Chang739

Join Date 08/2007

Half Life 2 infringement question

Hey, I know this is a little unorthodox asking this question on the sins forums, but ive been waiting for a few days for my account on the steam forums to be allowed by a moderator, and i have to go tomorrow, but anyway; I recently bought the complete Half Life 2 pack through steam, and spent a few hours downloading it all (all 11 or so gigs of it, i just love my internet here) and have been having a ball playing it.

But tomorrow, I head down south back to my mums house, and I wont be coming back to my dads for a month or two. My mum doesnt have a very good internet connection, so im not going to be able to re-download HL2 down there (Because it says your allowed to play HL2 on more than one computer, as long as you download it). So, am I allowed to copy/paste all of it onto a USB and take it down like that?

Will there be any copy laws broken like that? Im just asking this, because IF im allowed too do this, it seems a bit strange, because just imagine all the people who would abuse this and just copy/paste it for all their mates. I dont want to be banned from steam or have a lawsuit on my hands.

THanks for any replies.

off-topic

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Sorry this is an impulse forum and therefore we will show support for impulse and only tell you how to do it in impulse, which just happens to be the same way to do it in steam.

Anyway, what you can do:

open 'Impulse'. Right click on the game and select backup/archive game files

Follow the wizard through.

Go to where the backup is and put it onto your pendrive. You will also need the setup.exe you used to install Impulse/Steam.

Go to the next computer. Install 'Impulse'. Get it to open the game files.

play your game

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, thats a shame then, I guess Ill never know how to do this using Steam, but at least i know how to do it on 'Impulse'

FYI: I actually thought u could only get HL through steam, when i think HL, I think steam. Silly me. Otherwise I would have done it through Impulse.

What I want to know is, is this legal? Im guessing it is, seeing as its so simple to do. Maybe theres a catch...

Do I have to be signed in on steam to play the game? Maybe thats the catch, if they see two computers signed in on the same steam account, they will know the games being pirated.

Thanks for the speedy response

Successfully updated karma reason!

Half life IS only available through Steam. What you're planning is perfectly legal, just make a backup of your game(s) (File->Back up games, IIRC), transfer or make the back-Ups to a DVD or USB-drive, install Steam on the second machine, login with your account, and restore back-ups. I haven't done this myself, but that is how's it supposed to work.

Steam allows you to use your games on any computer you wan't, unless teher is a third-party DRM used, but that is obiviously not the case with Valve games.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The whole purpose of these digital distribution softwares is the ability for you to take your games anywhere and play them, so it should be fine. Just don't have the game running on both computers at once, since thats where it might get hairy. Taking a game somewhere else and playing it wouldn't raise any anti-piracy flags, but if it is played on both computers halfway across the world at the same time, that is when you might get into trouble. So just don't leave the game running on your computer while you go to her house

Successfully updated karma reason!

I asked the exact same question awhile back. All you have to do is copy the steamapps folder in its entirity onto a new installation of Steam and you are good to go. Perfectly legal (even the official help files reccomend this) and even superior in a way to Impulse in regards to convenience.

To play the games you still need an internet connection to allow Steam to phone home. You also need an account that owns said game, so while you CAN copy things for your friends all it will do is save them the effort of downloading.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thanks for the help guys, Im headed down south now with HL2 and the episodes on my thumbdrive. Should be alot of fun playing through the story!

Still, I think its a bad thing having to be signed in on steam to play the game. What if you dont have an internet connection? When I chose to buy it through Steam, I was expecting somthing that was pretty much a digital version of the CD you could buy retail, In that, you couldnt burn it or anything, and you needed a CD key, but you also DIDNT have to be connected to the internet to play.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Steam does have an offline mode that essentially works like Impulse, you'll have to do some reading in the documentation to find out how.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I don't suggest using steam backups they have a shoddy track record with me, copy your steam apps folder from the steam install directory then paste the folder back into the installed steam folder on the other computer. This doesn't always work for non-valve software.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Take all .gcf files from pc (C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps) and put them in USB. When you install new steam on other PC and log into your account, put .gcf files back and enable download game. It should speed up your download a lot. No need to wait to download whole game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

To use the offline mode the games must be updated to the latest versions, so you must connect the computer to the internet atleast once. Back when my computer didn't have this handy WLan card, i had to drag the computer to the other room to use the internet, and the modem is so damn old that it doesn't have Vista drivers, which meant i had to setup Lan connection between the computers to access the internet from my machine. After doing that though, HL2 worked perfectly.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Note that only valve games store savegames in the steamapps folder. Most of them like call of duty and mount and blade store them in your My Documents folder.

Successfully updated karma reason!