out early ...

... and you can't play it.

I'm not kidding. Half Life 2 is being purchased all over the planet, and people are getting home with the game only to find out that the wily guys at Valve have jiggered the game so that until it is activated online through their STEAM service, you can't play it.

Not a big deal, you'll just activate it, right? It's legal. Except that the Valve guys thought of everything, and until they "release" it through Steam, even LEGALLY PURCHASED copies of Half Life 2 are going to lie dormant on your drive. The main problem here is that Joe Blow Gamer is likely going to be completely unaware of this until he gets home, installs the game, and finds out he's screwed.

What seems like a great idea to curb piracy and control the release date (Half Life 2 wasn't supposed to be released until November 16th) is quickly turning into a debacle as people who have rightly purchased the game are locked out. That can't be good for customer relations, especially considering how Valve took it on the chin twice over the course of Half Life 2's development (once by missing a well-publicised release date by over a year, again when the game was stolen off the corporate network).

To make matters worse, Valve "presold" the game online through the same STEAM service. Those folks knew that their copies would be inactive until Valve released the game, but a company spokesperson (Doug Lombardi, IIRC) was quoted as saying that if the game's release date was broken, they would release the game through STEAM. Given that the retail copies must be activated, it's clear why Doug made this statement, but as it stands now, the game is still asleep and taking up hard drive space.

Of course, now the conspiracy theories are running rampant, as people wonder why the bandwidth on their STEAM server network is dropping (it's dropped in a similar fashion with every release), why the STEAM forums are down, and why Gabe Newell worships the devil (I made that last one up). Only one thing is for certain, we're all at the mercy of Valve's whims, and likely the fine print in a publishing contract between Valve and Vivendi Universal that is quickly souring. Considering that it'll be in Vivendi's best interest for Valve to activate the game, I can't see that being a big deterrent.

If it isn't clear by now, I'm just writing all this to pass the time while I wait for Valve to do the good deed. I suppose I could play some Halo 2 ...

Edit: Some people on the various internets have pointed out that it is Valve, not Vivendi, that put Steam activation in the game. That's both true and false. Valve programmed it in, but it was due to the contracted distribution arrangement with Vivendi that said that Valve couldn't release the game through Steam before the game was available at retail. The problem here is that the two companies differ on what "available at retail" means. For any SANE person, it means "I have it in my hand". To Vivendi, it means "when the date we specified comes".

Update: Valve has issued the following statement ...

If you have purchased a copy of Half-Life 2, we are sorry you are still waiting to play. This is not Valve's choice. Vivendi is insisting that the game has not yet been released, and has threatened that Valve would be in violation of its contract if we activate the Half-Life 2 Steam authentication servers at this time.