[frik]

I remember the "The Opera" mod. Good ol times. Only a few commenters in this thread are/were actual real PC gamers (not Farmville/CoC).

I refused to upgrade to Steam and patched my HL1, CS 0.8 to 1.x with non-Steam-patches. Valve was such a let down since Half Life 2 fake E3 presentation. HL2 was good, but many levels were cut (e.g. icebreaker) and after all HL1 was the better game (except the Xen alien levels). Half Life 3 is running gag like Duke Nukem Forever was for 10+ years.

The greed almost destroyed PC gaming around 2006-2009, it revived due to the casual trend and more players owning a PC/laptop. Nevertheless PC gaming is still strong in certain countries in Europe and Asia. Sadly, the real-time-strategy genre is completely dead (except StarCraft2 & clones) - Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Command and Conquer (3 different series) will be missed.