I bought Half-Life 2 yesterday over Steam, Valve's online games distribution system. The price is the same, the delivery much faster than waiting for the delivery of physical product, not to mention the fact that game developer actually earns a lot more this way, hopefully giving them enough incentive to continue producing great games.

This model is similar to musicians selling songs over iTunes, but better - iTunes (Apple) is still the middle man, and takes a big chunk of profit for themselves. I wonder if success of Half-Life 2 (over Steam) might revolutionize the way we buy games in the future, maybe even the way we buy music and movies online?

Needless to say, publishers (and by extension retailers as well) are not happy about this, and the consequence is at least one lawsuit between Vivendi Universal (game's publisher) and Valve going on at the moment. Additionally, even though I have already downloaded the game I can't play it till November 16th, when the retailers will start selling it - on the same day, the game will be unlocked and you'll be able to activate it online and then play (offline).

I tried the engine stress test and my laptop is definitely going to play the game with good frame rates. The great news for wide-screen laptop owners out there is that wide-screen gaming is supported out of the box and actually works!

In the end, a small bit of trivia for Half-Life fans - did you know that Valve hired Bram Cohen, author of BitTorrent, to work on the aforementioned Steam system beginning this year?