Team Fortress 2 is Free!

[The Happy Friar]

You're young.    You can't play any steam game outside of steam though.  You can launch it w/o having steam running, but then it launches steam.  Unless you have one of the rare titles that isn't tied to Steam any way (like Doom or Quake.  :p ).

The people who are pirating the games though don't care about Steam because they're not using it.  I have a copy of HL2 that doesn't need Steam, I made it from my Steam copy.  So I don't need Steam, they could delete my account & it wouldn't matter, I still have my game.

It's strange because Autodesk lost a lawsuit saying that that if you don't make people pay a lease fee (ie monthly, yearly, etc) it's not considered leasing & you can't stop people from reselling the software (in this case 3DSMax).  If Valve made you pay a yearly fee for the service (even $1) this would cover them.  Right now the only thing saving them is compliance of the consumer.  If enough consumers argued & filed a class action, Valve would loose.

[Arm0r]

In every game directory I have for steam there is a direct launch in the folder...you can even request copys of the cd's and their keys at any time if your account is in good standing.   I've maintained and used the same steam account for the past 7 years, I have at least 20 different titles all supported by steam.    I've never once had a problem, lost games, been hacked or given the run around by steam.....in fact they've been more than helpful, in tf2 I logged on and was missing quite a few items--I recieved them back plus bonus items for my troubles within a hours time.   I dunno what grief it is people have with steam but I'ts been a benchmark in my overall gaming experience, I back it up fully.   That and they give away free games all the time....they sponsor 2 completely free mmorpg's, they gave away portal for free, tf2, tf, counterstrike, day of defeat, alien arena...   To be honest I thought there was a catch too everytime I recieved a free game but I have yet to recieve any unwanted offers or hidden fee's. 

[Barton]

While they're at it, why don't they make CS 1.6 free, like how it use to be.