Quite frankly, what a load of crap!
Just a couple of days, I reckon, I briefly mentioned Half-Life 2 on a games related thread in here. That spurred my desire to play this game again, but I only have the licensed version of the main game. So I went today and bought the Orange Box.
BIG MISTAKE!
The box mentions in tiny letters on the back I need an internet connection in order to activate the game and accept the SSA. I am on a freakin games store!! Does Valve think people stop doing what they are doing (and that is buying games) to go back home, to their website and read an unreadable SSA document? No! They don't. They fall for their stupid registration mechanism and spend money without knowing what they are getting onto. But that's ok, I thought. They just want me to register the game and accept whatever stupid legal document has to say about it. I can do that.
So... I get home with the Orange Box all happy and dandy, getting ready for some serious head shots. The whole Steam thing confuses me. It's a 2 DVD box... what on earth is it using the internet for? Give me a bloody break! I don't want Steam, I want to play half-Life single player. Anyway... I end up waiting 2 hours for my poor 230Kb DSL crappy connection to download the installation files that should f.... be on those 2 DVDs.
When that is finally over, it informs me my ticket expired and I have to log back in. Fine... But... for some reason it can't log me back in. So, I click cancel, launch Steam again and off I go to its control panel to try and install the games. But what's this!?...
It's wanting me to download the content that is on those freakin DVDs!! Episod 2 is going to take 2 days, Episode One 1 more day and Half Life 2 15 hours!
I usually don't get this mad at these stupid, ignorant, tongue full of pus, snorting, decaying teeth, vomit face, castrated game developers who come up with these heinous registration and update mechanisms. But I did this time for no reason other than when I just grabbed the whole thing, put it inside the box and took to the store to return it, get my money back (and in the back of my head ask for a compensation the size of a defense budget), they didn't accept it... and reminded me... I opened the box.
So... I'm mad. Screw you Valve. I hope you choke on my money and you won't see anymore of it.