"I danced naked by the light of a full moon, sacrificed a chicken & then prostrated myself before the SH gods. "
Uh-oh, you didn't mention pouring a shot of rum into your left ear before the dance to prevent the torpedo curse?!
Seriously, I have Half Life 2 which I bought when it first came out, and my problems with STEAM come and go - but mostly come. STEAM is fine when you have high speed cable broadband, stinks on ice when you have DSL or any kind of slower connection. The main problem is the mood strikes me "hmmm, I haven't played Half Life 2 for a while, think I'll do that tonight." STEAM says LOL no you won't, I refuse to launch the game until you "update" STEAM so I can spam you with all our latest game sales. Wait an hour for that, then get "this game is not ready to run in offline mode". Okay, go online, "unable to contact STEAM server". Now they say the game isn't installed and I have to download the entire thing again.
STEAM sucks, get the disk.